bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Policy Implications of Education Informatics
Authors: Carr Jo Ann , O'Brien Nancy P.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This concluding article identifies the policy implications of education informatics and explores impacts of current copyright laws, legislative structures, publishing practices, and education organizations. Synthesizing the discussions in the preceding articles, this article highlights the importance of designing information systems to promote open access to information in order to support scholarly communications and provide for the application of scholarship to practice within the field of education. Specific steps are proposed to further advance education informatics and to anchor it within constantly changing technologies in order to address pedagogical, curricular, and policy issues within education.

Purpose

This article is designed to propose future directions for the development of the field of education informatics and promote additional research.

Research Design

Information in this article is based on a brief literature review and an analysis of the interrelated implications of the articles in this issue for policy development in education informatics.

Conclusions

Although education informatics as a term has been used since at least 1980, there is limited literature about this term. This lack of discussion about the integration of education informatics principles and content in copyright and other legislation, in formal education, and in information dissemination practices indicates that education informatics has had little impact as a field of study within the discipline of education. Policy changes at the federal and state government levels and within educational organizations and associations will be needed to promote the development of education informatics as a core part of the discipline of education. Full development of the field of education informatics will require diverse policy changes by multiple audiences. One specific policy change that will be needed is strengthening collaborative copyright as part of the Copyright Commons. This and other changes should focus on improving access to current and historical education literature from both formal and informal channels for scholarly, practitioner, community, and policy audiences. Additionally, schools and colleges of education should create programs of study in education informatics. Consideration of user needs and mobile access to information should drive policy changes in the organization of classrooms, learning, and teacher educator programs. Most of all, policy changes need leadership that is guided by a commitment to the alignment of federal, state, regional, and local data distribution and to the creation of partnerships to align policy with practice and a vision of the role of education informatics in the discipline and practice of education.
Programmatic Role of Education Libraries in Informatics to Support Preservice Teacher Preparation Programs
Authors: Farmer Lesley
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The management, processing, and transformation of information constitute central tasks in education. Education informatics intersects the theories and practices of both informatics and education. In particular, informatics aids in the systematic incorporation of technology as educational stakeholders represent, process, and communicate information effectively. The systematic study of those informational structures and interactions, particularly the application of technology to discovering and communicating education information—education informatics—is less prevalent.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

As education librarians seek to collaborate with preservice teacher preparation programs, they need to apply informatics principles to optimize the library's ultimate impact on student achievement. Specifically, education librarians need to examine several levels of information processing systems: student, faculty, program, institution, and government entities. Furthermore, education librarians need to identify the conditions or environments of these information systems because the infrastructure, available resources, and knowledge base all impact student learning.

Setting

The settings for this study were preservice teacher preparation programs and academic libraries.

Population/Participants/Subjects

The participants were preservice teachers, teacher preparation faculty, and librarians.

Research Design

This is a secondary analytic essay.

Conclusions/Recommendations

With the burden that teacher preparation faculty have in offering a well-rounded and time-efficient program, postsecondary education libraries and their staff can support efforts to address informatics, leveraging their contributions of resources and informatics expertise. Academic librarians have in-depth training in informatics in that they look at information systematically. Particularly in those institutions where librarians are assigned subjects in which to specialize, they can link their professional skill to content-area needs.
Compassionate, Spiritual, and Creative Listening in Teaching and Learning
Authors: Garrison Jim
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Listening is largely overlooked in cultures constituted on the basis of the freedom of speech, such as we find in the United States and elsewhere.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The article explores compassionate listening as a creative spiritual activity. Such listening recognizes the suffering of others in ways that open up possibilities for healing and transformative communication. It is particularly important for a caring profession like teaching and critical for good teaching and learning relationships.

Research Design

Relying on philosophical reflection, the article mixes some of the basic ideas of Eastern thought revolving around the image of the Bodhisattvas as they who constantly ameliorate suffering. The article concentrates on the Bodhisattva “Perceiver of the World's Sounds.”

