Research, Practice, and School Improvement: Lead the Change Interview with Elizabeth A. Zumpe

Posted on December 21, 2022 by | Leave a comment

In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview Elizabeth A. Lumpe shares reflections on her experiences as researcher, teacher, and a participant in a series of research-practice partnerships in Massachusetts and California. Zumpe is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Education at University of Massachusetts Lowell. Starting in January, she will be an Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa. 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,

Lead the Change (LtC): The 2023 AERA theme is “Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth” and charges researchers and practitioners with creating and using education research to disrupt institutionalized forms of discrimination. The call urges scholars to challenge traditional methods of inquiry in order to create increasingly useful, responsive, and equity-oriented research that can be used by schools to develop informed policies and practices to better support students. What specific responsibility do educational change scholars have in this space? What steps are you taking to heed this call?

Elizabeth Zumpe (EZ): We live in a time in which educational problems are both urgent and complex. Expectations for public schools have risen substantially over the past 40 years (Mehta, 2013). During the same time, income inequality has also risen (Sommeiller & Price, 2018), and our school system has become resegregated (Government Accountability Office, 2022). Amid a global pandemic and a resurgent racial reckoning, a paradigm of standards-based accountability (Mehta, 2013) continues to dominate education policies. Educators serving high-poverty communities of color find themselves in under-resourced schools labeled as “chronically low-performing” and subject to sanctions. Meanwhile, teacher shortages are growing as many educators leave the profession (Marshall et al., 2022).

I find myself asking, what is the role of education scholars in the midst of this reality? Clearly, research is needed for describing and diagnosing these conditions. But is that enough, given the complexity and gravity of the problems? Perhaps because of my prior career as a public school teacher for over a decade, I think that bridging the research-practice gap is imperative. This bridging requires more than dissemination and brokerage. The work of research needs to be useful to help solve the problems in our education system. We cannot learn how to solve these problems at a distance from the daily realities of preK-12 schools. To understand how improvement unfolds, more scholars will need to get involved in the work of improving.

This interest drove my involvement in a multi-year research-practice partnership (RPP) with a Californian school district. The RPP included a research team from the University of California Berkeley and a team of district leaders. This district serves a high-poverty community of color, has been flagged for low performance for years, and has a reputation of micro-political conflict. We decided up front that our partnership needed to do more than document and describe the challenges. We wanted to learn side by side with educators how to strive towards improvement amid conditions of complexity and adversity. This required researchers to become aware of and curious about the practical dilemmas that educators face. We became embedded in day-to-day decision making, conducting action research as we took part in the improvement work. Researchers and practitioners—district leaders, school leaders, and teachers—met regularly to co-design improvement plans and professional learning and to study the uptake and limitations.

This is not how most academic research traditionally occurs. This approach means putting practitioners’ needs at the center of inquiry. It also means wading into the complexity of urban school districts and recognizing that scholars do not necessarily have all of the expertise. An RPP of this type, therefore, requires new methods and new role identities.

Building on these ideas, in the past year, I helped launch a new RPP between the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Lowell Public Schools. With co-PI Jack Schneider, this RPP involves researchers and practitioners co-designing a school quality data dashboard and a professional learning series for applying methods of continuous improvement. Research has not yet revealed much about how to build capacity for evidence-informed collective learning in high-poverty school districts that face resource scarcity, turnover, and pressures from test-driven accountability policies (Zumpe, 2022a). We hope that our work in Lowell will begin to shed light on this.

“An RPP means wading into the complexity of urban school districts and recognizing that scholars do not necessarily have all of the expertise.”

LtC: In your work, you use improvement science and design-based school improvement models to define and solve problems in school systems. What are some of the major lessons the field of Educational Change can learn from your work and experience? 

EZ: My research and collaborations with educators have taught me the importance of building capacity for organizational problem solving. I first learned about this while involved in research and development within an innovative EdD program at the University of California, Berkeley, the Leadership for Educational Equity Program (LEEP). In the book, Design-Based School Improvement: A Practical Guide for Education Leaders, by Rick Mintrop, we describe a pedagogy developed in LEEP for education leaders to use design-based problem solving to address an equity-relevant problem of practice in their own organizations (Mintrop, 2017). Initial phases of this approach involve developing a theory of action. This entails first defining, framing, and diagnosing the problem. Then, leaders set goals and identify change drivers—or powerful social psychological forces—that can enable self-directed learning. Throughout this work, education leaders conduct local needs assessments to learn with and from people in the organization and co-design the change process. These steps are similar to principles of improvement science promoted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Bryk et al., 2015).

However, through action research within LEEP, we also discovered that it is not straightforward for education leaders to learn how to become organizational problem solvers. Tracing how one cohort of leaders developed theories of action over two years, we found that leaders’ existing ways of thinking about improvement interfered. As described in an article published in the American Journal of Education, we found a countervailing mindset that persisted over time (Mintrop & Zumpe, 2019). Rather than seeking to understand and solve a particular problem, leaders tended to start out with a preferred solution they wanted to implement and to frame their problem of practice as “the absence of my solution.” This implementation-oriented framing strongly constrained how leaders used evidence, engaged with local participants, and thought about change.

“Education leaders, scholars, and policymakers should do more to involve the people in schools in deciding which problems to solve and to build their capacity to learn how to solve them.”

For education leaders, focusing on implementation seems a rational approach to improvement. The typical work conditions they face in districts and schools do not create an environment that favors problem solving. Education leaders are often handed policies or “best practices” to implement. But many also face frustrations about reform churn (Hess, 2011) and so-called “resistance” to change (Knight, 2009). This suggests reasons to question a reform approach that orients leaders towards deciding “for” people what the problem and solution should be. Education leaders, scholars, and policymakers should do more to involve the people in schools—students, teachers, staff, parents, and community members—in deciding which problems to solve and to build their capacity to learn how to solve them.

