This week IEN discusses the evolution of the Olympia Schools, founded as a small kindergarten in 2003 by Ms. Minh An Pham and several other parents. Since that time, Olympia has grown to encompass a kindergarten and a primary, middle, and high school with a combined enrollment of 1,200 on a common campus in Hanoi. The post is based on a conversation between Thomas Hatch and Minh An Pham (Co-founder, Board of Directors), Quoc DanTran (Head Of Mathematics Department, Vice-head of Academic Council), Dr.Thuc AnhVo (Head of Foreign Languages Department; English teacher),and Thanh HaLe (Head of Science & Technology Department).
The power of love, dissatisfaction, and determination
The founding and development of the Olympia Schools is a familiar but inspiring story. The story begins with love and a deep belief in education. It requires some money or material resources but relies on determination, connections, and social capital. Along the way, success builds on a whole series of critical decisions – and sometimes “fortunate accidents” – that contribute to micro-innovations and adaptations that make it possible for the school to find a supportive community and create the conditions where alternative approaches to education can take root.
Dream House 2003
The story of the Olympia School begins in 2003 in Hanoi, when Ms. Minh An Pham and three of her friends were looking for kindergartens for their children. It was almost ten years since the Vietnamese government had begun loosening some requirements related to education and other sectors. Economic development was in full swing, and more and more international companies were finding their way to Vietnam. All four friends got jobs at one of those international companies and Ms. Pham told me that experience gave them opportunities to see the confidence and independence of their co-workers’ children. That exposure reinforced their concern that – although many Vietnamese students excel in academics – they often seemed to lack what she called “life skills.” As Ms. Pham put it, it seemed as if Vietnamese students had lost their confidence in speaking up and sharing their ideas. She attributed that to a school system based on a Confucian education tradition that emphasized memorization, examination, and respect for teachers, coupled with a tendency for Vietnamese parents to constantly compare how their children were doing and how they ranked academically.
With a growing international community and increasing opportunities for international work, Ms. Pham and her friends wanted to make sure that their children gained both academic and life skills and that their children could learn English along with Vietnamese. When they looked around to find a school that could meeting those goals, however, they did not see any public kindergartens that met these criteria. There were a few private options that Ms. Pham and her friends thought seemed more like day-care centers than schools, and there was one private kindergarten imported from Singapore. But even that – very expensive – option only ran from 9 – 3 PM, still not long enough to take care of their children while the four women worked. Seeing no other options, the four friends began to think about creating a kindergarten of their own.
With a growing international community and increasing opportunities for international work, Ms. Pham and her friends wanted to make sure that their children gained both academic and life skills and that their children could learn English along with Vietnamese.
The power of social networks
Their first steps toward developing a school came with the help of another colleague at work. Although Ms. Pham had graduated from a teacher training institution in Vietnam, she went straight into the business world after graduation. As a consequence, she had never worked in schools and was not that familiar with early childhood education. But, Ms. Pham told me, the four friends were fortunate to work with a woman whose mother was a well-known educator who specialized in kindergarten. As Ms. Pham described it, “she was our first teacher,” and introduced the four friends to a number of educational experts who helped them learn about other early childhood approaches, including the “Reggio approach” that originated in Reggio Emilio, Italy. As they visited local schools and traveled to observe private kindergartens in places like Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore, they focused more and more on schools that emphasized “developmentally appropriate practice” as well as some schools that were inspired by Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. On the one hand, Ms. Pham explained, these approaches provided broad support for children’s development and encouraged children to be independent. On the other hand, they also fit well with the Vietnamese national kindergarten curriculum. Notably, the national curriculum was already divided into areas that concentrated on physical, musical, and ethical development, and the four friends felt those subjects aligned well with the different strengths and abilities highlighted in theory of multiple intelligences.
They expanded their group of advisors as they were introduced to more and more people, including several working with not-for-profits like Save the Children, who had extensive experience in Vietnam. Those advisors looked at the plans to combine MI-based and developmentally appropriate curriculum with the Vietnamese national curriculum and concluded: “this is doable.” With that green light, Ms. Pham bought textbooks and gathered teaching materials and, with the help of their network of experts, reviewed and aligned them with the national curriculum. They rented a small house in an alley of Hanoi and worked with a designer to renovate it; they drew on the connections and expertise of their advisors to recruit and hire teachers; and, after an intense six months, opened their doors to the “Dream House” kindergarten and welcomed a small group of six students – four children of their own and two children who lived nearby. To make it all possible, Ms. Pham worked the evening shift at her job and spent the whole morning at the kindergarten.
Key developments in the first years
The four friends were fortunate to have the means and the relationships to get the school off the ground, but, as Ms. Pham explained, they also had to credit their houses to the bank, draw on their salaries to make sure they had enough money to pay the teachers, and “every time a student quit the school, we worried so much that we would not have enough money to keep going…” Nonetheless, the school grew year-by-year, from 6 students to 12 students, from 20 students to 60, as the first cohort expanded and progressed through the grades.
Dream House Primary and Secondary Schools 2007
By 2007, they were able to start the year with both a group of primary school students and a group of secondary school students. Along the way, several key decisions helped to create the time in the day and the space in the curriculum that they needed to stay true to their original vision of a developmentally based, holistic, education aligned with the national curriculum. First, they decided to teach Vietnamese and English in an integrated way. As Ms. Pham explained, she had seen private schools in Ho Chi Minh City that were teaching English, but only as a separate subject. “Our innovation,” Ms. Pham said, “was to teach English along with the other subjects.” That meant teaching key skills and concepts in math, science, and history in Vietnamese and then teaching the related English vocabulary in the same class. This innovation created space in their schedule because they did not have to find time to teach a separate English course. Furthermore, the subject teachers teaching in Vietnamese could co-teach with their colleagues teaching English, making coordination and communication easier. Perhaps most importantly, from the students’ perspectives, instead of having to make connections between concepts and vocabulary taught in different classes, they encountered an integrated curriculum that reduced confusion.
“Our innovation,” Ms. Pham said, “was to teach English along with the other subjects.” That meant teaching key skills and concepts in math, science, and history in Vietnamese and then teaching the related English vocabulary in the same class.
Second, although Vietnamese public schools generally ran for a half-day (usually from about 7:30 AM to 12 PM, 6 days a week), Dream House decided to run a full-day program, from 8 AM – 4:30 PM. That decision created additional time during the school day that allowed them to meet the national curriculum requirements, add and integrate the teaching of English, and incorporate the teaching of their own “life skills” curriculum. In particular, the national curriculum requirements for social science included both ethics and society and nature, but Dream House chose to split social science up by teaching nature during their science classes and then teaching ethics and society in their life skills class. As Ms. Pham put it, “we reconfigured all the subjects in the school day and made it a comprehensive approach, integrating Vietnamese and English.”
Movement games of kindergarten in Dream House
With those critical decisions and strategic choices, the basic structures for their primary, middle, and high school were in place. Capping off this period of development, what began as Dream House, moved to a new, larger campus in 2010. As part of a competition to come up with a new name, the Olympia School was born, the winning teacher paper declaring it a symbol for wisdom and success.
Next week: The “School of Change”: The Olympia School Story (Part 2)
This week, IEN explores what instructional coaching with teachers look like from “micro-“ and “macro-perspectives.” This post is the first in a series featuring excerpts of interviews with presenters participating in the Educational Change Special Interest Group sessions at the upcoming Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association in Philadelphia in April. This post includes presenters from the session titled: “A Roundtable Discussion to Examine a Synthesis of Micro- to Macro-level Coaching Research.” These interviews are part of the Lead the Change series produced by AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website. The LtC series is produced by Alex Lamb.
The Micro-level Work of Coaching: Examining the Content and Purpose of Coach-Teacher Interactions — Lynsey Gibbons, University of Delaware, Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania
LtC: The 2024 AERA theme is Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action. How does your research respond to this call?
Lyndsey Gibbons & Abby Reisman (LG & AR): Instructional coaching has been widely utilized as a strategy both for school reform and improving learning opportunities for students by providing teachers with ongoing, job-embedded professional learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). Instructional coaches are uniquely positioned to assist teachers to develop justice-oriented teaching that works toward transforming personal and power relationships in classrooms, as well as support them to interrogate the larger policies and practices of schooling (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). One way coaches do this is through supporting teachers to understand and respond to the roles of language, identity, culture, and power in learning (Baldinger, 2017; Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021). Coaches can also support teachers to interrogate policies and practices and make changes when they produce inequities or cause harm.
Lyndsey Gibbons (left) & Abby Reisman (right)
The larger theory of action of instructional coaching rests on resources that are made available to teachers through social interactions with coaches (Coburn & Russell, 2008). Coaching is job-embedded in nature, and coaches can take an active role in the work of teaching. As such, coaches can orchestrate professional interactions that make visible the complex reasoning work in justice-oriented teaching (Saclarides & Munson, 2021), such as considering when to ask a student to revoice another student’s contribution and the implications of such a choice. Professional discourse is central to how teachers learn and shapes what they have an opportunity to learn (Lefstein et al., 2020). Professional discourse is essential for productive discussions about justice-oriented teaching and learning because it allows teachers and coaches to name critical aspects of instructional practice and student learning. Coaches can help establish professional discourse to name aspects of teaching and help make it visible to teachers.
Professional discourse is essential for productive discussions about justice-oriented teaching and learning.
Particular features of social interactions can be more or less conducive to accessing appropriate resources and creating a normative environment that supports and enables change in teachers’ instructional practices. In our session, we will explore the features of coach-teacher interactions that provide productive learning opportunities to teachers. For example, we found that history teachers whose coaches focused on posing open-ended questions and anticipating students’ responses grew more in their discussion facilitation than teachers whose coaches focused on historical thinking skills. Identifying features of coach-teacher interactions is critical to supporting the professional learning of coaches, as well as researching the effectiveness of coaching. Guiding questions for our roundtable discussion include: How can coach-teacher interactions be shaped to consider how to dismantle racial injustice in the classroom and beyond? How do coaches’ orientations toward teacher learning and toward justice influence their interactions with teachers? We then will consider how we might craft a research agenda moving forward that attends to examining coaching interactions that support teacher learning.