Conclusions/Recommendation

We can only relieve suffering if we attend carefully to the needs, desires, interests, and purposes of others and respond in terms of their best possibility in the situation. Such self-eclipsing allows caregivers to avoid the horrors of conditional love. Such listening lies beyond theory and ideology in the immediate, directly involving sympathetic response, but not pity. It is not the kind of sympathy that assumes that the pain in others has the same characteristics or source as our own.
Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current U.S. Context
Authors: Goodwin A. Lin
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The United States is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented immigration, with the majority of new arrivals coming from Asia and Latin America, not Europe. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (APIs) represent the fastest growing racial group in the United States, and schools are again being asked to socialize newcomer students, many of whom are APIs. Yet, even as the United States becomes more racially diverse, the national mindset regarding immigrants and immigration ranges from ambivalent to increasingly (and currently) hostile, and is often contradictory. “American” typically is imagined as “White,” and perceptions of APIs and people of color as “other” remain cemented in our collective psyche. It is this sociohistorical-political context that frames the education and socialization of Asian American citizens, immigrants, and their children.

Objective/Focus

As APIs are absorbed into the fabric of society, how will they define themselves? How will they be defined? This article begins by deconstructing the social category Asian and Pacific Islander in order to reveal the immense diversity contained under this label. The discussion illuminates both the horizontal diversity of APIs—differences between ethnic groups, and vertical diversity—differences within ethnic groups, to underscore the insufficiency of the API label. Against the diverse backdrop that APIs truly (re)present, (Asian) American education framed by three curricular contexts in the United States—the major reforms of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the “model minority” mythology—is theorized using postcolonial theory as an analytic lens. The article concludes with thoughts on how APIs can resist domination and what might be sites of resistance in schools or society.

Research Design

This is an analytic essay that examines both historical and contemporary educational and policy contexts.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Curriculum, defined not simply as subject matter content and instructional procedures, but as a tool of acculturation and a depository of (U.S.) national and cultural values, has the power to emancipate or colonize. Each of the three curricular contexts in the United States—the major reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the “model minority” mythology—exemplify the role Curriculum plays in defining, silencing, and/or marginalizing APIs. Imagined sites of resistance against Curriculum as colonizer include this very page, where one voice deliberately pushes back against the obfuscation of fixed realities layered onto people of Asian descent in the United States, the reexamination and revision(ing) of teacher preparation curricula, and the larger policy arena.
Leading Schools of Excellence and Equity: Documenting Effective Strategies in Closing Achievement Gaps
Authors: Brown Kathleen M. , Benkovitz Jen , Muttillo A. J. , Urban Thad
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In the Fall 2006 issue of AERJ, Hoy, Tarter, and Woolfolk Hoy identified the new construct of academic optimism as a general latent concept related to student achievement even after controlling for SES, previous performance, and other demographic variables. Through structural equation modeling, they found that the collective properties of academic emphasis, collective efficacy, and faculty trust work together in a unified fashion to create positive academic environments. To build a comprehensive theory of academic optimism, Hoy and his colleagues recommended more research in a variety of school settings and more qualitative research to explore roles, experiences, expectations, conditions, and differences of academic optimism in schools.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The purpose of this empirical inquiry of state-recognized “Honor Schools of Excellence” was to explore how these schools of distinction are (or are not) promoting and supporting both academic excellence and systemic equity for all students.

Research Design

In Phase One, quantitative data were collected through equity audits to scan for and then document systemic patterns of equity and inequity across multiple domains of student learning and activities within 24 schools. In Phase Two, the 24 schools were ranked, based solely on minority achievement, and then separated into two types of schools, small gap (SG) schools and large gap (LG) schools. Through site visits (n = 16) and the use of semi-structured interviews with principals, assistant principals, teachers, and parent leaders (n = 80), qualitative data were then collected to document best practices and effective strategies that principals use to confront and change past practices anchored in open and residual racism and class discrimination. The data were analyzed through the theoretical framework of academic optimism.

Findings/Results

Three differences between the SG schools and the LG schools were found: encouraging academic achievement, offering instructional feedback, and expecting excellence.

