bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Developing and Using Indicators for Continuous Improvement
Authors: Ming Norma , Kennedy Alec I. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Amidst the complex and fast-paced demands in schools and classrooms, identifying what most deserves educators’ attention can pose a challenge. Indicators help focus attention by highlighting key features that signal important outcomes or opportunities to take action or learn. Purpose Informed by multiple literatures, we offer a conceptual framework that elaborates on the connection between an indicator's development and use. Specifically, the framework proposes that how to develop indicators depends on the answers to several questions about how they will be used: the intended use (why), timing (when), content (on what), and threshold (how much). Research Design To explore this conceptual framework, we present two cases on the construction and use of indicators for continuous improvement in the San Francisco Unified School District. In the first case, we applied statistical process control (SPC) theory to create control charts that visualize district-level outliers on student achievement outcomes to examine potential causes of variation among schools. In the second case, we combined SPC with more basic statistical methods to develop indicators highlighting areas of potential promise across multiple measures and student subgroups within a school. In our exploration of the two case studies, we present the statistical methods applied to construct the indicator, an example of the visualizations created, and descriptions of how central office leaders interpreted and used the results. We document how the intended use informed the indicators’ design, and the ramifications of those decisions for educators’ subsequent use of the indicators for improvement. Conclusions and Recommendations In learning from these cases, we highlight the importance of constructing indicators from the perspective of their intended use and linked with specific conditions and potential actions. This requires including more useful process data in the development of those indicators, as well as more follow-up analysis of the effectiveness of the actions taken based on those indicators, contrasted against alternative actions. We also underscore the importance of developing indicators that distinguish between the need for systemic versus targeted improvement efforts, based on SPC. We believe that combining approaches across disciplines and methodologies holds great promise for the development and use of indicators for continuous improvement in education.
Complexity and Transformative Learning: A Review of the Principal and Teacher Preparation Literature on Race
Authors: Roegman Rachel , Kolman Joni , Goodwin A. Lin , Soles Brooke 
Published: November 2021

Background: Racial inequities are a persistent reality in K–12 schools in the United States. There is a need for consensus and coordination between principals and teachers if they are to address the harm of racial inequities in education. Yet, despite this need and the interdependence of teachers and principals in schools, their preparation is profoundly distinct. Purpose: Although teacher and principal preparation practice and research are distinct, addressing racial inequities in K–12 students’ schooling experiences is central to the work within both professional arenas. In this literature review, we bring together these bodies of literature as we think about ways that preparation supports principals and teachers in developing skills, knowledge, and dispositions to counter racial inequities in their schools. We focus our review around one central question: In what ways does the teacher and principal preparation literature address candidates’ transformative learning around race? Research Design: This review focuses on peer-reviewed literature on race within teacher and principal preparation published between 2001 and 2018. We reviewed studies here that are: (1) empirical, (2) focused on principal or teacher preparation, (3) focused on preparing candidates around issues related to race or racial inequity, (4) published between 2001 and 2018, and (5) based in the United States. We ultimately identified 79 articles, 24 related to principal preparation and 55 related to teacher preparation. We drew on critical transformative learning theory to guide our analyses. Findings: Overall, we identified more commonalities between the two literatures than differences. Our review suggests that race is understood in three main ways: in terms of “difference,” “power,” and “racism.” Race-as-difference focuses on differences between individuals related to race or culture. Race-as-power emphasizes that these differences result from systemic oppressions. Race-as-racism centers racism and/or white supremacy. This review reveals complexities of transformative learning across three areas: how candidates’ backgrounds inform their learning; how clinical experiences present opportunities and constraints for learning; and how emotions influence learning. Recommendations: Preparation programs must educate teachers and principals about race-as-racism. Candidates need to come to understand the role of systemic racism in society and in schooling, beyond understanding individual differences. Critically, teacher and principal preparation faculties must work together across courses and experiences. Finally, there is a need for those who educate educators to receive preparation for this role.