LtC:What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?
In this session, we are intentionally bringing together scholars who study teacher learning, instructional coaching practice, and policies that impact coaching. By design, we will be examining practice and policies around coaching, as well as consider future directions for scholarship. The workgroup will break into three smaller groups to grapple with the logics, conceptualizations, and visions that shape their work researching coaching. The smaller groups will identify research gaps and consider new approaches. For example, a gap that might be identified is how coaches can help teachers attend to students’ identities and strengths as they plan for and enact instruction, as well as how coaches can help teachers learn to navigate the social and political dimensions of teaching (Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021). We then will come back together as a whole workgroup to synthesize discussions across domains to consider future, potentially collaborative, research agendas. We hope this session will be the genesis of long-term conversations organizing scholars who study coaching. Stemming from these initial conversations could be considerations for a special issue in a journal or creating a practitioner-facing document informing policies around coaching.
Widening Our Lens to Consider Coaching Models and Programs: The Benefits and Challenges of Programmatic Thinking — Jacy Ippolito, Salem State University, Rita M. Bean, University of Pittsburgh
Lead the Change (LtC):The 2024 AERA theme is Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action. How does your research respond to this call?
Jacy Ippolito & Rita M. Bean (JI & RMB): Our joint work has traditionally focused on the roles, responsibilities, and impact of instructional coaches (and literacy coaches specifically) across grade levels and school settings. In our latest book (Ippolito & Bean, 2024), we propose a new framework for understanding and synthesizing coaching research findings. The framework is an initial response to the Kraft et al. (2018) meta-analysis call to identify effective elements of coaching programs with simultaneous attention paid to both specific instructional practices and larger school and district contexts. Towards this end, our Content and Context Framework (CCF) for coaching reframes the notion of effective coaching. Instead of thinking of coaching success as solely the product of individual coaches’ work, we instead detail the ways in which coaching efficacy may be more accurately described as the alignment of instructional content with coaching programs and processes, all within a supportive school and district context.
Jacy Ippolito (left) & Rita M. Bean (right)
This more content- and context-dependent way of thinking about coaching success paves the way for coaches, teachers, and leaders to identify more clearly the ways in which issues of equity, diversity, and racial justice are influenced by coaching in schools. If coaching work is unable to influence the instructional core by creating more equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students, then we might be hard-pressed to say that the coaching program is successful. Likewise, if school and district contexts (i.e., leadership structures, coaching policies, systematic evaluations of coaching) are unable to fully support a coaching program that has diversity and equity as a core mission, again we might be unable to call a coaching program entirely successful.
If coaching work is unable to influence the instructional core by creating more equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students, then we might be hard-pressed to say that the coaching program is successful.
As we have begun to look across the past ten years of coaching research (Bean & Ippolito, 2023)—literacy coaching specifically, as well as research on instructional coaching more broadly—we found very few studies to date address content, coaching, and context simultaneously (e.g., Galey-Horn, 2020; Zoch, 2015). If alignment of these three domains is what we hypothesize may provide the best opportunities to address issues of equity and to dismantle racial injustice in classrooms, then we must incentivize future coaching researchers to attend carefully to content, coaching, and context together in larger-scale studies. Implications of this work are far-ranging, from influencing future research to shifting the ways that coaching programs are constructed, refined, and evaluated over time.
LtC: What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?
JI & RMB: Instructional coaching has long been heralded as a gold standard for job-embedded professional learning for educators (Kraft et al., 2018). At its best, coaching is: personalized; responsive to teachers’ needs; attentive to school and district needs; sensitive to students’ unique learning successes and challenges; and implemented over long periods of time to help teachers shift instructional practices in meaningful ways. However, coaching research suggests that many coaching programs do not quite live up to their promise of supporting broad and deep changes in teaching and learning.
Our Content and Context Framework (CCF) for coaching suggests that part of the reason that many coaching programs do not fully succeed is due to a misalignment or inattention to content, coaching, and context simultaneously. For example, when all three elements are aligned, coaches can provide content-specific guidance to teachers that furthers schools’ and districts’ goals while simultaneously supporting teachers’ own identified needs. In cases where content, coaching, and context are misaligned, coaches and teachers’ work may run counter to school and district goals, and/or school or district needs (e.g., for coaches to step in as classroom substitutes) may subvert coaching work completely. A number of implications arise from our framework’s suggestion that coaching success results from the alignment of purpose and practices across content, coaching, and context.
For researchers, the implications of this framework include conducting studies that focus equally on classroom-level teaching and learning, coaching practices, and school/district contextual factors. Smaller-scale studies of individual coaches and/or coaching programs can be mined for guidance on the direction and questions of larger-scale longitudinal studies and meta-analyses. Future coaching research, regardless of scale, may best serve the field by always including: (a) data collected from and about teachers’ and students’ work in classrooms; (b) coaching practices and collaborations with both teachers and leaders; and (c) information collected from/about school and district leaders, school/district policies, and related coaching and professional learning initiatives. Such comprehensive research on coaching work—attending equally to content, coaching, and context—is what the field most needs to support future policy and practice.
For U.S. policymakers, implications include providing better guidance to schools, districts, and states about the interdependence of content, coaching, and context. Coaching guidance can no longer be provided as if content- and context-factors were neutral or irrelevant. Based on emerging content- and context-specific coaching research (e.g., Hannan & Russell, 2020), policymakers may be better equipped to provide funding and guidance to support the success of coaching practices best suited to different disciplinary initiatives (e.g., coaching practices within literacy vs. math initiatives) and different contexts (e.g. within large urban school districts vs. smaller rural districts). Ultimately, we must move away from one-size-fits-all policies for coaching, and instead move towards more nuanced content- and context-dependent guidance.
Finally, for practicing coaches and leaders, our framework suggests that the development, refinement, and evaluation of coaching programs must consider the alignment (or misalignment) of content, coaching, and context. This suggests that teachers, coaches, and leaders must partner even more closely to define coaching roles, responsibilities, and routines. School and district leaders must work with coaches to develop role descriptions, coaching schedules, and menus of service that are content- and context-specific. Finally, coaches and teachers must develop common communication and collaboration practices that are content- and context-specific, to meet teachers’ and students’ needs most effectively.
The 30,000 Foot View: Mapping the Institutional Landscape of Coaching — Sarah L. Woulfin, University of Texas at Austin
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2024 AERA theme is Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action. How does your research respond to this call?
Sarah L. Woulfin (SLW): My research responds to this year’s AERA theme by paying close attention to how infrastructure and leadership shape instructional reform efforts in ways that exacerbate—or disrupt—inequities in educational organizations. For instance, my research on the policies and practices of coaching has explored how district and school leaders structure and conceptualize coaching as a tool for reaching equity-oriented objectives. I’m currently co-facilitating professional development sessions for principals and coaches on equity-oriented coaching. And my research on the implementation of turnaround reform considers how school leaders promote curriculum use to improve outcomes for Black and Brown students.
Dr. Sarah L. Woulfin
The daily practices of leaders and teachers can ‘add up’ to make significant changes.
LtC: What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?
SLW: One major branch of my work addresses the role of people in the implementation of education policy. In particular, the daily practices of leaders and teachers can “add up” to make significant changes. I hope the AERA and Educational Change audiences devote more attention to the power of and possibilities for individuals to catalyze crucial change to improve schools and communities. Additionally, the field should consider how to support the policy knowledge development of educators ranging from district leaders and principals to coaches and teachers. That is, how do we ensure that all educators hold the capacity to analyze and ask needed questions about reforms they are experiencing.
LtC: What excites you about the direction of the field of Educational Change, and how might we share and develop those ideas at AERA 2024?
SLW: I am excited about the ways the Educational Change field is examining a wide array of policies and programs, including discipline, attendance, school counseling, and EdTech in addition to accountability-oriented and instructional reforms. I believe this points to the utility of an Educational Change perspective for analyzing numerous aspects of districts and schools. And I encourage featuring scholarship that expands our understanding of educational change while looking at diverse reform efforts.
References (Gibbons & Reisman):
Baldinger, E. M. (2017). Maybe it’s a status problem”: Development of mathematics teacher noticing for equity. In E. O. Schack, J. Wilhelm, & M. H. Fisher (Eds.), Teachernoticing: Bridging andbroadeningperspectives, contexts, andframeworks (pp. 231–250). Springer.
Biancarosa, G., Bryk, A. S., & Dexter, E. R. (2010). Assessing the value-added effects of literacy collaborative professional development on student learning. TheElementary School Journal, 111(1), 7-34.
Coburn, C. E., & Russell, J. L. (2008). District policy and teachers’ social networks. Educational Evaluation and PolicyAnalysis, 30(3), 203-235.
Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacherprofessional development. Learning Policy Institute.
Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R., & Morrell, E. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy:Possibilities for moving from theory topractice in urban schools (Vol. 285). Peter Lang.
Ippolito, J. & Bean, R. (2024). The Power of Instructional Coaching in Context: A Systems View forAligning Content and Coaching. The Guilford Press.
Kazemi, E., Granger, J. C., Lind, T., Lewis, R., Resnick, A. F., Gibbons, L. K. (in preparation). Children Thrive WhenTeachers Thrive. Harvard Education Press.
Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta analysis of the causal evidence. Review ofEducational Research, 88(4), 547-588.
Lefstein, A., Louie, N., Segal, A., & Becher, A. (2020). Taking stock of research on teacher collaborative discourse: Theory and method in a nascent field. TeachingandTeacherEducation, 88, 102954.