Conclusions/Recommendations

To truly honor excellence, we need to embrace equity. As such, the outcomes of interest are better in schools where principals support, model, and monitor a teamwork approach, a balanced approach, a strong sense of purpose, and an insistent disposition to assure that all students are served well and that all are encouraged to perform at their highest level.
Americanizing the West: Protestant and Catholic Missionary Education on the Rosebud Reservation, 1870–1920
Authors: Bennison Sarah
Published: November 2021

Background

This paper challenges the dominant story of Protestant and Catholic conflict by illustrating the critical role that mission schools played in creating denominational consensus in the West.

Focus

Protestant and Catholic missionaries cast aside their differences as they worked toward common goals to “civilize,” Christianize, and “Americanize” natives on reservations like Rosebud. United as whites against indigenous “others,” these predominantly female missionaries forged new, interdenominational conceptions of American identity through their work in western mission schools.

Research Design

The article offers historical analysis and interpretation.

Conclusions

Despite a long historiography emphasizing conflict between these groups, this study of a Protestant school and a Catholic school on Rosebud at the turn of the twentieth century provides new perspectives on the Americanization process at the center of schooling during this period. This examination of missionary education adds to our understanding of educative efforts among Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by illustrating how religion, and religious denominationalism, operated on the frontier. Against a long history of missionary work in the West and denominational conflict in the East, Protestants and Catholics alike affirmed their own “American” identity through their work on Rosebud.
A Critical Look at Choice Options as Solutions to Milwaukee's Schooling Inequities
Authors: Chapman Thandeka K. , Antrop-González René
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The lack of court-ordered support for race-based policies that maintain and create integrated schools has forced communities of color to seek other avenues to obtain equitable education, such as school choice. Individual states and the federal government, as seen in grant provisions through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, are encouraging the expansion of choice at the very time that options for increasing student diversity, particularly racial diversity, are being narrowed by the courts.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The article uses critical race theory to examine the outcomes of specific school reforms, based on market theory models of school choice, that were designed to alleviate schooling inequities in urban districts.

Setting

The context of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serves as a microcosm of urban districts that have embraced school choice to create more equitable schooling options. Milwaukee, like most metropolitan areas, has a history of court-ordered desegregation that served as a temporary solution to racially segregated schools. Given the federal and district court turn from supporting race-based desegregation policies in schools, Milwaukee and other metropolitan districts are looking for new models to serve students of color in their districts and cities.

Research Design

This article is a conceptual paper that incorporates data from a variety of sources to support the authors’ conclusions.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data for this project were taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, documents from newly created small high schools, such as Web sites and curriculum designs; current newspaper articles discussing issues of small high schools; archival newspaper articles documenting the creation of the 1990 choice and charter programs; professional experiences as a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates institutional selection and small-school team support system; and an empirical study that documents teachers’ attempts to provide curriculum and instruction in newly created small schools.

Conclusions/Recommendations

In combination, these data sources tell the story of market theory reforms that will continue to struggle to meet reformists’ goals to serve all Milwaukee populations so long as policy makers and the courts continue to deny the irrefutable power that race and class exercise in parental choice in U.S. urban schools.
What do you See? The Supreme Court Decision in PICS and the Resegregation of Two Southern School Districts
Authors: Anderson Celia Rousseau
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In June 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to prohibit student assignment on the basis of race. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (hereafter referred to as PICS), the court deemed race-based strategies used to voluntarily desegregate school districts to be unconstitutional. Although the ruling certainly has important practical implications for the desegregation of U.S. schools, the PICS decision is also significant for what it reflects about the climate surrounding school segregation.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

One purpose of this article is to examine the larger landscape of contemporary views in which the PICS decision is situated. As such, the focus is less on the specific impact on student assignment policies and more on the broader picture of desegregation and education. A second purpose of this article is to illustrate the important role that critical race theory (CRT) can play in viewing these issues. Specifically, the author uses CRT to analyze the historical and contemporary conditions of two adjacent school districts and to connect the conditions in these districts to the PICS ruling. Insofar as neither district, at least on the surface, was directly impacted by the PICS decision in a practical sense, these cases provide a different means through which to understand the potential significance of PICS.