These findings suggest that educators’ mindsets about improvement can be shaped heavily by their institutional and organizational environments. My research and experience pose an important challenge to the field of educational change: If we want educators to undertake methods of continuous improvement like improvement science or design-based school improvement, then we have to puzzle over how they can come to develop conducive mindsets for this work while embedded in a typical district environment.

LtC: In your recent work, you investigate how district context (e.g., resources, past accountability experiences, turnover, and district norms) matters in establishing collective learning environments for school improvement. How might your findings help scholars and practitioners better support schools in designing and implementing system-wide change?

EZ: As part of our Californian RPP, I spent a year partnering with one school facing especially challenging conditions (e.g., negative reputation, staff shortages and turnover, serving many students who experience recurrent trauma and marginalization), like what many schools are facing today (Zumpe, 2022b). This was a school that eagerly joined the partnership and wanted to improve. But they faced challenges at the core of their work: daily challenges to reach their students, and as one teacher described it, struggles with “the basics of collaboration.” The school served a very high-poverty community of nearly all students of color. Educators talked of daily challenges to engage students who seemed “defeated.” The faculty describing having a negative reputation of what several members referred to as being seen as a “dumping ground” and having been labeled as “low performing” for years. Unfilled teaching positions and a teacher shortage required the principal and teachers to expend substantial daily effort to cover classes and keep their school running.

I endeavored to learn with educators how the pursuit of improvement becomes possible in this kind of environment. Through participant observation and action research with several work teams, including one that I launched and led, I observed how the chronic experience of adversity meant that their work teams had not been able to develop into trusting, “effective” groups able to solve the complex and vexing problems they faced. Rather, amid a history of turnover, overload, and being told that they were a “dumping ground” school, they were struggling to develop a more foundational capability—what I am calling, collective agency, or a group capability to face up to and work together to address any problems (Zumpe, 2020).

This experience left me wondering how educational policies and school improvement models might attend more to the humanity of educators undertaking complex work amid trying circumstances. High-stakes, standards-based accountability reforms tend to treat enduring problems to educate students amid adversity as “excuses” to be surmounted by pressure, ambitious goals, and threats of consequences. However, in the groups that I partnered with, each new low accountability rating tended to have a devastating impact on collective agency, prompting educators to abandon initiatives underway, turn on each other, and feel hopeless when they felt their efforts to improve were “never enough.”

I think policymakers, scholars, and education leaders need to think more about how to nurture collective agency as a key resource for school improvement. This includes identifying concepts and metrics that allow incremental developmental efforts to become visible and recognized. In challenged schools, reforms might be designed to orient educators towards a focus on simpler problems at the outset, to establish basics of teaming and serve as a foundation for building problem solving capacity over time. Another possibility may be to focus less heavily on solving “problems” and leverage insights from strengths-based organizational development models (Daly & Chrispeels, 2005), such as appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005).

LtC: Educational Change expects those engaged in and with schools, schooling, and school systems to spearhead deep and often difficult transformation. How might those in the field of Educational Change best support these individuals and groups through these processes?

EZ: Currently, school improvement research is quite limited when it comes to understanding organizational development in challenged school contexts. A dominant logic of inquiry developed through the effective schools movement has led to a body of case studies of “improved” or “effective” schools that have accomplished great feats while serving high-poverty communities of color, as well as many other cases of schools deemed “ineffective.” We need to learn much more about what might lay in between. How do schools develop? What kinds of dilemmas and struggles are entailed? My research builds on a handful of studies that have pointed to the importance of recognizing how chronic and cumulative adversity functions as a context for improvement (Mintrop & Charles, 2017; Ordenes, 2018; Payne, 2008). As described above, if we take adversity seriously as a context, we will need to build a better understanding of how to cultivate and sustain schools’ collective agency in the midst of an environment that can shut down agency.

“Policymakers, scholars, and education leaders need to think more about how to nurture collective agency as a key resource for school improvement.”

Such an approach—school development “in the next level of work” (City et al., 2009)—would constitute an important departure from how we have historically conceptualized, measured, and practiced school improvement. Learning how to recognize and sustain emergent agency requires attending to human needs, building trust, and sharing in the risks and joys of solving problems in schools. Design, development, and research in this area would necessitate proximity and action-oriented partnerships.

This has important implications for the kinds of methods and dispositions needed for those who seek to support educational transformation. To date, a major function of educational research has been to identify or design “best practices,” and to study the extent to which educators exhibit or implement these. Establishing standards of practice like this can be helpful. However, all too often, such standards are developed at a distance from educators, and educators have not had a say in constructing them. This sets up a situation in which research can end up describing a desired state that educators do not have the resources to attain. Such research can alienate educators rather than serve them.

That is not to say that educators always necessarily “know best.” I think we need to strive towards more mutuality in how scholars and practitioners share in the burdens and rewards of research and development in education. This has profound implications. Putting research into the service of solving real world problems will call for new relationships and models of knowledge production that allow us to pool our intellectual resources to design learning standards, activities, and materials that are engaging and responsive to educational needs. With this approach, I believe we can also produce knowledge that the field of educational change desperately needs about how development unfolds in complex and challenging environments.

“If the practice of scholarship could not enable the pursuit of change, I was not sure what it was worth.”

To get there, we will all need to learn how to understand each other across institutional contexts and status and power differentials. How might we come to understand each other’s limitations and differences as tied to differing institutional pressures and learning needs, and not as moral failings?

LtC: Where do you perceive the field of Educational Change is going? What excites you about Educational Change now and in the future?

EZ: When I left K-12 teaching practice to begin doctoral study, my initial excitement for scholarly learning waned quickly when I experienced the gut punch of the research-practice gap. Too much of the scholarly research seemed disconnected from the everyday problems and experiences facing educators. Too little of it seemed practically relevant for the pursuit of improvement. It also seemed like many established and successful scholars had too little concern for whether their research could or did influence practice. I encountered a pervasive distaste in the academy for action-oriented research. Walking in the library stacks, I often pictured the kids languishing right at that moment in an under-resourced school and asking, who is all this knowledge for? If the practice of scholarship could not enable the pursuit of change, I was not sure what it was worth.