Marshall, S. A., & Buenrostro, P. M. (2021). What makes mathematics teacher coaching effective? A call for a justice-oriented perspective. Journal of TeacherEducation, 72(5), 594-606.
Robertson, D. A., Padesky, L. B., Ford Connors, E., & Paratore, J. R. (2020). What does it mean to say coaching is relational?. Journal of Literacy Research, 52(1), 55 – 78.
Saclarides, E. S., & Munson, J. (2021). Exploring the foci and depth of coach teacher interactions during modeled lessons. Teaching and TeacherEducation, 105, 103418.
References (Ippolito & Bean):
Bean, R. M., & Ippolito, J. (2023, December). Interactions of content, coaching, and context in recent literacy coaching research. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Literacy Research Association (LRA), Atlanta, GA.
City, E. A., Elmore, R. F., Fiarman, S. E., & Teitel, L. (2009). Instructional rounds ineducation. Harvard Education Press.
Galey-Horn, S. (2020). Capacity-building for district reform: The role of instructional coach teams. Teachers College Record, 122(10), 1-40.
Hannan, M. Q., & Russell, J. L. (2020). Coaching in context: Exploring conditions that shape instructional coaching practice. TeachersCollege Record, 122(10), 1–40. Ippolito, J., & Bean, R. M. (2024). The power of instructional coaching in context: A systems view
Dennis Shirley & Andy Hargreaves (DS/AH): Our book started with collaborative research we conducted in the Canadian province of Ontario when the Ministry of Education had for the first time made student well-being and inclusion a policy priority. We were surprised by how frequently educators brought up the topic of students’ identities as part of the way they were promoting well-being. Educators told us that they were transforming their pedagogies and curricula to address the needs of their Indigenous, learning disabled, and LGBTQ+ students, in particular. As we were in the throes of starting to write the book, there was then an outbreak of culture wars and identity politics. We had been studying something inclusive that, in some ways, had become divisive and we now realized that our research had something of value to say about all this. We hope that our book will help us get beyond the polarized time of outrage and indignation in which we now find ourselves.
IEN: What did you learn in working on this book that you didn’t know before?
DS/AH: We already knew that it always matters to engage with those who are different from us. What we weren’t entirely clear about is just how complex identity issues are for young people now. It’s inevitable that when dealing with issues of representation, there will be some box ticking, or homi\ng in only on the oppressed aspects of people’s identities. However, that just scratches the surface of identity matters today.
For instance, in a recent Canadian presentation that one of us made, there was one black person in a room of white people. Having his racial identity affirmed mattered to him, but he is also a gay American photographer living in Canada who restores old Lambretta scooters with his partner. In circumstances like this it is essential to create openings where people can reveal and share their identities on their own terms.The Age of Identity adds to the literature on intersectionality with the idea of “conflicting intersectionality.” This refers to the ways one can be an oppressor in some respects and oppressed in others. It means that dividing groups rather than actions into mutually exclusive categories of oppressors and oppressed can be misleading and often provokes a backlash.
[D]ividing groups rather than actions into mutually exclusive categories of oppressors and oppressed can be misleading and often provokes a backlash.
IEN: What’s happened since you completed the book?
DS/AH: A lot. The October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, the ensuing war in Gaza, and the horrific casualties have polarized educators and pushed yet more identity issues onto the front pages. It’s easy to reduce the conflict to simple binaries: Jews versus Arabs, Judaism against Islam, Israelis versus Hamas, colonizers versus the colonized, and so on. This has led to all kinds of demonization, reciprocal name-calling, and silencing in our schools and higher education institutions.
At the same time, reason and reconciliation show some signs of breaking out in other parts of the world. Following the advocacy of a Conservative politician who lost her son to suicide, the Canadian province of Ontario, has made mental health a compulsory subject in the high school curriculum. Meanwhile, the Conservative government in England has issued Draft Guidance on Gender Questioning Children for schools that is being broadly received as promising and practical, if not yet perfect, because it makes determined efforts to reconcile the rights and concerns of different groups. These efforts include the security and integrity of transgender students, the protection of safe spaces for cisgender girls, and parents’ rights to know about their children’s movements towards transition and self-identification in school. The guidance also supports educators’ professional judgments about when and how best to inform parents, while alerting school staff to circumstances where parents and other caregivers may be abusive, neglectful, or transphobic.
Our challenge in these times is to try to see past the simplifications and the caricatures that have spread intolerance in our school and college campuses, to acknowledge the full humanity of others. There’s more to everyone than meets the eye. Education has a key role to play because it should assist us all to open our minds and our hearts to one another. We hope that our book makes a contribution to this effort.
Our challenge in these times is to try to see past the simplifications and the caricatures that have spread intolerance in our school and college campuses, to acknowledge the full humanity of others.
IEN: What are a few of the key implications for policy/practice?
DS/AH: We need new narratives of inclusion and new tools that create a sense of belonging. Many approaches focus too much on who or what is responsive to this group or that group and not enough on the idea that what is essential for some kids is often good for all of them. Likewise, a lot of culturally responsive teaching can devolve into promotion of particular identities, rather than adopting the larger principle of embracing the whole child in a whole school. In general, we advocate much more self-determined learning, in which students can discover for themselves what’s important to their own and each other’s identity. In the book, we provide strategies and tools that will help educators understand colleagues, parents, and students who are different from them more effectively. It’s essential today to manage debates and differences about identity issues with civility and dignity.
IEN: What’s next — what are you working on now?
DS/AH: We are working with groups and systems to help them address identity issues and to increase students’ sense of belonging in their schools. There’s a lot of good work going on by dedicated professionals, even in those US states where educators’ freedom to teach about racism and sexism is circumscribed. We hope that by opening up space to talk about the full scope of what it means to be fully human that we can find ways of addressing controversial topics and promoting students’ identities at one and the same time.
We hope that by opening up space to talk about the full scope of what it means to be fully human that we can find ways of addressing controversial topics and promoting students’ identities at one and the same time.
We also have other projects that we’re working on. Dennis is writing up research on the interaction of educational change, technological innovation, and the future of work that he conducted as a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Andy is starting on a second edition of Professional Capital, with Michael Fullan, and is continuing to lead the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory, an international network of policy makers, educators, and researchers committed to advancing human rights in education.
In spite of the many challenges, we find this to be an exciting time to be in education. We continue to draw inspiration from the many colleagues and students around the world who are drawn to our indispensable profession.
This week’s post features the work of Amelia Peterson and Maria Teresa Tatto.They are two of the participants in this month’s issue of Lead the Change (LtC), which brings together interviews with four members of a virtual convening on Education System (Re)Building for Equity and Social Justice in Teaching and Learning organized by Amanda Datnow, Vicki Park, Don Peurach, and Jim Spillane, with the support of the Spencer Foundation. Last week’s post featured the work of participants Phương Minh Lương and Tine S. Prøitz. The convening, with virtual meetings in May and June of 2023, was designed to help establish “a cross-national community of scholars whose members take appreciative, critical, and practical perspectives on advancing educational access, quality, and equity by (re)building education systems.” To continue the discussions begun during the convenings, we invite those attending the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April to join the conversation with Minahil Assim, Thomas Hatch, Phương Minh Lương, Don Peurach, and Tine Prøitz at a symposium for AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group – Equity and Educational Transformation in a Cross-National Perspective. The LtC series is produced by Alex Lamb and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A pdf of the fully formatted interview is available on the LtC website.
Amelia Peterson
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2024 AERA theme is “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action.” Can you tell us how your work on educational transformation responds to this call?
Amelia Peterson (AP): My research and writing considers two different forms of educational transformations – top down (or “zoomed out”) policy changes and bottom-up (or “zoomed in”) activities at the student and school level. The phrases “zoomed out” and “zoomed in” highlight that a key challenge of dealing with change at scale is abstraction: what is lost from our tacit understandings of equity and justice when we abstract out to make principles or policy for unidentifiable people.
In terms of “zoomed out” policy changes, I have studied how rethinking high school diplomas (what, internationally, we would call upper secondary qualification reform) can change the goals of formal schooling. In my past research I studied how reforms of the 90s and 2000s often replicated inequitable divisions rather than transforming them. Yet, some reforms did lead to models that really combined ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ education – and with them disrupted associated racial and social stratifications (Peterson, 2020). I am now involved in a policy and practice group called Rethinking Assessment which is focused on possibilities of qualification reform in England and the UK.
In term of the “zoomed in” activity required for these policy changes to make a difference at the student and school level, I have worked with a group of co-researchers to ask: to what extent can approaches such as continuous improvement, teacher inquiry and design-led methods sustain and scale? (Yurkofsky et al., 2020). We are currently working on a book, tentatively titled Design Meets the Real World and one topic we engage with extensively is what kind of conditions and preparation are necessary for these methods to actually disrupt patterns of equity.
LtC:How do you define and operationalize equity (and/or social justice) in your work?
AP: ‘Operationalization’ in its fullest sense is a key concern for me as my pressing work is not research but institution-building. The London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) is a new higher education institution that attempts to bridge some of the divides we see in the sector: between ‘elite’ and open-access; between academic and vocational; and between the Arts and Sciences. In my work at LIS, for the most part, I can be “zoomed in”, trying to realize equity and justice for individual students. As we construct and re-construct our own policies, however, we also require a more “zoomed out” view. In this, I approach equity from a sociological perspective that considers structure and stratification: inequity – as opposed to just difference – is created by reinforcing structures (or feedback loops) that leave little room for agency. A key concern here is with the way prior wealth or lack thereof creates a reinforcing loop. Especially for students who are having to support themselves whilst studying, everything about their educational experience is more challenging, in a reinforcing way. This is a major problem in the context of a cost-of-living crisis in London and stagnant student loan provision in England.