Research Design

This article is an analytic essay that draws on both historical accounts and contemporary descriptive data from the two school districts.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The data reviewed in this article highlight the ongoing resegregation of the two districts. I argue that this resegregation is tied to collective definitions of segregation that are supported by color-blindness and the valuing of private choice. These collective definitions are also clearly reflected in PICS and represent the connection between the Supreme Court decision and the conditions in two districts that ostensibly are not impacted by the ruling. Insofar as these collective definitions shape the way that we view school segregation, we will not be able to address the ongoing inequity tied to segregation until we change what we see.
How Do Teachers Support Students’ Motivation and Learning in Their Classrooms?
Authors: Anderman Lynley , Andrzejewski Carey E. , Allen Jennifer
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Despite the importance of students’ active engagement for learning, little is known about how teachers create environments that are supportive of students’ positive motivational and learning-related beliefs. Furthermore, most of the studies that have described teacher practices in relation to students’ perceptions of their classroom context have focused on elementary and middle school populations; much less is known about creating supportive contexts for high school students. We conceptualized supportive instructional contexts as multidimensional, developing a profile of student perceptions that would define a classroom that would promote and sustain students’ motivation and learning, based on the literature on classroom motivation. This profile included perceptions of the motivational climate, the social climate, and the academic climate of the classroom.

Purpose and Research Questions

The goal of this study was to identify high school teachers who were perceived by their students as creating classroom contexts that were particularly supportive of students’ motivation and learning, and to describe their practice. The analysis was guided by these questions: How do effective high school teachers create classroom contexts that students perceive as supportive of their motivation and engagement? What underlying commonalities describe these teachers’ instructional practices? A secondary question focused on whether there were any discernible differences between the contexts of high school science and social studies classes, or associated with teachers’ gender.

Participants

Students (N = 2,864) in Grades 9–12 from three high schools and 4 of their teachers (2 science and 2 social studies), identified based on students’ survey reports.

Research Design

Teachers were identified for observation based on students’ reported perceptions of the instructional contexts of their classes. Observation field notes were analyzed thematically to develop a grounded model of teachers’ instructional practices.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Analysis of the field notes suggested a model that consists of three core themes: supporting understanding, building and maintaining rapport, and managing the classroom. Within this framework, a number of the teacher practices described served more than one of these three functions, and some, such as teacher movement and the use of varied participation structures, served all three. All the observed characteristics of practice were consistent across subject area domains, and differences in relation to teachers’ gender were evident only in terms of teachers’ use of humor in the classroom.
“It's Already Happening”: Learning from Civically Engaged Transnational Immigrant Youth
Authors: Knight Michelle G.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This essay is part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The goal of this paper is to open up a dialogic space where educators can learn from and with transnational immigrant youth who are already participating in civic learning opportunities as local and global citizens in and beyond the sphere of schools. Drawing on data from two qualitative research studies, I discuss the global lifestyle and civic engagement of Kwame, one transnational immigrant youth, who lives in New York and maintains close ties to Africa. The relationship between his transnational immigrant identity and civic engagement provide insights into how he is constructing, negotiating, and contesting citizenship norms, K–16 civic learning opportunities, and new technologies of civic engagement for the betterment of diverse democratic societies.

Conclusion/Recommendations

The author argues that, in the midst of contentious debates on immigration and (mis) representations of immigrants in the media, dialogic spaces between and among educators and transnational immigrant youth can be created to grapple with notions of globalization, education, and citizenship. Moreover, as schools also serve as public civic space, educators can focus on engaging transnational immigrant youth's daily experiences and knowledge in the curriculum. In so doing, the curriculum opens up opportunities for teachers and students to dialogue and learn about what is already happening with youth to further encourage, motivate, and sustain youth's civic engagement at local, national, and global levels. Such learning carries the potential of a diverse action-oriented educated citizenry committed to human rights in a globalized world.
School Connectedness for Students in Low-Income Urban High Schools
Authors: Nasir Na'ilah Suad , Jones Amina , Mclaughlin Milbrey
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In this article, we explore school connectedness for students in a high-poverty urban school. Current approaches to measuring connection conflate behavior and attitudinal measures of connection and rarely explore school connection in urban school settings.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

We examine interpersonal (attitudinal) and institutional (behavioral) connection in the context of an urban high school. We ask, How are affective and behavioral dimensions of school connection related to one another for African American students in a high-poverty urban high school? How does affective and behavioral connection and disconnection play out in the school lives of students? And how is it related to the specifics of the school context?