Fast forward to today, and that situation has substantially changed. A vast new research territory has opened. I am excited about the emergence of a thriving scholarly community working to build a new paradigm of educational research that is improvement-focused (Peurach et al., 2022). I find new hope in scholars who are building new theories and methods for practice-focused knowledge production in the service of solving educational problems (Bryk et al., 2015). This includes other scholars like me who are involved in RPPs, developing new approaches to research that are more collaborative with educators, and working on the puzzle of how to make research more responsive to practice (Cobb et al., 2018; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2016). I am also excited about research emerging from those who study educators’ experiences with using continuous improvement methods (Yurkofsky, 2022) and who study the dynamics of RPPs to help us figure out how to help them emerge, grow, sustain, and succeed (Farrell et al., 2019; Henrick et al., 2017).

I am also excited about the innovations underway in the field of leadership development. Over the past 15 years, the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) has led the transformation of education doctorate programs towards dissertations-in-practice (Perry et al., 2020). Now with over 130 university consortium members (https://www.cpedinitiative.org/), members of CPED commit to a set of principles that emphasize improvement-focused research and social justice. This innovation offers strong promise for producing new forms of knowledge that can guide scholars, policymakers, and educators towards new practices and new structures for a more just educational system.

These new developments hold promise for stronger connections between research and practice—but that is not a foregone conclusion. The pull of old habits and institutional forces could render “new” approaches new in name only. Funders might shy away. Academics and educators might find that the efforts of connecting research and practice outweigh the rewards. But every week, as I read new research and participate in expanding communities of practice in this new space, I become more optimistic that a new paradigm of knowledge production is emerging.

References: 

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press.

City, E. A., Elmore, R. F., Fiarman, S. E., & Teitel, L. (2009). Instructional rounds in education: A network approach to improving teaching and learning. Harvard Education Press.

Cobb, P., Jackson, K., Henrick, E., & Smith, T. M. (2018). Systems for instructional improvement: Creating coherence from the classroom to the district office. Harvard Education Press.

Cohen-Vogel, L., Cannata, M., Rutledge, S. A., & Socol, A. R. (2016). A model of continuous improvement in high schools: A process for research, innovation design, implementation, and scale. Teachers College Record, 118(13), 1-26.

Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. (2005). Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Daly, A. J., & Chrispeels, J. (2005). From problem to possibility: Leadership for implementing and deepening the processes of effective schools. Journal for Effective Schools, 4(1), 7-25.

Farrell, C. C., Harrison, C., & Coburn, C. E. (2019). “What the hell is this, and who the hell are you?” Role and identity negotiation in research-practice partnerships. AERA Open, 5(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419849595

Government Accountability Office [GAO]. (2022). K-12 education: Student population has significantly diversified, but many schools remain divided along racial, ethnic, and economic lines. GAO-22-104737. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104737

Henrick, E. C., Cobb, P., Penuel, W. R., Jackson, K., & Clark, T. (2017). Assessing research practice partnerships: Five dimensions of effectiveness. William T. Grant Foundation.

Hess, F. M. (2011). Spinning wheels: The politics of urban school reform. Brookings Institution Press.

Knight, J. (2009). What can we do about teacher resistance?. Phi Delta Kappan, 90(7), 508 – 513.

Marshall, D. T., Pressley, T., Neugebauer, N. M., & Shannon, D. M. (2022). Why teachers are leaving and what we can do about it. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(1).https://doi.org/10.1177/00317217221123642

Mehta, J. (2013). How paradigms create politics: The transformation of American educational policy, 1980–2001. American Educational Research Journal, 50(2), 285-324

Mintrop, R. (2020). Design-based school improvement: A practical guide for education leaders. Harvard Education Press.

Mintrop, R., & Charles, J. (2017). The formation of teacher work teams under adverse conditions: Towards a more realistic scenario for schools in distress. Journal of Educational Change, 18(1), 49-75.

Mintrop, R., & Zumpe, E. (2019). Solving real-life problems of practice and education leaders’ school improvement mind-set. American Journal of Education, 125(3), 295-344.

Ordenes, M. A. G. (2018). Commitment as struggle: Teachers serving students in the face of socioeconomic adversity [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California.

Payne, C. M. (2008). So much reform, so little change: The persistence of failure in urban schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Perry, J. A., Zambo, D., & Crow, R. (2020). The improvement science dissertation in practice: A guide for faculty, committee members, and their students. Myers Education Press.

Peurach, D. J., Russell, J. L., Cohen-Vogel, L., & Penuel, W. R. (2022). The foundational handbook on improvement research in education. Rowman & Littlefield.

Sommeiller, E., and Price, M. (2018). The new gilded age: Income inequality in the U.S. by state, metropolitan area, and county. Economic Policy Institute.https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-inequality-in-the-u-s-by-state-metropolitan-area-and-county/

The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (2021). A knowledge forum on the EdD. https://www.cpedinitiative.org/

Yurkofsky, M. (2022). From compliance to improvement: How school leaders make sense of institutional and technical demands when implementing a continuous improvement process. Educational Administration Quarterly, 58(2), 300-346.

Zumpe, E. A. (2020). School improvement in the next level of work: Struggling for collective agency in a school facing adversity [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.