Inequity – as opposed to just difference – is created by reinforcing structures (or feedback loops) that leave little room for agency.
At LIS, we also try to operationalize equity through assessment. Our school and higher education systems currently provide people with very unequal conditions and opportunities to signal and demonstrate their strengths. This informs the way we approach assessment design at LIS, but as we have been working within the norms of UK higher education, there is still much progress we could make here.
LtC:What is a core issue/challenge you are grappling with in your work related to systems and/or equity and social justice?
AP: I share my core challenge with many other educators: how can we foster the emancipatory potential of education in a context where educational performance is the shared metric of societal competition? In other words, how can we balance the demands of freedom and meritocracy?
This is a compelling time to address this dilemma because the dominance of meritocratic thinking seems to be slipping. Pandemic lockdowns created a breakdown in productivity cultures; scandals and crises have undermined some traditional signals of merit, whilst populism has shown the potential of alternative routes to power. Yet, societal competition is just as real as it has ever been, and so there are major risks to any shift from the norms and institutional arrangement that shaped meritocracies. These risks may be worth taking, however, if there are possibilities for different kinds of relationships between individuals and their education, and between schools, society, and work.
These risks may be worth taking, however, if there are possibilities for different kinds of relationships between individuals and their education, and between schools, society, and work.
The core questions I grapple with are: Is it feasible to undermine the traditional signals of educational success (tests, credentials), whilst still promoting the values and ideals that education would ideally foster, such as capabilities, truth, beauty, goodness? Should we just continue in the quest for better signals, or should we try to imagine some quite different way of incentivising and structuring personal and collective investment in education?
LtC: What can researchers and practitioners of educational change learn from your work?
AP: From the London Interdisciplinary School, I hope that researchers and practitioners see the potential for new thinking about what we teach, as well as how and why. In our teaching, we try to balance the practical demands of what it takes to get things done and make changes with the academic demands of what’s required to really comprehend and use complex concepts and skills. This makes for a very demanding curriculum but one in which our students are thriving. They come to us from many different educational pathways and are a testament to the ingenuity and perseverance of young people, when they set real demands. They make me continuously hopeful.
More generally, I hope that others will have more chances to learn from my work over the next year as I put emphasis back onto informal and formal publishing. The recent convening discussed at the start was a welcome opportunity to re-engage with a community of scholars who are working on similar questions in different ways. I do believe this is a moment when we can collectively forge different ideals of the relationship between education and societies, and of what we owe each other and our planet, and I look forward to continuing to work with others on that goal.
Maria Teresa Tatto
Lead the Change (LtC): You were a participant in a recent convening to share and examine work around the world on equity, social justice, and educational transformation, and The 2024 AERA theme is “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action.” Can you tell us how your work on educational transformation responds to this call?
Maria Theresa Tatto (MTT): Principles of justice and equity are the driving force of my work. I study how the intersection of research, policy, and practice can result in more equitable and widely accessible high-quality educational opportunities for marginalized populations. I investigate policy and its effects on education systems, including education reform implementation at the macro, meso, and micro levels, nationally and internationally, within a comparative framework. I mainly look at the impact of educational policy on practice, including the shaping of curriculum and instruction, teaching and learning, and teacher education, as barometers of more significant societal changes and as mediated by organizational and governance structures across economic, political, and cultural/social contexts. I use quantitative and qualitative methods and participatory and reflective approaches to inquiry. My work is characterized by rigorous, collaborative, reflective, capacity-building, and policy-oriented research to generate policy/practice-usable knowledge among colleagues across various country contexts.
LtC: How do you define and operationalize equity (and social justice) in your work?
MTT: In Empowering Teachers for Equitable and Sustainable Education: Action Research, Teacher Agency, and Online Community (Tatto & Brown, in press), I define equity as “the state, quality or ideal of being just, impartial and fair” (AECF, 2014, p.5). According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2023), equity is synonymous with fairness and justice, with fair resource distribution taking individual variations into account. To guarantee that everyone has the same chance of success, various forms of support would be needed for differences that currently marginalize individuals. A more ambitious aim would be to create just systems where equity is sustained long-term. Sustainable justice would seek to create equity in systems as well as individuals. Through the years, societies have introduced systemic reform in education to provide equitable access to education, such as free primary and secondary public education (Cohen & Methta, 2017). At the same time and notwithstanding the significant success of these reforms, inequities persist, sometimes exacerbated by local policies affecting schools and classrooms that limit access to valuable opportunities to learn based on race, language, or other characteristics that do not represent the culture or values of majority or dominant populations. Teachers and school personnel are seen as essential in offering access to opportunities to learn and helping maintain equity in classrooms; however, in many instances, educators are not prepared to teach culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Regional and local policies also restrict teachers. For instance, as of 2023, Arizona is the only state in the U.S. with English-only education legislation still in effect through its law known as Proposition 203, which poses obstacles to equitable education for English language learners (ELLs), especially immigrants and their teachers. “Justice can take equity one step further by fixing the systems in a way that leads to long-term, sustainable, equitable access for generations to come” (Erdmann, 2021, p.1). Consequently, “teaching for equity and justice requires educators having a systemic and structural understanding of the inequities in our society, a personal commitment to challenging these injustices, and provoking or facilitating a local response” (Sadler, 2023, p. 1). In our forthcoming book, we describe an M.Ed. in Global Education designed to help teachers and educators learn how to engage in action research for equity. I direct this program with the support of Arizona State University faculty. The program aims to enable teachers to collect valid evidence to challenge policies and school cultures perpetuating inequities.
Teachers and school personnel are essential in offering access to opportunities to learn and helping maintain equity in classrooms; however, in many instances, educators are not prepared to teach culturally and linguistically diverse populations. National, regional, and local policies also restrict teachers’ attempts at creating equitable classrooms.
LtC: What is a core issue/challenge you are grappling with in your work related to systems equity and social justice?
I see effective teacher education and development as an equity and fairness issue—future teachers enroll in teacher education expecting to be prepared to be education professionals, and parents enroll their children in schools expecting that well-prepared teachers will teach them—all children with no exceptions. Lack of well-prepared, knowledgeable teachers affects teaching and instruction: how teachers interpret and implement the curriculum and how well they can address the needs of their students in an intellectually ambitious and humane way. Such a vision has proven difficult to realize in the U.S. and other countries, with notable and worth-studying exceptions. My work attends to these concerns by focusing on several core issues:
How can teacher education systems prepare knowledgeable and effective future and early career teachers?
My scholarship on the outcomes of teacher education, teacher learning, and transitions into teaching is manifest in two large international research projects focusing on teacher education, teacher learning, and transitions into teaching [the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), and the First Five Years of Mathematics Teaching – Proof-of-Concept Study (FIRSTMATH)]. The projects involved collaborating with colleagues in 17 and 12 countries, investigating system-level policies affecting elementary and secondary teachers’ preparation, knowledge acquisition, and teaching methods. The findings revealed that highly knowledgeable mathematics teachers exist in systems that have developed robust accreditation systems and require future teachers to demonstrate deep knowledge of their subject and pedagogy. However, teachers often lack knowledge of teaching culturally diverse students and critical tools to promote equity (e.g., formative assessment and action research) (Tatto et al., 2012; Tatto et al., 2018; Tatto et al., 2020).
How can teacher educators and teachers contribute strong evidence to shape the field and inform effective policies and practices in teaching and teacher education?
My work on the links between research, policy, and practice in pursuing equity in teacher education resulted in a joint collaborative project with colleagues in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, England. Our studies explored the impact of market models in education on the preparation of future teachers in the U.S. and England, revealing that the goals of teacher preparation have shifted from a humanistic curriculum to a test-based approach, causing teachers to compromise between student needs and accountability demands and negatively affecting teacher recruitment and retention (Tatto et al., 2018). A follow-up study sought to understand the intersection and evolution of knowledge, policy, and practice in teacher education across nations, showing that resistance or acceptance of market approaches is mediated by the management of accountability systems in each nation (Tatto & Menter, 2019).
How can teacher educators and teachers contribute strong evidence to shape the field and inform effective policies and practices in teaching and teacher education?
An essential challenge teacher education programs face is helping teachers develop applied research skills to monitor and improve their practice to effectively foster equitable access to learning opportunities. My work in this area encourages the education profession to attend to diverse epistemologies, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies to enrich teacher education, teaching, and learning (Tatto, 2021a). Another key challenge is helping teachers learn how to implement responsive teaching strategies (e.g., formative assessments) to prevent students from falling behind. The argument here is that the accountability movement has diminished the importance of teachers’ knowledge and implementation of responsive teaching strategies (e.g., formative assessment). These findings should prompt the profession to reimagine action research and assessment’s role in teacher education for adequate and equitable teaching and learning (Tatto, 2021 a, c).
How do we find synergies between local needs to educate all students and global movements in education to offer teacher preparation for sustainable, equitable practices?
Substantial synergies to promote inclusive and equitable quality education opportunities for all learners can be obtained by exploring the potential of promising global movements such as UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4). This would require the profession to agree on definitions and measurements of global indicators for successful, equitable teacher education, teaching, and learning by moving from easy-to-measure indicators to more meaningful ones. Such an effort would require a thoughtful examination of professionalism in teaching and teacher education (Tatto, 2021b). In my work, I use psychological and sociological frameworks to explore how recontextualizing agents struggle to dominate the construction and interpretation of professionalism in teaching, concluding that the education field must develop the capacity to ensure teachers’ professional learning, informed by use-inspired research and an inquiry culture in university-based teacher education programs (Tatto, 2021b; Tatto, 2021c).
LtC: What can researchers and practitioners of educational change learn from your work?