Research Design

We surveyed 120 high school students and collected observational and interview data on a subset of 20 case study students at an urban high school. Surveys, observations, and interviews focused on capturing students’ interpersonal and institutional connection as well as students’ academic achievement and academic identities.

Findings

Data indicate that in this urban school context, dual dimensions of connectedness (interpersonal connection and institutional connection) operated in different ways for students. Specifically, we describe four connectedness quadrants, highlighting both academic outcomes for students in these quadrants and detailing the ways in which interpersonal and institutional connectedness played out in the context of the school. Students who were connected both interpersonally and institutionally had higher grades and graduation rates. Students who were high on institutional connection but low on interpersonal connection fared next best, and students who were institutionally disconnected were worse off on a variety of outcomes. Students’ institutional and interpersonal connection were also deeply tied to aspects of the local school context.

Conclusions/Recommendations

These findings raise important concerns with respect to using traditional connectedness measures in urban school contexts and suggest the use of more nuanced measures of connectedness in future studies. Findings also suggest that schools play an important role in structuring experiences of connection or disconnection for students.
A Dialogic Inquiry Approach to Working with Teachers in Developing Classroom Dialogue
Authors: Hennessy Sara , Mercer Neil , Warwick Paul
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This article describes how we refined an innovative methodology for equitable collaboration between university researchers and classroom practitioners building and refining theory together. The work builds on other coinquiry models in which complementary professional expertise is respected and deliberately exploited in order to question, understand, and improve practice. Drawing on research using digital video to help make explicit teachers’ pedagogical rationale, our approach involved intensive critical scrutiny of video recordings of teachers’ own and others’ practices.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The study explored and reformulated definitions of classroom dialogue—in which teachers and students exchange, evaluate, and build on ideas—in the context of interactive whiteboard (IWB) use. This article focuses on the collaborative theory-building process itself, whose aim was to exploit insights derived from research to stimulate and inform thinking, guide principled development of new classroom practices, and refine the theory.

Population/Participants/Subjects

Three university researchers and three (primary, middle and secondary school) United Kingdom teachers, along with their students aged 10–14, took part in the research. The teachers were all experienced, reflective practitioners with an established dialogic pedagogy. They taught personal education, English, and history.

Research Design

A case study design was used to collect qualitative observational data. A series of three in-depth workshops focused on the construct of dialogue and critiqued associated literature. Subsequent joint review of lesson videos and other data plus two further workshops served to characterize effective strategies for supporting dialogue.

Data Collection and Analysis

The three initial workshops prepared teachers to design and teach three consecutive lessons employing a dialogic approach supported by IWB use. Teacher and university researcher pairs jointly reviewed the lesson videos, along with unstructured teacher diaries, interviews (three per teacher), and other contextualizing data, and two further team workshops took place. Cross-case analysis of the data, including interview and workshop transcripts, follow-up questionnaires, and accreditation reports, characterized teacher perspectives on the reflexive—and itself dialogic—coinquiry process and its outcomes.

Conclusions

Preconditions, critical features, and scalable benefits of our evolving approach are identified for other research partnerships. The process additionally yielded negotiated, recontextualized understandings of dialogue and strategies for fostering dialogic pedagogy. These were framed in accessible language, spontaneously shared within the schools and adapted for wider use, thus forming a springboard for further critique and modification in new settings.
A Life in Bits and Bytes: A Portrait of a College Student and Her Life with Digital Media
Authors: Davis Katie
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Digital media seem to pervade all aspects of American youth's lives, from communicating with friends and family to learning about the world around them. Many educators and scholars celebrate the new opportunities for learning that Web 2.0 tools present, and empirical evidence suggests that computer-mediated communication positively influences the quality of adolescents’ friendships. Yet, adults are also mindful of the risks associated with youth's digital media activities, including the negative effects of multitasking and the implications for identity development of being perpetually “tethered” to one's friends and family.