Zumpe, E. (2022a). Evidence-based practices in U.S. schools: The California context. In C. Brown & J. R. Malin (Eds.), The handbook of evidence-informed practice in education: Learning from international contexts. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Zumpe, E. (2022b, August 2). Five of the biggest threats today’s K-12 students and educators face don’t involve guns. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/5-of-the-biggest-threats-todays-k-12-students-and-educators-face-dont-involve-guns-182648

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , , ,

Identity, community and leadership: A virtual visit to St. Paul’s Primary School (Scotland) and Hymba Yumba Independent School (Australia)

Posted on December 14, 2022 by | Leave a comment

This week, IEN provides a glimpse of “virtual school visits” to St. Paul’s Primary School in Scotland, and Hymba Yumba Independent School in Australia. This post is the third in a series sharing videos and reflections from a session of the 2022 (virtual) Conference of the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI). The series began with Promoting equity through language access: A virtual visit to Liceo San Nicolas (Chile) and Easton Academy (UK) and Exploring Democratic Student Leadership and Active Citizenship: Virtual Visits to a Kenyan and an Italian school. This post provides each school’s  description of their values and approach, key takeaways of school members from a virtual panel discussion, and the reflections from the coordinator of the virtual school visit. This post was produced by Paul Campbell (Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change). 

St Paul’s Primary School, Glasgow (Scotland)

St. Paul’s Primary School website

St. Paul’s Primary School is a catholic primary school located in Glasgow, Scotland. The school’s virtues are faith, hope and love, with the central virtue being that of love. This is at the core of everything at St Paul’s; it is the basis of all interactions and relationships. The community at St. Paul’s believe that by creating a nurturing environment, where all of the community are welcomed and loved and none are judged, children can exceed their potential. 

“The community at St. Paul’s believe that by creating a nurturing environment, where all of the community are welcomed and loved and none are judged, children can exceed their potential.”

St. Paul’s Primary School is located in the North East of Glasgow and serves a community of 465 children. 385 children are in the primary school (ranging from 5-12 years old in Primary 1 to Primary 7) and 80 children (ranging from 3-5 years old) are in the nursery class. The children in the primary school and nursery class are learning at Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence levels Early, First and Second. Learning for some of the children in the nursery class is supported by the Birth – 3 years old curriculum in order to address identified and emerging barriers to learning.

The school is situated in a busy town, and the school serves an area of high levels of deprivation. 78% of pupils are eligible for Pupil Premium/ Pupil Equity Funding/ Free School Meals which are measures of deprivation.  25% of pupils have an additional support need and 25% of pupils have English as an Additional Language, with 27 languages spoken in the school.

The school has been recognized for sector leading work, with the senior leadership team having engaged in a range of accredited professional learning to support the ongoing work of the school. The school is therefore dynamic, and always looking for ways to improve their research-based pedagogy.  The school’s vision is to have 100% of pupils reading (91% of the 2020-21 Primary 7 cohort left the school being able to read). 

A virtual visit to St. Paul’s Primary School

The school has very high expectations for pupils; and everyone in the school community shares these standards including the children themselves. Over the past nine years the headteacher has been in the post, she has purposefully built a whole community of learners: children, staff and parents. A focus has been on empowering staff and children to lead change in school, using a number of strategies to develop their voices.

Staff and children are part of the school’s quality assurance procedures. Parents have also been involved in this empowerment agenda, gaining qualifications in parenting and food hygiene, and leading our successful Plot to Plate Initiative (more information can be found on the school’s website).

The school commenced their Children’s Rights journey 7 years ago and recently became the only state primary school in Glasgow to gain a UNICEF Rights Respecting School Gold Award. The children are fully involved in the running of the school; they drive forward change through the school improvement plan and through the various Pupil Voice Committees in the school. The children have a strong belief and drive to make the world a better place and this can be seen in their many campaigns to improve the local school environment, trying to create a more sustainable school and world and writing to the Scottish Government. The school’s strategies for Health and Wellbeing focus on building emotional resilience and the children themselves have driven the change from what was the Promoting Positive Behaviour Policy to a Relationship Policy; highlighting a shift in thinking, culture and practice.

Hymba Yumba Independent School, Queensland (Australia)

Hymba Yumba Independent School website

Hymba Yumba Independent School (HYIS) is founded and proudly based in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture. The school is a Prep – Year 12 majority Indigenous school, founded in 2011 by Uncle Albert Holt and has been built upon the traditions of Indigenous culture, spirituality and identity. Situated in Springfield, Queensland on the traditional land of the Jagera, Yuggera and Ugarapul people, the name of the school is from the Bidjara language group and was gifted to the school by founder, Uncle Albert Holt. Hymba means the development of skills in listening, reflecting, evaluating and planning and Yumba is the building and support for learning; the building of school and classroom routines and the building of community. The excellence in teaching and learning stems from a 21st century cultural and pedagogical approach, focused upon the whole jarjum (child) and his/her journey in education.

“Hymba means the development of skills in listening, reflecting, evaluating and planning and Yumba is the building and support for learning; the building of school and classroom routines and the building of community.”

HYIS is developing not only a futuristic approach to education, but also developing and building 21st century facilities to create an environment that is engaging and stimulating to create the strongest outcomes for their jarjums. By the end of Year 12, their jarjums will be in a career pathway that is either ‘learning or earning’ and will be equipped with real life experience and skills. The vast opportunities provided at Hymba Yumba are supported by passionate teachers and a strong network of partners with tertiary and vocational organisations. Although teaching excellence is at the forefront of HYIS’ work, they focus on the jarjum as a whole and therefore provide multiple wellbeing and sports programs to support the jarjums in their education journey. This is in recognition of how good mental and physical health is just as important as academic education in today’s society. Upon graduation, jarjums will proudly be able to lead in both worlds equipped with skills, experience, education, cultural knowledge and strength. The school first opened its doors with only 50 students and 8 staff members, and today has over 280 students and 40 staff making up the school community.

A virtual visit to Hymba Yumba Independent School

Key Lessons: Reimagining the intersection of practice, policy and research

This virtual school visit, made possible through the generosity and community spirit of the schools involved, enabled a rich dialogue around the nature of school and community leadership, and the contextual variation that emerges in understanding this within a global context. With the emphasis on leadership, community, and the development of the whole child evident in both schools, participants in the school visit discussed and highlighted the idea that ‘nothing is too much’ in trying to achieve what is needed to nurture and support the development of the ‘whole child’.