MTT: I aim to provide insights for scholars and practitioners studying equity-oriented educational reform via my contributions to the comparative study of pre-service teacher education, focusing on collaborative capacity development and evidence-based decision-making. My work on teacher education systems examines the challenges and possibilities of promoting equity in teacher education and teaching. My research emphasizes the need to rethink the future of teacher education curricula to support professionalism in the education field.
My work also highlights the complexity and interconnectedness of teacher education programs, such as differences in programs’ nature and effects, the socializing effect of normative cohesive teacher education on teachers’ beliefs, and challenges associated with education reform, including understanding how such reforms affect teachers’ perceptions of roles, practices, and goals of education. (Tatto, 1996; Rodriguez, Tatto, et al., 2018).
My research suggests solutions for the problems various national teacher education programs face, emphasizing the need for national and regional policies that support programs’ collaborative curricular change and strengthen teachers’ knowledge, research skills, and collaboration networks.
I also stress the importance of resolving contradictions and conflicts surrounding education reform through well-informed practice and policy. By focusing on these topics, I hope to provide insightful analysis of possible solutions to the intricate problems that teacher education systems face worldwide.
About the Interviewees:
Dr. Amelia Peterson is Associate Professor and Head of Learning and Teaching at the London Interdisciplinary School, where she leads work developing new curricula based around the integration of Arts and Sciences. She was previously part of the first cohort of Harvard University’s PhD in Education, where her dissertation focused on assessment and qualification reforms. She has taught in a variety of settings including a large UK secondary school and at the London School of Economics, and has worked on education projects both in the UK and internationally, including for the World Innovation Summit on Education (WISE), the OECD, and the Brookings Institution. She is on the Advisory Group of Rethinking Assessment and for many years was a facilitator for the Global Education Leaders’ Partnership.
Maria Teresa Tatto is a renowned comparative education expert at Arizona State University, focusing on teacher education systems and the intersection of research, policy, and practice to create more equitable and accessible educational opportunities for disadvantaged populations. She has created a theoretical framework to analyze the relationships between teacher preparation research, policy, and practice and has authored 17 books, over 100 journal articles, and book chapters. Tatto is a former president of the Comparative and International Education Society, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford, an Honorary Visiting Professor at the UCL – IoE, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Bath, England. She is also a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.
References (AP):
Peterson, A. (2020). The Road Less Travelled: The Decline of Vocational Pathways and Variety of Hybridization Across Four Countries, 1995-2016 [Harvard University]. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37365787
Yurkofsky, M. M., Peterson, A., Mehta, J. D., Horwitz-Willis, R., & Frumin, K. (2020). Research on continuous improvement: Exploring the complexities of managing educational change. Review of Research in Education, 44(1), 403–433. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X20907363
Cohen, D. K., & Mehta, J.D. (2017). Why reform sometimes succeeds: Understanding the conditions that produce reforms that last. American Educational Research Journal, 54(4), 644-690. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831217700078
Tatto, M. T. & Brown, L. (Eds.) (in press). Empowering Teachers for Equitable and Sustainable Education: Action Research, Teacher Agency, and Online Community. Routledge.
Tatto, M. T. (in press). Empowering Teachers for Sustainable and Equitable Education: Program Philosophy, Theoretical Bases, and Pedagogy. In M.T. Tatto & L. Brown (Eds.), Empowering Teachers for Equitable and Sustainable Education: Action Research, Teacher Agency, and Online Community. Routledge (in press).
Tatto, M.T. & Brown, L. (Eds.), Empowering Teachers for Equitable and Sustainable Education: Action Research, Teacher Agency, and Online Community. Routledge (in press).
Tatto, M.T. (1996). Examining values and beliefs about teaching diverse students: Understanding the challenges for teacher education. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 18, 155-180. https://doi.org/10.2307/1164554
Tatto, M.T. (1998). The influence of teacher education on teachers’ beliefs about purposes of education, roles, and practice. Journal of Teacher Education, 49, 66-77. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487198049001008
Tatto, M.T. (1999). The socializing influence of normative cohesive teacher education on teachers’ beliefs about instructional choice. Teachers and Teaching, 5, 111-134. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354060990050106
Tatto, M.T. (2021b). Comparative Research on teachers and teacher education: Global perspectives to inform UNESCO’S SDG 4 Agenda. Oxford Review of Education, 47 (1), 25-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2020.1842183
This week’s post features the work of Phương Minh Lương and Tine S. Prøitz. They are two of the participants in this month’s issue of Lead the Change, which brings together interviews with four members of a virtual convening on Education System (Re)Building for Equity and Social Justice in Teaching and Learning organized by Amanda Datnow, Vicki Park, Don Peurach, and Jim Spillane, with the support of the Spencer Foundation. Next week’s post will feature interviews with two other participants, Amelia Peterson and Maria Teresa Tatto.The convening, with virtual meetings in May and June of 2023, was designed to help establish “a cross-national community of scholars whose members take appreciative, critical, and practical perspectives on advancing educational access, quality, and equity by (re)building education systems.” To continue the discussions begun during the convenings, we invite those attending Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April to join the conversation with Minahil Assim, Thomas Hatch, Phương Minh Lương, Don Peurach, and Tine Prøitz at a symposium for AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group – Equity and Educational Transformation in a Cross-National Perspective. The LtC series is produced by Alex Lamb and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A pdf of the fully formatted interview is available on the LtC website.
Phương Minh Lương
Lead the Change (LtC):The 2024 AERA theme is “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action.” Can you tell us how your work on educational transformation responds to this call?
Phương Minh Lương (PHL): I have contributed to Vietnam’s educational transformation for the past 23 years as a researcher, teacher and social activist. I have participated in a number of studies addressing educational reform and equity in educational access for disadvantaged children including Research on Improving System of Education in Vietnam (2017-2023) and a national study on developing high-quality human resources for ethnic minorities in Vietnam through pre-service and in-service training systems (2023-2025). These research projects involve close collaboration with policy makers from the Ministry of Education and Training and have informed the country’s educational policies and contributed to curriculum and intervention programs for educational quality improvement, particularly for disadvantaged groups.
I have also drawn on this research to develop equity-driven curriculum with an emphasis on achieving Sustainable Development Goal No 4. This work involved specific efforts to educate both master’s students and undergraduates to become agents of change through courses like human rights and national policies, human rights and social justice, civil society organizations, community development, and world of gender.
As a social activist, I have initiated a series of community development projects and a field research internship for both Vietnamese and international students. These projects have been conducted in cooperation between Hanoi University and some non-government organizations such as Aid et Action, Plan International, and Action on Poverty. Via these projects, we have gradually fueled students’ sense of responsibility and accountability of securing wellbeing for less advantaged communities in Vietnam and worldwide.
As a teacher educator, I have provided in-service training courses for teachers at different educational levels. With funding from International non-government organizations like ActionAid International Vietnam, Save the Children, and UNICEF, we have jointly developed culturally relevant teaching methods and textbooks for ethnic minority students in disadvantaged areas in Vietnam. All in all, social justice and equity are deeply imbued in my work. The intersection of research, teaching and service-learning projects has supported the achievement of access to a more equitable, inclusive, and quality education for disadvantaged students in Vietnam.
The intersection of research, teaching and service-learning projects has supported access to a more equitable, inclusive, and quality education for disadvantaged students in Vietnam.
LtC:How do you define and operationalize equity (and/or social justice) in your work?
PHL: Recognition means treating cultural claims as if they are a question of morality and justice. In this sense, education needs to ensure that all students’ claims of respect, dignity, and esteem are seen as equal individual rights. Here, recognition is treated as “one fairly specific form of moral and political relations between the state and its citizens” (Patten, 2017, p. 163). The paradigm of recognition can encompass not only movements aiming to revalue unjustly devalued identities but also deconstructive tendencies rejecting the “essentialism” of traditional identity politics (Fraser & Honneth, 2003).
Redistribution concerns the distribution of economic opportunities and resources considering cultural identities and differences. As such, it “encompasses not only class-centered political orientations… but also socioeconomic transformation or reform as the remedy for gender and racial-ethnic injustice” (Fraser & Honneth, 2003, p. 12). Accordingly, inequity includes both deprivation (being denied an adequate financial resource) or marginalisation (being confined to an undesirable or poorly allocated budget). Representation encompasses authoritative engagement and active participation in decision-making for a certain group in society. Recognition is reflected in the ‘representation’ dimension in which claims and power positions of different individuals and groups are acknowledged equally by having their voices heard and by their participation in any policies and programs related to their benefits and rights (Fraser & Honneth, 2003). This means that representation can be examined in terms of sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and location of participants in the education system.
Although equity and justice are recognized in Vietnam’s legal framework at the institutional level, they have not been operationalized effectively at the organizational and individual levels.
From this perspective, the concept of justice is seen to secure sustainable equity for all in systems where those in power are held accountable for equal treatment for all, while rights-holders are empowered to actively claim their deserved equal rights and opportunities.
With this understanding of equity and justice, I’ve undertaken research, teaching and development projects with a constructivist and human right-based approach. In that approach, both those in power and rights-holders are empowered to address the structural inequities in the system in terms of redistribution, recognition and representation, and the development of their personal commitments and capacities.
LtC: What is a core issue/challenge you are grappling with in your work related to systems and/or equity and social justice?
PHL: Although equity and justice are recognized in our legal framework at the institutional level, they have not been operationalized effectively at the organizational and individual levels. At the organizational level, for example, the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) has been quite weak in Vietnam. As a consequence, it has been difficult to collect and analyse the ethnicity related information/data needed to address equity in terms of financing/ budgeting and investments/ procurement/ bidding procedures. This situation makes it difficult for me and others to carry out research that generates adequate knowledge and data for developing effective policies and practices related to equitable access to quality and inclusive education.