“Not Present in Our Ranks”: Exploring Equitable Representation in Student Voice Efforts for Policy Change
Authors: Holquist Samantha E. , Walls Jeff 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context: Increasingly, K–12 students are seeking to influence educational policies that directly affect their lives. As student intervention in policy increases, it is important to understand the composition of these groups and how they seek to exercise power and influence over policymakers. Purpose: This study sought to examine how two state-level student voice groups for policy change sought equitable representation in their composition. As student voice groups expand beyond school, city, or district level groups to focus on state- and national-level advocacy, the character of their composition takes on additional importance as they claim to speak on behalf of larger numbers of students. Setting: This study draws on interview, document analysis, and observation data from two student voice groups working to influence state-level legislative action on K–12 educational policy. Research Design: We combine secondary data analysis of data from state-level student voice groups with elements of duoethnography to explore how participants thought about, strived for, and fell short of equitable intra- group representation. Findings: We found that the members of both groups were personally committed to equity both in terms of group composition and advocacy. Additionally, group members had structures and policies—such as remote access and low barriers to entry—that encourage equitable representation. Participants reported a relational climate of inclusion. Despite these assets, outcomes were mixed: the groups successfully achieved racial and ethnic proportionality with the state, but remained predominantly urban and able- bodied in their composition. Conclusion: Despite the groups’ best efforts, group members’ challenges with distributed recruitment and emphasis on certain skills such as public speaking limited equitable outcomes in representation. This research makes clear that who is involved in the group at the outset and their network will shape representation. It also indicates that although technology can lower barriers to entry, it is not a panacea. Finally, this research reinforces the notion that students engage in self-policing of the group in order to gain greater legitimacy in the eyes of policymakers.
One Size Fits All? Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Happiness in Schools
Authors: Davis Laura , Whiteside Jasmine L. , Cherng Hua-Yu Sebastian 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context While an abundance of evidence demonstrates how unequal conditions in schools contribute to unequal learning outcomes, the extent to which students’ affective experiences of schooling reflect similar incongruences warrants further inquiry. Framing this discussion are empirical accounts and popular narratives of schools as socializing institutions that ascribe particular gendered, racialized, and otherwise socially defined identities to young people. These intersections form the basis of their experiences as students and likely shape their individual happiness in schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article examines, from an intersectional perspective, whether there are group differences in self-reported happiness in school. Our findings challenge the broad argument that girls are happier in schools because this pattern only holds when comparing levels of happiness between White girls and boys. Research Design Using data from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study, we provide descriptive averages of levels of happiness by sex and race/ethnicity. Given that these patterns are likely shaped by classroom (and teacher and school) conditions, we next use classroom fixed effects models that predict levels of happiness. This modeling strategy makes comparisons only among students in the same classroom who are taught by the same teacher and housed in the same school. Findings/Results We found that the argument that girls are happier than boys in schools only applies to White students. In contrast, there are no gender differences among Latinx and Asian American students, and we found that Black girls are less happy than their male counterparts. Conclusions/Recommendations Overall, our article's findings challenge widespread notions that there are universal gender differences in happiness in schools. More broadly speaking, our work speaks to the socializing function of schools and indicates that the gendering process cannot be interpreted without an analysis of how schools also construct race and ethnicity. Future work can build from our study to examine whether the patterns revealed in this study hold true in older grades, given that one of our secondary findings is that older students seem less happy in schools than their younger peers. Research should also examine how interactions with key social actors, such as peers and teachers, shape student happiness in school.
Requiring Civics Then and Now: Potentials and Pitfalls of Mandated Civics Curriculum
Authors: Lo Jane C. , Kisa Zahid 
Published: November 2021

Background In recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in calls for mandating civics coursework across the country. For decades, scholars have identified classroom practices that help make civics courses more impactful to students’ civic engagement and knowledge. As more civics courses are required of young people, one begins to wonder if these courses include the kinds of curricular goals and pedagogical practices that can support students’ understanding of politics and promote their engagement with the system. Purpose With increasing calls for mandating middle school civics coursework across the country, it becomes necessary to better understand what happens in these courses. To gain insights into a mandated civics curriculum, the study presented in this article examined students’ experiences in a mandated middle school civics course and how the course influenced students’ civic knowledge and engagement outcomes. Research Design We used a fully mixed concurrent triangulation design to develop a robust understanding of how a mandated middle school civics course was implemented. We collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously to confirm, cross-validate, and corroborate findings. The qualitative portion of the study looked to understand quantitative trends by examining these relationships through in-depth interviews and classroom observations. Findings Three takeaways were elucidated by analysis of data: 1. Students’ experience of a mandated civics course varied a great deal between the two cases explored in this study; 2. these differences were instigated by the academic pressures associated with an end-of-course exam; yet 3. certain kinds of civics instruction have the potential to promote some desired civic outcomes in middle school. These findings suggest that middle school civics has the potential to promote students’ developing civic knowledge, interest, and engagement. However, these findings hint at a troubling civic inequality that exists as early as middle school. Conclusions Our study found that middle school is a good time to introduce students to civics content because they seem to have fairly positive attitude toward civic-mindedness. At the same time, we found that the civic opportunity gap can manifest as early as the middle grades. Specifically, these inequalities are exacerbated by the existence of a high-stakes end-of-course exam, which negatively impacts students who are already considered low academic performers.