‘Nothing is too much’ in trying to achieve what is needed to nurture and support the development of the ‘whole child’.

The role of leadership, and particularly that of the Principal was highlighted in relation to the possibilities for school improvement. The learning focus, and the values and ideas that inform the leadership they exercise within their communities was viewed by participants as being key to the successes shared within the two communities, and with application beyond. Importantly, as both schools and participants highlighted, the role of the whole learning community coming to understand, appreciate and continue to build an understanding of the students and communities they work with is central to responsive practices, and priorities or approaches to improvement.

Participants reflected that what the schools illustrated was the importance of professional community, and organizational learning, sustaining the passion and enthusiasm for the community and the schools’ mission and values, and the centrality of relationships in achieving this.

More broadly, the role of leadership, community and the development of the whole child and the sharing of this through a forum like the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) highlights the scope and possibility to be imagining and reimagining the intersection of practice, policy and research. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated even further the possibilities and potential of collaboration within and across systems. As national and international socio-political contexts continue to change, these school communities and the conversations that represented ideas and experiences from across the globe (Hong Kong, Morocco, Sweden, Australia, Scotland, the United States, and Qatar), highlight the role education and schooling can play in supporting communities, and society more broadly. This has required creativity, bravery, and new modes, means and outputs of thinking as to the role and nature of schooling in uncertain times.

What these virtual school visits have also highlighted is the need for sustained, critically reflective dialogue and analysis of the structures, mechanisms, tools, and approaches that not only support school effectiveness and improvement, but enable the learning, growth, development, and understanding of the young people we work with in school communities. Through the intentional development of shared and inclusive forums to share ideas, reflect on experiences, and imagine the future, we can collectively contribute to and enhance the positive experiences and outcomes of young people in school systems across the globe.

Note on ICSEI Virtual School Visits: The International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) held its 35th annual congress online in January 2022 due to the pandemic. Over many years of face-to-face conferences, participants have had the unique opportunity to visit local schools to gain first-hand experience with the host country’s education system, share ideas and insights from one system to another, and act as a catalyst for discussion and debate between colleagues from different countries during and after the visits. The Virtual School Visits sought to keep that purpose, with the added advantage of not being restricted to one host country, increasing the richness and diversity of insight, discussion, and collaboration beyond what was possible at a face-to-face congress. ICSEI 2023 will be in Chile in January 2023 and schools’ visits will again be held virtually. For more information: https://2023.icsei.net and https://2023.icsei.net/school-visits/

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , , ,

What’s changing in classrooms and schools right now? (Part 2) Micro-innovations supported by private and public sources

Posted on December 7, 2022 by | Leave a comment

In the second post of a two-part series, Dulce Rivera Osorio explores what’s changing in schools by scanning news articles that report on educational “micro-innovations” developing by in the US and internationally by non-profit organizations, private companies, and states and education systems. In Part 1, Thomas Hatch introduced micro-innovations and then Rivera shared a number of examples of micro-innovations being made in instruction or school/district operations that have been described in media articles from the US. To learn more about  the numerous proposals to change schools and “reimagine education” post-COVID, read IEN’s previous post: Is anything changing in US schools post-pandemic? Possibilities for rethinking time, place and supports for well-being.

In addition to changes in structures, resources, and practices at the classroom and school/district level, news articles have discussed a variety of micro-innovations that have been introduced by nonprofits and private companies in the US. To give a sense of the variety of initiatives, companies like Highland Electric Fleets and Thomas Built Buses have worked with school districts to cover the upfront costs involved in shifting from conventional buses to electric buses (US schools can subscribe to an electric school bus fleet at prices that beat diesel).

US schools can subscribe to an electric school bus fleet at prices that beat diesel, Canary Media

Airbnb, working in partnership with the National Education Association, has developed an adaptation to their hosting approach that provides extra income to teachers based in the US who share their homes through Airbnb (NEA, Airbnb partnership aims to help teachers supplement income). Nonprofits like the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Clubs have provided before and after-school programs for some time, but during the school closures of the pandemic they helped provide child care, academic support and access to recreational and arts activities by implementing socially distanced “learning camps” in some parts of the country (New Players Fill Child-Care Gap as Schools Go Remote). The Boys and Girls Clubs have also been actively developing new programs to support career and workforce learning.  As the The Hechinger Report describes, clubs in Indiana, Washington State, and Montana have been working with Transfr, a technology start-up, to use virtual reality to develop “immersive” career and workforce training simulations for manufacturing, carpentry, public safety, hospitality and automotive industries (Future of learning with virtual reality).

State and national education systems have also been developing responses to the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the school closures that rely on a variety of new structures and programs. Alaska is creating its own digital content delivery system to aid rural communities and areas with poor internet connectivity (From Alaska Schools Creating Digital Networks to Aid Remote Learning to a Homework Freeze in Texas to Limit Screen Time, 9 Ways States Are Aiding Schools Amid COVID-19). Texas is implementing a state-wide telemedicine program so that school children can access therapists in school (State telemedicine program allows Texas children to see therapists at schools).

State telemedicine program allows Texas children to see therapists at schools, KUT 90.5

New policies and changes in policies are also encouraging districts and schools to develop new resources and mechanisms to support teachers and schools. In California, lawmakers made innovative changes in zoning policies that allow school districts to build staff housing on any property the district owns without requiring zoning changes from city or county officials (California removes hurdles to building teacher housing). At the national level in the US, federal agencies like the EPA are providing funding for states to take advantage of new technologies and developments that can both save schools money and support the environment (EPA nearly doubles funding to districts for clean school bus rebates). The passage of a $430 trillion spending package designed to address the global climate crisis includes a host of provisions that provide creative ways schools and districts can save money and support the planet. As a new guide from the Aspen Institute and the World Resources Institute (K12 Education and Climate Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act) reports, districts can now get tax credits to support energy-reducing innovations in the form “direct pay” – cash payments to the district instead of through credits claimed by a third party that made the whole process problematic (Quick Hacks: How Schools Can Cut Costs and Help the Environment).