Focus of Study

Because widespread Internet and mobile phone use are still relatively new phenomena, further research is needed to investigate their effects on young people. Existing research indicates that the effects are unlikely to be wholly positive or negative. In this article, the author explores the tension between the promises and perils associated with digital media in the context of one college student's daily experiences.

Research Design

Using the qualitative method of portraiture, the author examined how one college student uses digital media in her everyday life; her motivations and goals for using various media; and the opportunities and drawbacks she perceives in her daily media use.

Conclusions

This student's experiences illuminate the always-connected, always-connecting quality of life for today's young people. Her experiences also reveal the complexity of life with digital media, because media both support her connections to people and ideas and give rise to feelings of disconnection and fragmentation. Finally, this portrait highlights the need for and value of nurturing youth's reflective practices and providing them with spaces to engage in sustained reflection.
“Coming Out Crip” in Inclusive Education
Authors: Erevelles Nirmala
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The author argues that within inclusive education's almost obsessive focus on space, there is a tendency to ignore the ideological assumptions that undergird the curricular and extracurricular practices in schools that serve to construct certain student subjectivities as deviant, disturbing, and dangerous, thereby justifying their exclusion.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Sexuality is one such discourse that challenges naïve notions of inclusion. Heteronormative in its ideological content, discourses of sexuality, being both restricted and restrictive, play a critical role in defining the “normal” child, while at the same time intervening in the most personal/private space of intimacy. The pregnant teen, the lesbian gay bisexual transsexual questioning intersex (LGBTQI) young adult, and the disabled student are some examples of children and youth for whom the mere expression of their sexuality casts them as abnormal. Thus, the author examines the dominant discourses of sexuality in the school curriculum from the critical standpoint of disability studies.

Research Design

Analytic essay.

Data Collection and Analysis

The author demonstrates how discourses of sexuality rely on the ideology of the “normate” to segregate, to exclude, and to dehumanize those sexual subjects who disregard the rules of normativity.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Transformative possibilities in “coming out crip” for inclusive education are discussed. To prevent Constance McMillen from bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.
Creating Alliances against Exclusivity: A Pathway to Inclusive Educational Reform
Authors: Valle Jan , Connor David J. , Broderick Alicia A. , Bejoian Lynne M. , Baglieri Susan
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Having brought together scholars to consider inclusive education within both their own and others’ disciplines, research perspectives, and agendas, the content of this concluding article reflects on what these contributions say—individually and collectively—about inclusive education. Furthermore, the authors critically consider what all of this says to and means for educational scholarship, schooling, and society at large.

Purpose

The authors foreground ways in which interdisciplinary conversations among critical scholars illustrate how potential alliances can be developed through shared concern about widespread injustices within education systems. First, the writings of scholars featured within this special issue of TCR are analyzed with a particular focus on convergences of ideas and disciplinary-specific interanimations reflected in a variety of fields, including disability studies, critical race studies, queer studies, and feminist studies. Second, the authors pose notions of exclusivity justified by the prevalent rhetoric of neoliberalism as a shared concern. Third, opposing vignettes are offered to illustrate how discourses of neoliberalism and inclusivity are performed in classrooms. The article closes with suggestions for building alliances within institutions of higher education.

Research Design

Analytic essay.

Conclusion

The authors urge the academy to continue the conversation begun in this special issue, with the hope of further cultivating interdisciplinary alliances united in their common desire to work toward equity in education.
Can Good Principals Keep Teachers in Disadvantaged Schools? Linking Principal Effectiveness to Teacher Satisfaction and Turnover in Hard-to-Staff Environments
Authors: Grissom Jason A.
Published: November 2021

Background

High rates of teacher turnover likely mean greater school instability, disruption of curricular cohesiveness, and a continual need to hire inexperienced teachers, who typically are less effective, as replacements for teachers who leave. Unfortunately, research consistently finds that teachers who work in schools with large numbers of poor students and students of color feel less satisfied and are more likely to turn over, meaning that turnover is concentrated in the very schools that would benefit most from a stable staff of experienced teachers. Despite the potential challenge that this turnover disparity poses for equity of educational opportunity and student performance gaps across schools, little research has examined the reasons for elevated teacher turnover in schools with large numbers of traditionally disadvantaged students.