Cross-Racial Agency: Exploring a New Form of Collaborative Practice to Support Men of Color in Higher Education
Authors: Lott Joe , Perez Dalya , Yeh Theresa Ling 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Men of color have been the focus of a growing number of research studies, as educators and policy makers attempt to address educational equity gaps along the P–20 pipeline. Compared with other educational settings, less attention has focused on how to increase persistence and graduation rates of men of color pursuing baccalaureate degrees. Yet national statistics over the past two decades show that men of color in colleges and universities graduate at lower rates than all other populations, including their same-race women peers. Interventions and supports for men of color in higher education often rely on siloed programmatic efforts that focus on the student as the primary unit of change. Little is known about how to create organizational change that addresses institutional barriers to equity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This research examines a collaborative, equity-based inquiry approach to respond to equity gaps for men of color in college. The purpose of this article draws on the theory of relational agency to understand how practitioners of color worked together to design an institution-wide intervention that would benefit students and simultaneously drive institutional change. Guiding questions are: (1) How did relational agency manifest itself in the collaborative process of creating a cohort-based framework for undergraduate men of color at a predominantly White institution? (2) What is the impact of the collaborative process on the practitioners who were involved? Research Design This study uses a social design experiment (SDE) approach to examine what happens when staff of color on a predominantly White campus come together to address educational inequities for men of color. Pursuing this investigation through an SDE framework enabled us to apply a holistic perspective to real-world activities and our observations of them as researchers who co-constructed an intervention with participants. Conclusions/Recommendations We propose the concept of cross-racial agency as a unique form of relational agency in which practitioners of color use design-based approaches to work across professional and racial boundaries toward a shared goal. We suggest that developing communities of practice through this approach could lead to more enriched and comprehensive responses and to systemic organizational change.
Leveraging the Power of Play in Rehearsals: Supporting Complex Practice in Literacy Teacher Education
Authors: Husbye Nicholas E. 
Published: November 2021

Context There is an ever-growing body of work continuing the argument for play as a pedagogical resource that supports the learning of the youngest learners; despite this, there continues to be little evidence play has been considered as such in teacher education. Research Focus The study sought to understand the role of play and playful pedagogies in a school-based literacy education course within a teacher educator program. Setting Research was conducted in a school-based literacy education course housed in an urban school in the Midwest. Participants Preservice teachers enrolled in literacy education coursework at a midsized urban institution of teacher education. Research Design Data utilized in this study comes from a multiple case study using a practitioner inquiry lens. Data Collection and Analysis Data collection occurred over five semesters (Spring 2016-Spring 2018). Types of data included mid- and end-of-semester interviews, audio and video recordings of rehearsals, video recording of enactments, and a variety of artifacts produced by preservice teachers within the course. Findings Play, utilized within the context of a literacy education course, promoted the development of complexity tolerance: an ability to entertain the variables that may impact their teaching, even those they had not thought of. Recommendations This complexity tolerance supported preservice teachers in being able to respond to student learning in the moment, deviate from instructional planning when necessary, and interrogate their own educational histories. It is a powerful pedagogical tool to support preservice teacher development when intentionally invoked in teacher education coursework.