Quick Hacks: How Schools Can Cut Costs and Help the Environment, Education Week

Outside the US, NGO’s, companies, and education systems are also looking for new ways to address issues as varied as a shortage of bus drivers, “remote learning,” and mother-tongue language instruction. In Australia and New Zealand, GoKid, a carpooling app, hopes to aid the shortage of school bus drivers by making carpooling more accessible and easier for parents (GoKid partners to address school transportation crisis). The app helps parents to find carpool partners in a school or school district by providing a rough location map of nearby families and suggesting optimized routes.

In India, as a recent Brookings report explains, the development of young mothers’ groups created new ways to support learning at home during school closures. With the support of the Pratham Education Foundation, groups of 4 – 6 mothers met weekly or fortnightly to share experiences and access “idea cards” sent via WhatsApp containing games, activities, and recipes. For children in grades three to six, youth volunteers led small groups of children in “mini learning camps” for one to two hours per day using simple instructional activities and materials made by the children. In Bangladesh, BRAC dealt with the school closures by creating “phone schools.” In these “schools,” locally-recruited and trained teachers conducted virtual classes in group calls with three to four children. BRAC reported that those calls reached over 180,000 students in more than 7,000 schools (The power of community as a catalyst to tackle disrupted learning).

With emerging evidence supporting the expansion of mother tongue instruction, South Africa has instituted policies to support mother tongue instruction in grades 1, 2, and 3, but now the Eastern Cape education department allows high school students who are taking the matric exams to answer using their home language (Policy options to crack the mother tongue versus English riddle in South African schools). That kind of development can encourage schools to offer mother-tongue instruction through grade 12.  As provincial education official Fundile Gade put it, “China, Singapore and Germany use their own languages. English is a secondary language, like other languages, so it can’t be given preference as if pupils can’t learn and develop outside of English (Matric pupils to write exams in isiXhosa and Sotho at Eastern Cape schools).

Policy options to crack the mother tongue versus English riddle in South African schools, The Conversation

US schools can subscribe to an electric school bus fleet at prices that beat diesel, Canary Media

NEA, Airbnb partnership aims to help teachers supplement income, K-12 Dive

New Players Fill Child-Care Gap as Schools Go Remote, Education Week

Future of learning with virtual reality, Hechinger Report

From Alaska Schools Creating Digital Networks to Aid Remote Learning to a Homework Freeze in Texas to Limit Screen Time, 9 Ways States Are Aiding Schools Amid COVID-19, The 74

State telemedicine program allows Texas children to see therapists at schools, KUT 90.5

California removes hurdles to building teacher housing, EdSource

K12 Education and Climate Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, World Resources Institute

EPA nearly doubles funding to districts for clean school bus rebates, K-12 Dive

Quick Hacks: How Schools Can Cut Costs and Help the Environment, Education Week

GoKid partners to address school transportation crisis, Benzinga

The power of community as a catalyst to tackle disrupted learning, Brookings

Policy options to crack the mother tongue versus English riddle in South African schools, The Conversation

Matric pupils to write exams in isiXhosa and Sotho at Eastern Cape schools, Times Live

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , ,

Using Education Research to Disrupt Institutionalized Forms of Discrimination: A conversation with Whitneé L. Garrett-Walker

Posted on November 30, 2022 by | Leave a comment

In this month’s Lead the Change interview Whitneé L. Garrett-Walker highlights challenges and opportunities for students and educators to work toward fostering systemic equity in schools through an understanding of the historical contexts of modern policy. Whitneé is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Social Diversity at the Ontario institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Whitneé is a Black, Indigenous (enrolled member of Natchitoches Tribe of Louisiana) and Queer woman from the San Francisco Bay Area. 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.

Lead the Change (LtC): The 2023 AERA theme is “Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth” and charges researchers and practitioners with creating and using education research to disrupt institutionalized forms of discrimination. The call urges scholars to challenge traditional methods of inquiry in order to create increasingly useful, responsive, and equity-oriented research that can be used by schools to develop informed policies and practices to better support students. What specific responsibility do educational change scholars have in this space? What steps are you taking to heed this call?

Whitnee L Garrett-Walker (WLGW): I think educational change scholars have a responsibility to be co-conspirators for the purposes of equity and social justice. We do not need more of the same kinds of research on change management, school transformation, and transformational leadership occurring in institutions that primarily serve historically marginalized youth and communities. We have enough research on traditional notions of leadership that are centered in white, heteronormative, ableist values. We need to see more research and intentionally diverse collaborations (diversity within identities as well as the folx leading/researching various educational contexts) to continue conversations of why we need critical leadership in our field to push social justice movements forward. This looks like intentional collaboration to change the field of educational change and our expectations of what we hope to give and receive from it as means to better build our collective future. For example, we need more research on the importance and responsibility of solidarity across our various identities. I talk more about that with some amazing colleagues and friends here: UnLeading Podcast: Leading Through Solidarities.

In terms of my own research, I come to this work as a former teacher, instructional coach, and school leader of 14 years in San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco, California. My research is deeply informed by my practice of being a Black, Indigenous (Natchitoches Tribe of Louisiana) and queer woman working in urban public schools. Given this, my research explores the experiences of racialized and gendered leaders and the ways in which they are defining their experiences, including their challenges, promise, and the potential of what is possible within the innovation of their leadership as well as their healing. I see my research as grounded in the ancestral, historical, and political context and understanding of what educational leadership looks like for Black, Indigenous women. I gather Black and Indigenous women and seek to learn from them because they are me, and I am them. I remain curious about their experiences as well as opportunities for solidarity as a model of what is possible for transforming the field of education, broadly. Their leadership, legacy of resistance, and critical hope are not just innovative, but pedagogical tools. My work is deeply connected to this call for the simple fact that my research subverts what has been and demands that we turn our eyes to what is possible.