At the individual level, we need a better professional development and pre-service and in-service teacher training system so that teachers can learn how to secure equity and justice in their work. For instance, as lecturers, we have not been trained to use formative assessments effectively to make sure students from different backgrounds, particularly those from disadvantaged groups, do not fall behind. As a result, it is understandable that our policy makers and practitioners in the educational system do not have the capacity to put the legal framework of equity and justice into practice effectively.
LtC: What can researchers and practitioners of educational change learn from your work?
PHL: In Vietnam’s educational system, we promote equity and justice in ways relevant to our socio-cultural & political context. One of the most effective ways to transform our system is to engage policymakers and concerned stakeholders in our research, teaching and community development projects. For example, my research on equity in educational access for children of migrant workers in the industrial zones in Vietnam provides findings for my courses like “Human Development and Sustainable Development Goals” and “Social Policies.” Within these courses, we cooperated with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to deliver a Responsible Business Communication Campaign to advocate for companies to secure the equal right to quality education for children of their migrant workers.
I am also active in networks with international scholars from the USA, UK, Germany, Australia, and Japan in research and teaching related to equity and justice issues on both a national and global scale. These collaborations enable me to see equity and justice from different perspectives and in different contexts and helps me to develop a socio-culturally relevant concept of equity and justice within Vietnam’s context. This puts equity and justice forward as principles and goals that can be achieved with collective action in a synergy and socio-cultural ecology of concerned stakeholders.
Tine S. Prøitz
Lead the Change (LtC): You were a participant in a recent convening to share and examine work around the world on equity, social justice, and educational transformation, and The 2024 AERA theme is “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action.” Can you tell us how your work on educational transformation responds to this call?
Tine S. Prøitz (TSP): My work relates to the conference theme through investigations of how education systems are developed in education policy and in practice with an aim to provide equal educational possibilities for all students. My work primarily focuses on the education systems of Norway and Sweden that have traditionally been associated with welfare systems characterized by universal rights including free access to public education. These countries rank high on comparative measures on equity in education (Blossing et al., 2014) and are considered successful in equal access to education and learning opportunities for all (Frønes et al. 2022). Even so, international studies show that the Nordic countries are experiencing increasing inequalities along several dimensions where socio-economic status and other background factors influence student’s academic achievement (Frønes et al 2022). As a result, many are asking if the Nordic countries can maintain a ‘School for All’ in the face of increasing diversities and social inequalities, globalization and other changing conditions (Lundahl, 2016; Telhaug et al., 2006).
Can Nordic countries maintain a ‘School for All’ with increasing diversities and social inequalities, globalization and other changing conditions?
Furthermore, the differences among the Nordic countries in terms of the degree of privatization, demographic characteristics and the governing of schools indicates that a rise in inequality relates to complex issues. In an ongoing comparative and mixed method research project (CLASS-Comparisons of leadership autonomy in school districts and schools) I am working with colleagues in Norway, Sweden and Germany to look into some of the complexity. We focus on how the relationships between education leaders in municipalities, school districts and in schools open or close education opportunities for all. By studying how educational leaders work with inclusion and assessment can help to reveal how education opportunities for students are constructed differently under varied framings of education systems.
We are also studying structures for collaborative knowledge development in education. Here equality is interesting in terms of how actors in education in different contexts can become involved in the nexus between education policy and practice (Prøitz et al. 2023). I am currently looking into new ways of working in research practice partnerships (RPPs). In these studies, we are exploring how to challenge traditional asymmetrical power relations and hierarchical structures by, for example, valuing practitioner´ experience-based knowledge equally with research based knowledge without compromising scientific quality.
We are exploring how to challenge traditional asymmetrical power relations and hierarchical structures by, for example, valuing practitioners´ experience-based knowledge equally as research-based knowledge without compromising scientific quality.
LtC:How do you defineand operationalize equity (and/or social justice) in your work?
TSP: Taking a systems perspective involves the investigation of what education systems consist of and also how different system elements can influence what practitioners do, in terms of creating and limiting opportunities for action. From such a perspective, equity can be understood: as equity in terms of opportunity and choice; access and admission; results and outcomes; and treatment and adaption. In the Nordic setting, historically, equity has been viewed as everybody being the same, but today’s approach to equity tends to treat everyone as unique, with a focus on equivalence and the appraisal of individual autonomy, diversity, and merit (Aasen 2007; Prøitz & Aasen 2017). In the CLASS-project, we are looking at what approach to equity is promoted in policy and in the practice of education leaders.
In the Nordic setting, equity in education has traditionally been understood as everybody being the same, while today’s understanding of equity tends to consider everybody as unique and is more of a question of equivalence and the appraisal of individual autonomy, diversity, and merit.
In the context of RPPs we are emphasizing the concept of equality in participation and involvement between all partners of the research practice partnerships. Equal here refer to having the same powers to be involved in decision making about common aims and goals, but without having to be involved in all parts of the research activities. Partners in RPPs often have different roles and competences of varied relevance in the stages of the work of the RPP (Prøitz & Rye 2023).
LtC: What is a core issue/challenge you are grappling with in your work related to systems and/or equity and social justice?
TSP: The recent developments in the Nordic countries challenge basic ideas of the Nordic education model as a universal welfare good for all students (Telhaug et al. 2006); it also puts the “one public school for all” principle under pressure and thereby the national curriculum and the national quality development system as well (Dieude 2023). Consequently, our research takes as a core issue how public education systems develop and handle education opportunity for all under changing circumstances. These changing circumstances include more heterogenic and diversified populations with new expectations, more individual rights-oriented students and parents, teachers striving to handle more complex student populations with varied needs, and governments with different focus and shifting conceptions of equity. Our CLASS-studies of education leader autonomy, so far shows how the recognition of a growing number of individual rights challenges education leaders´ autonomy as they try to secure the rights of all students. Preliminary findings also show that education leaders experience more autonomy when it comes to supporting the involvement and participation of all students in schools, an issue high on the agenda in both policy and in practice and one that takes a lot of education leaders´ time and attention. Issues that I grapple with right now in these concrete studies include the classic question of how today’s public education system can balance the needs of the individual with the broader needs of the collective and the society. From a more long-term perspective, although I highly value the idea of a public education systems for all, I wonder: is a public education system for all a realistic idea for the future? If so, what will it take to sustain it?
Is public education systems for all a realistic idea for the future? If so what will it take to sustain it?
LtC: What can researchers and practitioners of educational change learn from your work?
TSP: I hope that the work I’ve shared in publications and in meetings with scholars, teachers, school leaders, administrators, and policymakers can inspire a renewed discussion of what education systems we construct and what we need to do to build sustainable systems with education opportunities for all. I hope to raise awareness and debate on what we mean by equity as well as by equivalence in today’s education systems. Building on the Nordic model’s more traditional meanings of equity in terms of opportunity and results does not seem to meet the challenges of today. Identifying further steps and potential solutions for more equitable education systems will require collaborations between researchers and practitioners. I hope that the work on RPPs may contribute to ways of working more closely together for educational change.
About the Interviewees:
PhươngMinhLương is a lecturer and coordinator of the Master Program of Global Leadership of Vietnam Japan University (Vietnam National University). She is also a collaborating researcher with the Vietnam National Institute of Educational Sciences (Ministry of Education and Training). Her expertise and work focuses on Education, Development and Sustainability, specifically, securing human rights, equity and social justice, wellbeing and sustainable development for People, Family, and Community through theories of recognition, agency development, and socio-cultural ecological transformation. She has been a trainer of teachers and educational managers related to teaching methods and sustainable development issues for the past 18 years for several international non-governmental organizations. Her publications have primarily focused on internationalization and intercultural competence in higher education, green skills and labour market, equity, justice and sustainable developments.
Tine S. Prøitz is a professor of education science at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Her research interests are in the fields of education policy and education practice, education systems studies, and comparative studies with an emphasis on actor relations and actor collaborations. Prøitz is currently the principal investigator of the CLASS-Comparisons of leadership autonomy in school districts and schools project and she is the vice dean of research at the Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Sciences.
References (PHL):
Fraser, N. (2003), Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, and participation. In N. Fraser & A. Honneth (Eds.), Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange (pp. 7-109). Verso.
Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (Eds.). (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange (pp. 7- 109). Verso.
Patten, A. (2017). Equal recognition: The moral foundations of minority rights. Princeton University Press.
References (TSP):
Aasen, P. (2007). Equality in Educational Policy: A Norwegian Perspective. In Teese, Lamb & Duru-Bellat (eds.) International studies in educational inequality, theory and policy (pp. 460-475). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
Blossing, U., Imsen, G., & Moos, L. (2014). Nordic schools in a time of change. In U. Blossing, G. Imsen, & L. Moos (Eds.), The Nordic education model. A ‘school for all’ encounters neo- liberal policy (pp. 1–14). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
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IEN: In the first part of our interview, you talked about the goals and key elements of the Toda City education reforms, but can you tell us a bit about what you learned in the process?
Hirokazu Yokota: Through dialogues with educators in Toda City, I learned that they have a mixed feeling toward this aggressive education reform. Although change is necessary, some might regard it as the negation of their past – sometimes successful – practices. That reminds me of the PISA shock around 2003; when Japan’s ranking substantially fell in the midst of the implementation of a child-centered learning reform, and the addition of a significant amount of learning content with the revision of the Courses of Study (national curriculum standard). Rather than throwing away past things altogether, we should not forget the spirit of “continue past things and pioneer the future while developing them.”
For example, whether it’s ICT education or generative AI or anything new, teachers will not change their practices no matter how many times they are told by Boards of Educations or principals until they understand it’s necessary and beneficial to them. Therefore, we put so much effort into letting teachers actually use ICT in professional development opportunities and experience the merit of it. Then, they became strong promoters.
Whether it’s ICT education or generative AI or anything new, teachers will not change their practices no matter how many times they are told by BOEs or principals until they understand it’s necessary and beneficial to them.
