This week IEN is highlighting Lead the Change’s post featuring this years presenters in their Educational Change SIG sessions. SIG is proud to present 10 sessions featuring different contexts, perspectives, and methodological approaches to educational change. The issue features a small slice of the symposia and paper presenters. This post includes presenters from the session titled: “Foundations for Lasting Equity and Transformation: Policy, Organizations, and Professional Practice.” These interviews are part of the Lead the Change series produced by Series Co-Editors Jackie Pedota & Soobin Choi and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.
Faculty Cluster Hiring as a Catalyst for Racial Equity in Academic Departments — Román Liera (RL) Montclair State University, Rosa M. Acevedo (RM) University of Pittsburgh, Baili Park (BP) University of Pittsburgh, Aireale J. Rodgers (AR)
University of Wisconsin – Madison, Heather McCambly (HM) University of Pittsburgh
Lead the Change (LtC): What are some ideas that you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work to inform policy and practice?
RL, RM, BP, AR & HM: In an increasingly hostile sociopolitical climate that actively defunds and undermines racial equity efforts, university-based faculty cluster hiring (FCH), designed to recruit faculty cohorts around shared research themes to advance interdisciplinarity and diversity, has not been immune to anti-DEI backlash. Drawing on the modes of reproduction framework (Anderson & Colyvas, 2021), our analysis examines how whiteness is animated and potentially disrupted at the department level within FCH implementation. By tracing inequitable outcomes to their sources, whether exclusionary criteria, departmental values, or individual racial schemas, we illuminate the specific sites where racialized mechanisms operate.
Our work suggests that the field of Educational Change must recognize that sustainable, equity-focused transformation requires more than rhetorical commitment or effective hiring practices. Institutional change agents must attend to the institutional routines that reproduce whiteness even within well-intentioned initiatives. Practically, this means embedding equity-minded evaluation criteria into formal policies, creating accountability structures, and designing post-hire support rather than relying on faculty of color’s precarious labor (McCambly et al., 2025). Our findings underscore that equity innovations are vulnerable to co-optation without sustained investment in the structural conditions that enable their flourishing. Lasting change requires dismantling the modes of reproduction that animate whiteness, not merely diversifying within them.
Middle Leaders and the Illusion of Reform: Unpacking Faux Comprehension and Pseudo-Understanding in Curriculum Change — Chun Sing Maxwell Ho (CH) The Education University of Hong Kong, Chiu Kit Lucas Liu (CL) The Education University of Hong Kong
Lead the Change (LtC): What are some ideas that you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work to inform policy and practice?
CH & CL: Meaningful educational change depends not only on policies, timelines, and accountability routines, but on the quiet, caring work middle leaders do with educators—checking understanding, building trust, and creating safe spaces to question and refine practice.
When care is replaced by tight control and a chase for ‘efficiency,’ schools risk ‘faux comprehension’ among teachers, in which they appear aligned yet quietly prioritize their own aims (which is not necessarily problematic). When care gives way to hands-off optimism, schools drift into ‘pseudo-understanding,’ a sincere but flawed enactment sustained by vague goals and overconfidence.
To move beyond surface-level claims of success, reform should adopt a dual learner-centered stance: student-centered (clear non-negotiables anchored in educational purpose) and teacher-centered (bounded autonomy, structured sensemaking cycles, and timely support and feedback). Attending to both learners surfaces misunderstandings early, aligns pedagogy with purpose, and yields an impact visible in students’ work and in teachers’ growth.
Drawing on Sengupta-Irving et al. (2023), we suggest situating the present in the context of the past as we struggle toward an imagined future. Our comrades in Black studies teach us that we find hope in deep study and struggle (Harney & Moten, 2013; Hartman, 2019; Kelley, 2018). Thus in the context of our symposium, we invite attendees to think with us about the particularities of present DEI and/or antiracist change efforts across higher education in the context of their historical emergence, while remaining them attuned to what the future of these change efforts must become to build a just system of higher education. Practicing how to design change efforts that stand the test of time demands explicit attention to multiple timescales, and we offer that as an important takeaway through our symposium.
The Role of Absorptive Capacity for ICT-knowledge management in schools: Does collaboration matter?
— Sandra Fischer-Schöneborn (SF) IU International University of Applied Sciences, Marcus Pietsch (MP) Leuphana University – Lueneburg, Chris Brown (CB) University of Southampton, Burak Aydin (BA) Ege University, Stephen W. MacGregor (SM) University of Calgary
Lead the Change (LtC): What are some ideas that you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work to inform policy and practice?
SF, MP, CB, BA & SM: This study examined the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) -knowledge absorptive capacity (ACAP) for technology integration (TI) in schools. The aim was to contribute to the international debate on ACAP as a critical factor for organizational learning in schools and for the implementation of innovations in schools by integrating external knowledge generated in networks.
Findings indicate (among others) that ICT ACAP has a positive effect on TI in schools and serves as a mediator in the relationship between external knowledge and TI. Additionally, the impact of ICT-ACAP on TI is contingent upon the presence and efficacy of knowledge-sharing mechanisms within the school, as well as the extent to which schools engage in collaborative efforts with competitors (known as coopetition).
These results have implications for policymakers and educational leaders, who could prioritize building ACAP and fostering collaborative networks, such as research-practice partnerships or professional learning networks, to create more adaptable and innovative school environments.
Leading Educational Change by Learning from Failure in Networks – Stephen W. MacGregor (SM) University of Calgary, Marcus Pietsch (MP) Leuphana University – Lueneburg, Sharon Friesen (SF) University of Calgary.
Lead the Change (LtC): What are some ideas that you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work to inform policy and practice?
SM, SF, & MP: In our study of leaders implementing multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) for student mental health through a cross-sector network (MacGregor & Friesen, 2025), a consistent pattern was that most setbacks were not caused by “bad actors” but by process and capacity problems: fragmented implementation, weak data infrastructure, uneven rollout, and too much work for the available people and services, especially in rural communities.
First, treat implementation as facilitation, not compliance. Leaders need time, authority, and routines to align the innovation, the people affected, and the local context, and to surface small failures early before they harden into routine. Second, build the infrastructure, including shared measures and data-aggregation pathways that enable schools to learn from patterns rather than anecdotes and to reduce duplication and drift. Third, protect purposeful risk.
We saw little evidence of exploratory testing in MTSS, which signals a field squeezed by short funding cycles and public accountability. Create “safe-to-try” zones inside MTSS work: small pilots with explicit learning aims and rapid feedback. Networks can host this work by normalizing candid failure talk and turning it into collective problem-solving.
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