LtC: You write about your experiences as a mother, a Black and Indigenous woman, a school leader, and a scholar, offering insights into the challenges and joys in balancing these identities, especially during global crises. What are some of the major lessons the field of Educational Change can learn from your work and experience?

WLGW: As folx read my work, my hope is that they learn to humanize Black and Indigenous women and our experiences both in the world and in our work. We are whole people who are full of love, joy and the resistance of our ancestors shines through us and within our work inside and outside of schools/the academy. To tell our stories takes courage, as well as hope; not that someone will find us worthy, but so folx know that we exist as more than we’ve been caricatured to be. I think our SIG and field of educational change can learn much from my work and from the work of amazing colleagues and scholars before me. My hope is that folx gain more information and clarity about the experiences of historically and multiply marginalized practitioners to shift how we conduct research, engage with policy, lead the way on policy, and finally prepare new practitioners for the field. I do this by approaching my work from the space of movement-building, as opposed to the space of conducting research for the sake of conducting research. I conduct research for the sake of collective liberation from the harmful ways that whiteness, capitalism and other systems and structures of oppression have adversely impacted how we think about and engage with each other and educational leadership. My hope is that my colleagues and those who read my work will do the same.

LtC: In your work investigating the experiences of Black women in leadership, you use critical theories to guide your analysis. How might your findings help scholars and practitioners envision and implement a more just and inclusive education system for faculty, staff, students, and communities?

WLGW: Well, I think particularly through critical hope. In my dissertation study, I found that Black women continue to engage a legacy of resistance that is grounded in their desire to lead from a space that activates their ancestral legacy of resistance. Critical hope is what fuels their desire to transform learning outcomes for historically and multiply marginalized youth and keeps them in this work and to continue this work, they must engage in healing as ongoing. So much can be learned from these findings, regardless of your place in an educational institution. I think it is so powerful to read and empathize with people who do not look like you (or experience the world as you do) because it begins an important process of critical self-reflection, transforming your behavior, and building connections to rebuild the world as we know it.

LtC: Educational Change expects those engaged in and with schools, schooling, and school systems to spearhead deep and often difficult transformation. How might those in the field of Educational Change best support these individuals and groups through these processes?

WLGW: It’s important to read, elevate, and center work that intentionally engages deeply in conversations that we need to have. For example, if you are a white scholar who is engaged in the work of educational change, who are you collaborating with? Who are you citing? How are these collaborations explicitly allowing for shifts in practice? How are you bringing these diverse authors and perspectives into your classroom? Another way to support the collective work toward equity is through directly incorporating the innovative scholarship of emerging scholars and practitioners who are multiply marginalized.  Most times, our work is not seen by those in our field without a tweet or a newsletter such as this. Educational change as a SIG and the field as a whole must center scholarship from multiply marginalized and historically marginalized peoples to transform how we think about each other and create meaningful opportunities for solidarity.

“My research subverts what has been and demands that we turn our eyes to what is possible.”

LtC: Where do you perceive the field of Educational Change is going? What excites you about Educational Change now and in the future?

WLGW: I believe that our field is moving entirely too slowly in reference to the way we think/write and conduct scholarship about educational change. We are living during a powerful series of moments where everyone is clearly aware of how systems and structures of oppression are alive and well. COVID-19 has also shaped the way we’re engaging and thinking about the future of the public education system. There aren’t any additional excuses that can be provided as to why the harmful behavior of some continues to go unchecked or why we keep conducting research and publishing scholarly work that highlights inappropriate ways of how we write about and engage with certain populations. Educational Change as a field is in a special place where we have the power to shift language, behavior, and policy, and this is what excites me most about the future of our field and our SIG.

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Giving Thanks for Education Around the World 2022

Posted on November 23, 2022 by | Leave a comment

Every year, during the week of Thanksgiving in the US, IEN highlights opportunities to support some of the organizations that we have featured that are making a difference in children’s lives and in their educational opportunities. This year, we also want to emphasize the drastic needs to support children who are suffering from war, famine, natural disasters, climate change, and disrupted education, and to highlight ways to donate to some of the organizations that are working to respond to those crises, particularly in places like Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and East Africa.

Over 27 million children at risk as devastating floods set records across the world, Unicef

How women and girls vulnerable to climate change are fighting back, Independent

Inside Somali hospitals where climate change-induced hunger is killing children, CBSMornings

To Keep The Trauma At Bay, Ukrainian Refugee Children Are Given More Time To Play, Radio Free Europe

In Afghanistan, a drive to continue education – and confront the Taliban, The New Humanitarian

Take action to help those affected by catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, Obama Foundation

Take Action to Protect Children from the Impacts of Climate Change, Unicef

Help save children in Somalia, Save the Children

How To Donate To Ukraine Relief Efforts, Forbes

Afghanistan is the only country in the world that forbids girls to go school: Donate, Malala Fund

Fount For Nations

Donate Here

From: Building equal learning opportunities for differently-abled children in Malawi: An interview with Patience Mkandawire on the evolution of Fount for Nations

IkamvaYouth (South Africa)

Donate Here

Kliptown Youth Program (South Africa)

Donate Here

The Citizens Foundation (Pakistan)

Donate Here

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , , , , , ,

What’s changing in classrooms and schools right now? Micro-innovations for teaching, learning and education (Part 1)

Posted on November 18, 2022 by | Leave a comment

In this two-part series, Dulce Rivera Osorio explores what’s changing in schools by scanning  news articles that report on “micro-innovations” that teachers, schools and educational organizations are making to improve their educational structures and practices. In Part 1, Thomas Hatch introduces micro-innovations and then Rivera shares a number of examples of micro-innovations being made in instruction or school/district operations that have been described in media articles from the US. Part 2 will describe the micro-innovations at the state level; those being made by companies and nonprofits; and some examples from outside the US. To read more on the numerous proposals to change schools and “reimagine education” post-COVID, read IEN’s previous post: Is anything changing in US schools post-pandemic? Possibilities for rethinking time, place and supports for well-being.