Purpose

This study hypothesizes that school working conditions help explain both teacher satisfaction and turnover. In particular, it focuses on the role of effective principals in retaining teachers, particularly in disadvantaged schools with the greatest staffing challenges.

Research Design

The study conducts quantitative analyses of national data from the 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 2004-05 Teacher Follow-up Survey. Regression analyses combat the potential for bias from omitted variables by utilizing an extensive set of control variables and employing a school district fixed effects approach that implicitly makes comparisons among principals and teachers within the same local context.

Conclusions

Descriptive analyses confirm that observable measures of teachers’ work environments, including ratings of the effectiveness of the principal, are generally less positive in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students. Regression results show that principal effectiveness is associated with greater teacher satisfaction and a lower probability that the teacher leaves the school within a year. Moreover, the positive impacts of principal effectiveness on these teacher outcomes are even greater in disadvantaged schools. These findings suggest that policies focused on getting the best principals into the most challenging school environments may be effective strategies for lowering perpetually high teacher turnover rates in those schools.
Contracts, Choice, and Customer Service: Marketization and Public Engagement in Education
Authors: Cucchiara Maia , Gold Eva , Simon Elaine
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Market models of school reform are having a major impact on school districts across the country. While scholars have examined many aspects of this process, we know far less about the general effects of marketization on public participation in education and local education politics.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article uses an examination of marketization in Philadelphia over a six-year period (2001-7) to explore its implications for public engagement—or the ability of individuals and groups to work with and influence the school district and hold officials accountable.

Setting

The research was conducted in Philadelphia, the sixth largest city in the country. In 2001, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took over the School District of Philadelphia, citing on-going fiscal crises and poor student achievement. The resulting reforms included new leadership, new governance structures, and significant privatization.

Research Design

This is a qualitative case study of school district change in Philadelphia, focusing on the implications for public engagement.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data included over 50 interviews with education administrators, civic and political elites, and representatives of grassroots and community groups. Data also included six years of participant observation at public meetings and in reform coalitions. Analysis followed a grounded theory approach designed to identify district policies and practices related to public participation and to document how these practices shaped the ability of individuals and groups to engage productively with the district.

Findings/Results

We find that the marketization of education in Philadelphia had a major impact on the district's institutional structure and practices for interacting with local stakeholders. Our data point to several changes that were particularly consequential in shaping the opportunities for engagement and the direction such engagement took. These are: a corporate governance structure, an emphasis on communication, widespread contracting out for services, an increase in school choice, and a focus on customer service.

Conclusions/Recommendations

These changes have resulted in channeling of public participation along individual lines at the expense of collective forms of action and, more broadly, undercutting of the understanding of education as a public good. Given the continued influence of market models of education reform at the local and national levels, it will be important for policymakers to pay close attention to the ways by which marketization can limit engagement and to develop strategies, such as increased transparency and new vehicles for public input, to address this tendency.
Applying the Grossman et al. Theoretical Framework: The Case of Reading
Authors: Kucan Linda , Palincsar Annemarie Sullivan , Busse Tracy , Heisey Natalie , Klingelhofer Rachel , Rimbey Michelle , Schutz Kristine
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This article describes the application of the theoretical framework proposed by Grossman and her colleagues to a research effort focusing on text-based discussion as a context for comprehension instruction. According to Grossman and her colleagues, a useful way to consider the teaching of complex practices to candidates is to focus on (a) how the practice is represented, (b) how the practice is decomposed, and (c) how candidates are provided with opportunities to approximate the practice. The context for the present study was an Institute of Education Sciences Teacher Quality Grant in which the authors collaborated with 9 teacher educators, who were learning about text-based discussion as a context for comprehension instruction, to design, implement, and revise modules to support candidates in comprehension methods courses. The modules provided teacher educators with representations of text-based discussions in the form of video excerpts and lesson plans. The modules also provided structured activities to decompose the practice of text-based discussions, for example, by focusing on analyzing the texts to be discussed and crafting questions to engage students in understanding the important ideas in the text. Finally, the modules provided opportunities for candidates to approximate the practice of enacting text-based discussions by using a collaboratively developed teaching plan for a common text.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The focus of the study was to collect data on the module implementation in the form of assessments of candidate learning and evaluation of module content and use by teacher educators in order to develop resources that would benefit a wider audience of teacher educators and their students.