Another important thing was that because there are more and more young teachers who tend to lack a common foundation for teaching and learning, we were faced with the need to re-emphasize the Subject Education (“S” of our SEEP Project). That’s why we created the Plan for Strengthening Subject Education in May 2023. The key concept here is that student learning is analogous to teacher learning. So, in order to realize individually optimized and collaborative learning for students, we, through professional development and other means, need to provide these learning opportunities for teachers.
The last big issue is absenteeism. The figures released last October show we hit a record high of 299,048 – with a remarkable increase of 22.1% from the previous year. In order to tackle this problem, in March 2022, we published the Toda-Version Alternative Plan, which aims at an education where nobody will be left behind. What we’re essentially doing is to prepare choices of various learning places. In the last fiscal year, because the number of absentees at the elementary level has been rapidly increasing, we set up in-school support rooms (“Palette Room”) in all the 12 elementary schools for students who are experiencing challenges in the classroom. Depending on their situation, they can choose to participate in classroom lessons virtually from the Palette Room or physically during the day. Also, when some students cannot stay in their classroom due to their developmental issues, they can visit the Palette Room to cool themselves down before returning to their classroom. I also saw an immigrant student, who cannot understand Japanese well, spend some time at the Palette Room to receive one-on-one instruction for a few months, and after then they can keep up with classroom lessons and stop using the Palette Room. In short, students, in consultation with teachers, have the freedom to use this room whenever it fits for them.
Additionally, we expanded our education center and established a student support room that accommodates junior high school students in a high school. Furthermore, with the help of a non-profit, we also set up an online education center in the metaverse for children who mostly stay at home and cannot go outside. Our policy measures are unparalleled to any municipal BOE in Japan, and have gotten a lot of attention from the media (including in Forbes, NHK News Web, and the MEXT website).
IEN: What advice do you have for others who might want to pursue a similar approach, whether in Japan or other parts of the world?
Hirokazu Yokota: I understand that it is very, very difficult to change others. In order to make transformational change in education for students, we should be mindful that change must start with us adults. The typical relationship between the BOE and schools is resistant to these changes, with the board urging schools to make visible changes while educators in schools are fed up with new things imposed from above. We as a BOE wanted to change this image. Thus, the BOE changed first by going outside of the education circle and bringing new movements of the society into our office. This is because in order to implement our SEEP project (as is mentioned in the last post), there is no way but to collaborate with private companies, public sectors and research institutions. At the beginning, BOE officers stopped trying to provide all the contents by themselves, collected raw materials in collaboration with outsiders, “cooked” with these, and then, in a sense, provided schools with the “cuisine” (e.g. BOE reached out to private companies that have contents of programming education, created a curriculum in collaboration with them, and implement it in schools). Gradually, as principals understood that they can do these new things without being threatened, schools became cooks themselves with raw materials provided by the BOE (e.g. schools adjusted their annual curriculum plan so that they can provide programming education in a more coherent way). In this way, principals gradually began to see the benefits and started to change themselves, then this change also spread out to teachers and finally classrooms. Although one teacher can change his or her practice, when it comes to systemic change, I don’t think the transformation comes from the right to the left. It should happen the other way around – BOEs should change first. Additionally, I’m sometimes surprised by the fact that schools, in addition to being cooks, even prepare raw materials by themselves (e.g. some schools reach out to outside experts on programming education without BOE’s involvement, and invite them to their in-school professional development session) . Because there are so many “cooks” in the education governance, which means each stakeholder tries to intervene in school reform in an incoherent way, our approach of giving autonomy to schools while providing support is indispensable.
In addition, what makes education policy complicated is its governance system. Also in Japan, there are many reformists who say “Our schools are broken. Let’s fix it.” However, as there are more and more cooks in the kitchen, making coherent and sustainable policies becomes more challenging. That’s why we as a BOE have so much respect for school principals and give them considerable autonomy so that they, with the deepest understanding of individual students, can be engaged in school reform themselves. I believe that school can be reformed only from within and truly important education reforms should happen from schools, not from MOE or BOEs. In order to realize that, management by BOE should shift from “one-size-fits-all control” to “individual support” and BOEs should be institutions that accompany schools and support their self-propulsion.
School can be reformed only from within, and truly important education reforms should happen from schools, not from MOE or BOEs. In order to realize that, management by BOE should shift from “one-size-fits-all control” to “individual support,” and BOEs should be institutions that accompany schools and support their self-propulsion.
IEN: What’s next? What are you working on or hoping to work on now?
Hirokazu Yokota: When I had looked at this Toda City before I joined as a deputy superintendent, I had the impression that it’s essentially a top-down reform with strong leadership from the superintendent. However, after being assigned by the Education Ministry to work here, I realized that I was mistaken. Although the BOE was running alone at the beginning of this reform (Stage 1), we’re now in Stage 2 (accompaniment) – many people within the BOE and schools have the same reform vision as the superintendent, and the BOE accompanies schools so that they can do cooking with raw materials provided by the BOE. Now, I have a feeling that we’re stepping into Stage 3 (self-propulsion) in which schools can prepare raw materials from scratch. What strikes me is that all the 18 schools in our jurisdiction are becoming leading schools that welcome visits from outsiders, as opposed to only a few leading schools and many other old-fashioned ones.
Through a dialogue with schools, I noticed that there are many things that schools want to do if and only if they have more money. Actually, my division’s budget accounts for only 4% of the total education budget of Toda City. With this budget constraint, what I came up with is essentially fundraising by the BOE. We ask our schools to submit ambitious reform proposals, and rather than expecting individual schools to do all the fundraising for their initiatives, we as a BOE collect money for them. We collected 5 million yen in the last fiscal year, and we distributed it to each school to implement. Although an exception for now, I believe this approach will also spread gradually, as the financial condition of governments has become even more challenging recently, and it will continue to be challenging in the future.
In this 2-part interview, Hirokazu Yokota provides an inside look at a municipality-led educational reform effort in Japan. In the first part, he describes the background and key elements of the initiative from his perspective as deputy superintendent and director for education policy at the Toda City Board of Education. The second part of the interview will focus on what he’s learned from his experience with the initiative as he returns in April to his regular posting as a government officer at the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Mr. Yokota has previously written about his experiences as a parent and educator during the pandemic (A view from Japan: Hirokazu Yokota on school closures and the pandemic) and his work as a policymaker and government officer at Japan’s Digital Agency (A view from Japan (part 2): Hiro Yokota on parenting, education and the new Digital Agency in Japan).The graphics included in these posts are drawn from a slide show on Education Reform in Toda City. For further information on the Today City reforms see the slide show or contact Hiro via Linkedin.
IEN: At the time of your previous post, you were working at the newly established Digital Agency, government of Japan. What brought you to Toda City?
Hirokazu Yokota: As I mentioned in the first post, I am a government officer at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. At a certain point in our career, most of the Ministry officers are delegated to local governments to better bridge policy and practice. The term usually varies from two to three years, and after returning to the Ministry they are supposed to further polish their policy making and implementation skills with more knowledge of what’s occurring at the ground. Although most of my colleagues have been delegated to prefectural BOEs, I’m currently serving as a deputy superintendent and director for education policy at Toda City BOE – a municipality in Saitama prefecture (20 minutes from the Tokyo metropolitan area by train, Toda City has 12 elementary and 6 junior high schools with some 12,000 students.
IEN: What’s the issue you have been working on?
Hirokazu Yokota: I’m basically trying to change the “grammar of schooling” – you can see what one of our schools is doing in the video “Creating Your Future @ STEAM Lab”. As we talked about in in your class on School Change and you address in your last book “The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict,” it’s disappointingly difficult to transform the “technical core” – classroom instruction – of schooling, and most of the times micro-innovations, rather than reforms targeted at the entire school systems, take place in ecological “niches.” In Japan, one device per student was distributed with the subsidy from the Ministry to all the students in elementary and junior high schools during Covid-19. However, there is still too much pressure on one-way, teacher-led classroom instruction throughout this country, and I’m personally afraid this new and powerful ICT tool is not as utilized at schools as initially expected.
In this regard, Toda City is an exception as you can see from the STEAM video. The turning point was when Tsutomu Togasaki, a former school principal, assumed superintendency in 2015. Back then, he articulated four concepts of education reform; (1) develop abilities that are hard to be substituted by AI, (2) utilize knowledge resources in collaboration with companies, public sectors and research institutions, (3) get away from education that solely relies on“experience, intuition, and spirit” and focus on “objective evidence,” and (4) utilize educational data so that instruction/student guidance etc. will be based on evidence that is corroborated by research.
In order to realize this vision, we’ve implemented the Toda City SEEP Project composed of Subject (subject education), Edtech, EBPM (evidence-based policy making), and PBL (project-based learning). And it’s my primary responsibility now to move this ambitious reform into the next phase while narrowing the gap between policy and practice and building the capacity for educators.
IEN: What do you think are the root causes of this problem?
Hirokazu Yokota: Changing the status quo is always an uncomfortable step. In the context of Japan, which is a relatively high performer in PISA and TIMSS, some educators regard aggressive education reforms such as ours as something that may undermine their past success. At the outset of our reform in Toda City (8 years ago), the superintendent found that there was a lot of pushback from school principals and others. Even the city council members, who were generally pro-reform, had some resistance to what they saw as his “radical” vision.
Undeterred, Mr. Togasaki continued to say that “in order to bring the movement of the ever-changing society into the classroom, BOE prepares raw materials for a variety of learning and human resources. Schools are expected to make the most of them for lesson improvement, in-school PD, and workshops”. He even went on to say it is extremely insincere (for educators) not to try to understand the society where students will dive into after graduation from school, and we should make school a learning place where children can feel the future. “Avoiding risks is the greatest risk, “ he warned, and he welcomed an ambitious challenge (even if it is 60 points out of 100) rather than a mediocre practice (that is 90 points). These are the words now I can hear from principals and other school staff, which means the superintendent’s vision has permeated into the ground over the eight years.