Reframing School Culture through Project-Based Assessment Tasks: Cultivating Transformative Agency and Humanizing Practices in NYC Public Schools
Authors: Hantzopoulos Maria , Rivera-Mccutchen Rosa L. , Tyner-Mullings Alia R. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context In the last two decades, high-stakes testing policies have proliferated exponentially, radically altering the broader educational landscape in the United States. Although these policies continue to dominate educational reform agendas, researchers argue that they have not improved educational outcomes for youth and have exacerbated inequities in schooling across racial, economic, geographic, and linguistic lines. Alternative project-based assessments, like ones used by the New York Performance Standards Consortium (Consortium) are one type of practice to have shown promise in aiding in the creation of humanizing and transformative educational spaces. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article examines how teachers and students make meaning of their experiences transitioning away from high-stakes standardized tests to project-based assessment tasks (PBATs) and specifically considers the role that PBATs might play in shaping school culture. Drawing from three years of data collection at 10 New York City public high schools new to the Consortium, we discern how students and teachers negotiate this shift, paying attention to the ways in which PBATs fostered transformative and humanizing pedagogies and practices. We raise the following questions: How can schools that use project-based assessment reinvigorate school culture to address enduring inequities that persist in schools? How might PBATs reframe schools to be more humanizing and transformative spaces? Research Design We used multiple methods to understand how project-based assessment shapes school culture and curriculum in these transitioning schools, and drew from qualitative and quantitative traditions. The research involved: (1) a historical inquiry into the role of the Consortium in school reform; (2) a broad investigation of the 10 schools transitioning into the Consortium (including three rounds of annual surveys with teachers and administrators); (3) three in-depth focal case studies of transitioning schools (including observations, interviews with teachers, and surveys with students); and (4) surveys with experienced teachers new to established Consortium schools. Conclusions PBATs are a useful tool to engage students and teachers more actively as participatory actors in the school environment, particularly when overall school structures collectively support its integration. Although there were inevitable challenges in the process of transition, our data suggest that the school actors mediated some of these tensions and ultimately felt that PBATs helped create more dignified spaces for youth. By anchoring the assessment process in the concept of transformative agency, we consider how the transition to PBATs might reinvigorate school culture, redress harmful systemic injustices, and serve as a necessary part of school reform and education policy.
Examining the Actor Coalitions and Discourse Coalitions of the Opt-Out Movement in New York: A Discourse Network Analysis
Authors: Wang Yinying 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Since 2013, opting out of state standardized tests has become a movement—the grassroots, organized efforts to refuse to take high-stakes state standardized tests. In particular, opt-out rates in the state of New York have been consistently fluctuating around 20%. Purpose/Objective This study aims to examine the actor coalitions and discourse coalitions that have propelled the opt-out movement in the state of New York—the movement's epicenter with the highest opt-out rate in the United States. Conceptual Framework This study is conceptually grounded in the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a prominent conceptual lens to investigate the formation of coalitions and their impact on policymaking. The ACF posits that advocacy coalitions are forged by policy actors who have similar policy preferences. By contrast, differences in policy preferences are manifested in the discourse that serves to defend or propose coherent arguments as justifications for policy preferences held by the opposition coalitions. Research Design This study compiled the Opt-out Discourse Data Set by using data from 323 press articles and 52 archival documents from 2015 to 2018. Each news article or archival document was coded with three variables: movement actors, statements articulated by the actors, and the actors’ sentiment toward the statements. An actor-statement bipartite network, an actor coalition network, and a discourse coalition network were created, respectively. Next, Freeman degree centrality was calculated to identify major actors and their statements. The network metrics of density and connectedness of the two competing coalitions were calculated to compare the coalitions’ network structure. Findings In the actor coalition network, the movement advocacy coalition is clearly more densely connected than the movement opposition coalition in terms of the number of actors, coalition density, and coalition connectedness. The discourse coalition network shows similar patterns: the movement advocacy coalition is densely connected, as evidenced by the numbers of nodes in each coalition and the network metrics of coalition density and connectedness. Conclusions/Recommendations This study concludes with a discussion on how the future of the opt-out movement depends on (1) how the movement advocacy coalition continues to amass power and influence in education policymaking, and (2) how the New York State Education Department exercises its power over implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Moreover, this article demonstrates the application of discourse network analysis to examine qualitative data in education research. The discourse network approach is particularly instrumental in explaining a policy output by identifying coalitions and their interactions within and across the coalitions.