Research Design

The study is an example of design-based research focused on the iterative development and study of the modules in order to support teacher educators to prepare candidates to enact text-based discussions in the context of literacy methods courses. The study was conducted over the course of 3 years, with a 4th year to prepare the resources for dissemination.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our efforts to design and revise the modules were greatly influenced by the framework suggested by Grossman and her colleagues. The framework provided a way to represent and decompose the module content and to maintain our focus on the importance of providing opportunities for approximating the complex practice of text-based discussion.
En La Lucha: The Struggles and Triumphs of Latino/a Preservice Teachers
Authors: Irizarry Jason G.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Several studies have argued that the academic struggles of Latino/a students are connected, at least in part, to the dearth of Latino/a teachers and other school personnel who may be better equipped to meet the needs of this group. Others have suggested that there are significant academic benefits to having a more diverse teaching force. Despite significant population growth among Latinos/as in the United States, the teaching force remains overwhelmingly White, as Latino/a students continue to be underrepresented in institutions of higher education and, more specifically, within teacher education programs.

Purpose/Objective/Focus of the Study

Given the failure of teacher preparation programs to attract and retain more Latino/a students, and the implications that the shortage of qualified teachers has on Latino/a and other K–12 students, it is vital to learn from the challenges and successes of Latino/a preservice teachers to improve the ways in which teachers of diverse backgrounds are attracted into the field and prepared for this work. This article reports the findings of an ethnographic study in which a cohort of Latino/a preservice teachers was followed from the teachers’ recruitment into college, through their undergraduate years and, for most, their eventual transition into the teaching profession.

Setting

All the participants were undergraduate students enrolled in the teacher education program at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) of higher education in the northeastern United States.

Participants

A cohort of 5 Latino/a preservice teachers recruited to the institution as part of a minority teacher recruitment program participated in the study.

Research Design

This article draws from data collected ethnographically, using phenome-nological interviews, observations, field notes, and student work products to document barriers that students encountered while navigating their preservice teacher education program. The author critically examines how this cohort of Latino/a undergraduates experienced systematic silencing, the result of the acts of individual agents and institutional practices and policies that manifested in overt and subtle forms of subordination.

Findings

The study reveals how subordination serves to marginalize students of color by hindering their full, active participation in teacher preparation programs through the silencing of their voices. Using critical race theory (CRT) and Latino/a critical race theory (LatCrit) as analytic lenses, the author describes multiple sites within the institution of higher education where students experienced silencing.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The article concludes with a discussion of implications, framed around the central tenets of CRT and LatCrit, for improving the recruitment and retention of Latino/a college students in teacher education, particularly as an important means for enhancing the educational experiences and outcomes for Latinos/as in K–12 schools.
The Work of Writing in the Age of Its Digital Reproducibility
Authors: Kalantzis Mary , Cope Bill
Published: November 2021

Just as a child who has learned to grasp stretches out its hand for the moon as it would for a ball, so humanity, in all its efforts at innervation, sets its sights as much on currently utopian goals as on goals within reach. Because… technology aims at liberating human beings from drudgery, the individual suddenly sees his scope for play, his field of action, immeasurably expanded. He does not yet know his way around this space. But already he registers his demands on it. (Benjamin, 1936/2008, p. 242)
Digitalk: Community, Convention, and Self-expression
Authors: Turner Kristen Hawley
Published: November 2021

Teens have eagerly embraced written communication with their peers as they share messages on their social network pages, in emails and instant messages online, and through fast-paced thumb choreography on their cell phones. (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, & Macgill, 2008)