“we should make school a learning place where children can feel the future. ‘Avoiding risks is the greatest risk,’ he warned, and he welcomed an ambitious challenge (even if it is 60 points out of 100) rather than a mediocre practice (that is 90 points).” – Tsutomu Togasaki, Superintendent of Toda City
There were two important policy levers that have supported this reform. The first is the ICT device distribution through the GIGA School Initiative. We had a clear intention to use this new tool for the purpose of transforming teacher-led instruction into student-centered learning. Additionally, in contrast with other municipalities that said “let young teachers use ICT first,” we started with veteran teachers, knowing that the use of ICT will spread throughout the school much faster once they see veteran teachers, with solid instructional design, use ICT effectively. This strategy worked out very well.
The second was unexpectedly COVID-19. It attacked our city exactly when we started to implement PBL. However, it did not slow down, and actually accelerated PBL. Since students could not do what they took for granted – from school excursion to learning face-to-face with classmates and teachers -, they, with a sense of urgency and ownership, started to engage in problem-solving by themselves. For example, since students could not go on a school trip, they made project mapping on the wall of the gymnasium at their school in order to experience a campfire (as if they were actually on a trip site). Additionally, in order to make PBL an authentic learning experience, ICT is an indispensable tool – from creating presentation slides together to conducting a questionnaire to getting feedback from outsiders online.
IEN: With these policy reforms already in place, what did you do first to tackle the problem?
Hirokazu Yokota: I started out by listening to educators here – visiting schools one by one and meeting principals, head teachers etc. where they are. Through these candid conversations, although I was building future policy directions – study (1) lesson, (2) student guidance, and (3) class/school management scientifically (which is directly related to my former task at the Digital Agency that I described in my last blog post, the Roadmap on the Utilization of Data in Education ), I had a feeling that educators on the ground are still in the stage of utilizing ICT and not necessarily ready for a next step of utilizing data from there.
For the first direction (study lesson scientifically), we sought to promote data-driven lesson study toward the realization of proactive, interactive, and deep learning, as is stipulated in the new national curriculum standard (Courses of Study). Therefore, as a common language to transform teacher-led instruction into student-centered instruction, we shared with schools the Toda City Version SAMR model.
Although all the schools were in the Substitution or Augmentation Phase back then, the timing and specific tools of students using ICT was still controlled by the teacher. By letting go of control and giving students the handle of learning, we can move onto the Modification Phase, which is the first step of changing the “grammar of schooling.” Whenever I visited classrooms, I used this model as something like the Danielson Rubric for classroom instruction, not to evaluate teachers but to have an understanding of where we are and clarify room for lesson improvement.
IEN: What challenges did you encounter?
Hirokazu Yokota: Regarding the aforementioned three future policy directions, there were few policies in place for the second (study student guidance scientifically) and third (study class/school management scientifically). And actually, I noticed that teachers have a fear of being evaluated when we implement the first direction (make lessons etc. evidence-based). On the other hand, I noticed that because absenteeism, especially for elementary school students, has been increasing rapidly, detecting early signs of absenteeism by data utilization is actually in greater need for educators (second direction). Moreover, although school leadership is indispensable for these policy reforms, we did not have a common language – lenses or perspectives – to reflect on school management (third direction). So there was definitely a great deal of policy need in these two directions, which urged me to create new reforms in order to realize “an education where nobody will be left behind.”
IEN: What changes did you make?
Hirokazu Yokota: For the second direction of studying student guidance scientifically, I started a new initiative to establish the Education Comprehensive Database that will consolidate data related to children from the BOE and other departments at the city hall. Essentially, we are asking are there any signs of absenteeism, bullying etc. that appear in advance, that we could address? Our main hypothesis here is that, if we connect and analyze a variety of data relating to children, we might be able to detect early indicators of absenteeism and provide support accordingly. The number of absentees has been increasing nationally for ten years in a row, and just hit a record high of some 299,048 (22.1% increase from the previous year). This upward trend is similar in our city, with the number of absentees in elementary school increasing rapidly, but our hope is that this database will serve as something like the Early Warning Indicator Systems in US schools.
Establishing such a database is very laborious, including deciding on which data to use, arranging ID’s for all the data, considering ways to collect and store the data (including digitization of paper information), and devising protective measures for private information, access control, and ethical guidelines. In collaboration with private companies, we are now coming close to completion and moving into the phase of actually using this database with schools.
For the third direction of studying class/school management scientifically, based on the discussion with principals, head teachers and others over some 40 hours, I drafted the Toda City Version School Management Rubric. I believe that our city is the first in Japan to publish such a rubric. Our basic concept here is to provide feedback on school management just like providing feedback on classroom instruction for continuous improvement. As you can see from the slide below, each element of this rubric is verbalized as “a challenging goal” – to be accomplished if and only if school management staff make concerted and intentional efforts over the time. For example, although most of the schools articulate their school visions, there are few schools that have intentional systems to make the vision referred to by teachers and children a common language (No.1 – school management staff as a visionary). Additionally, there are some teachers who engage in transformational practices in every school, but spreading this “good practice” throughout the school is extremely difficult (No.2 – school management staff who lead curriculum designers). With this rubric, the BOE and school management staff have common ground to talk about where we are, what we are doing and what we are not, and what we can do together for further improvement.
To be continued in “Hiro Yokota on aggressive education reforms to change the ‘grammar of schooling’ in Toda City (part 2)
This week, Thomas Hatch shares IEN’s annual scan of headlines that are trying to anticipate key trends and development for education in the New Year. For comparison, review the previous scans of the “looking ahead” headlines from 2022, 2021 part 1, 2021 part 2, and 2020. Last week’s post featured articles that looked back on the key issues and stories from 2023; previous posts looking back on the year in education also can be found for 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 part 1, 2019 part 2.
In some ways, the predictions for schools and education in 2024 reflect “more of the same” – continuing discussions of the influence of technology and AI on education; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on attendance, academic outcomes, and wellbeing; the challenges of education financing as pandemic funding runs out; and problems caused by teacher shortages and divisive politics:
This is a critical year as the nation grapples with the long-term effects of the pandemic amid a technological revolution, a still-unfolding refugee crisis, and a presidential election that could intensify political tensions.
Educators should expect debates over school choice, teacher pay measures, artificial intelligence, and standardized testing in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill in 2024
Budget projections will be easier and more reliable, at least for the calendar year, as the economy continues settling fairly smoothly to a slower pace with inflation easing and interest rates drifting down with it… absent the usual unforeseeables like new wars, oil shocks and pandemics — public finance is returning to something resembling business as usual.
One of the biggest forces impacting education in 2024 will be labor shortages—and not just in the classroom. Pressures on the wider U.S. workforce caused by a lack of employees with the requisite skills will drive more collaboration between K12 schools and employers… It will also drive a surge in popularity in career and technical education programs.
“While the rest of us are buying gym memberships we probably won’t use, school leaders are facing far more ambitious New Year’s resolutions: regaining academic ground, tightening those belts, weathering divisive politics, and ensuring more students show up to class.”
“New York’s Board of Regents has called for increased investments in the state’s information technology infrastructure, a bolstered educator pipeline, and additional money to update the state’s learning standards.”
“AI is the phrase on everyone’s lips heading into 2024, with 19 education technology experts believing its advantages will range from virtual tutors and faster student feedback to engaging, compelling presentations and better data analysis for teachers. Other predictions include more immersive and multisensory learning experiences, flexible learning locations, and leveraging and reaching community-based help groups.”
To look back on some of the key education issues and stories from 2023, Thomas Hatch shares IEN’s annual roundup of the end-of-the-year headlines from many of the sources on education news and research that we follow. For comparison, take a look at IEN’s scans of the headlines looking back in 2021, 2020, 2019 part 1, and 2019 part 2. The next post will look to 2024 by pulling together some of the education predictions for the coming year.
Reviews of education stories in 2023 highlighted:
The continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement, student absences, teacher shortages, and other aspects of student and teachers’ health and well-being
Pandemic recovery initiatives and concerns about a “fiscal cliff” that may cut off funding for those initiatives.
Developments in education technology and particularly the potential impact of artificial intelligence following the launch of ChatGPT in 2022
Advocacy for the “science of reading” and foundational learning in literacy and numeracy
Persistent concerns including inadequate education funding, inequities in educational performance and opportunities, and the challenges of innovation in assessment and instruction.
A Capture of Moments, Danna Ramirez, New York Times
an unusual early childhood experiment up close; wrestling with large datasets to better understand education trends; getting over a fear of math to cover efforts to revolutionize the teaching of calculus; and, yes, talks with professors struggling with adjusting teaching to the presence of AI chatbots
“The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced significant changes in 2023, including updated marking-schemes and increased number of exams that candidates can take.”
IEN will be taking a break over New Year’s and returning in January with our annual post scanning the education headlines for stories looking back at last year and looking ahead with predictions for the new year. In the meantime, please revisit some of our most viewed stories of the year along with some of the interviews that we did. We hope you have a restful, peaceful, and healthy New Year!
“ChatGPT’s strength in language and conventions show that it is a clear writer, capable of crafting fluent, grammatically sound prose. The chatbot either met or exceeded standards in both these categories for all 27 essays submitted.The AI has the most room for improvement in its development of ideas. The graders’ written feedback reveals that it sometimes fails to support its claims with reasons or evidence and, in a few instances, makes assertions that are flat out false.” – Michael B. Horn & Daniel Curtis from “To Teach Better Writing Don’t Ban ChatGPT. Instead, Embrace It”
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