Schools are changing, but those changes are often more subtle and more context-specific than many ambitious reform efforts hope. These smaller changes can be considered micro-innovations: adaptations and inventions new to the contexts in which they are developed. Micro-innovations include those aimed to help specific groups of students learn key concepts for particular disciplines (like a card game and app from Singapore that helps high school students learn key terms for introductory chemistry); an “activity-based pedagogy” from Second Chance that helps out-of-school students in Ethiopia and Liberia catch up to their peers in elementary schools; and the development of a system of vans to provide safe transportation to support the all-female staff central to the success of the schools created by the Citizen’s Foundation in Pakistan. Rather than hoping for some “disruptive innovation” or general approach to educational reform that will magically sweep across schools and education systems, a focus on micro-innovations highlights specific, concrete improvements that can be made right now to develop an infrastructure for more equitable and more powerful learning (for more examples, see “What can change in schools after the pandemic?”.

“Rather than hoping for some “disruptive innovation” or general approach to educational reform that will magically sweep across schools and education systems, a focus on micro-innovations highlights specific, concrete improvements that can be made right now to develop an infrastructure for more equitable and more powerful learning”

What counts as a micro-innovation? Micro-innovations include concrete and visible changes in the structures, practices, and resources of schools and other educational organizations that have the potential to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of educational opportunities in particular contexts. As they are designed to respond to the constraints and opportunities in specific situations and settings, they should not be expected to be replicated across all contexts. However, they may be adapted in some related contexts, and they can help educators envision what might work in their own settings to address critical problems they may be facing.

– Thomas Hatch

Educational micro-innovations in the news

Along with the cascade of news about “learning loss” and the challenges of education today, over the past year, news and research in the US have also described a variety of examples of micro-innovations that have been developed at the classroom, school and district levels in the US. At the classroom level, articles have highlighted how teachers set a positive tone for the day by developing innovative ways of greeting students at their classroom doors (Positive Greetings at the Door: Evaluation of a Low-Cost, High-Yield Proactive Classroom Management Strategy) and how teachers craft questions to help students develop their vocabulary, particularly of scientific terms and concepts (How to Support Vocabulary Building in Science Classes). Research has also pointed to specific ways teachers can design and organize their classrooms including ways that even “symbolic features” of classrooms such as wall décor can influence student learning and sense of belonging in the classroom, “with far-reaching consequences for students’ educational choices and achievement” (Designing Classrooms to Maximize Student Achievement).

How to Support Vocabulary Building in Science Classes, Edutopia

Schools are also showing their inventiveness in tackling the challenges that their students and families are facing. In Massachusetts, staff members in one school created ways to support the transition from hospital to classroom for students struggling with mental health (School mental health program eases transition from hospital to classroom). In California, staff members at a school took on a critical need for housing in their community by creating a homeless shelter to support some of their students and their families (A school created a homeless shelter in the gym and it paid off in the classroom). According to Maribel Chávez, a first grade teacher at the school, quoted in the Hechinger Report, “If the child is not stable, that’s a barrier to their education, so that’s why we felt like as an educational institution, we had a mandate.”

Educators are also implementing a variety of micro-innovations at the district level to tackle challenges encompassing issues like bussing, translation between teachers and non-English speaking parents, and mental health. For example, districts in Boston, Indiana, and Maine are finding ways to use electric buses and scanning technologies to save costs, support the environment and increase safety (Boston to replace school buses with electric ones by 2030; Vans, Transit Passes & Changes to State Law: How Bus Driver Shortages & Soaring Costs Spurred Innovations in Getting Indianapolis Students to Class, Central Maine school districts turning to emerging bus scanning technology to address safety, driver shortages).

Vans, Transit Passes & Changes to State Law: How Bus Driver Shortages & Soaring Costs Spurred Innovations in Getting Indianapolis Students to Class, The74

The Oakland school district invested about $40,000 to use the TalkingPoints translation app to communicate with parents who do not speak English (Translating a quarter of a million text messages for families). As a district English language coordinator described it, “Teachers love it and the families absolutely love it. They tell me it’s made a huge difference. Before, they felt hopeless at times because they couldn’t communicate with teachers or administration.”

Translating a quarter of a million text messages for families, The Hechinger Report

Four districts in Iowa are also testing a new tele health platform, Classroom Clinic, developed by a psychiatric nurse practitioner, with a focus on providing services to rural areas of the state (Iowa nurse creates virtual mental health service with focus on rural schools).

Micro-innovations at the classroom level

Positive Greetings at the Door: Evaluation of a Low-Cost, High-Yield Proactive Classroom Management Strategy, Sage Journals

How to Support Vocabulary Building in Science Classes, Edutopia

Designing Classrooms to Maximize Student Achievement, Sage Journals 

SXSW EDU Launch Winner Our Worlds Bringing Native American Culture to Life Through Mobile-Based Immersive Reality, The 74

Micro-innovations at the School Level 

A school created a homeless shelter in the gym and it paid off in the classroom, The Hechinger Report 

School mental health program eases transition from hospital to classroom, New England Public Media

Trying to give students in low-wage majors some extra skills they can cash in on, The Hechinger Report

What COVID-Era Learning Looks Like in 144 Innovative Schools Around the Country, The 74

How One School Is Using House Calls to Keep Kids Learning During the Pandemic, The 74

For these six schools, pandemic-era innovation demanded “know thyself, CRPE

Rural Schools Have Battled Bad Internet, Low Attendance and Academic Decline Through the Pandemic. Now the Push Is On to Return Students to Classrooms — Safely, The 74

Micro-innovations at the District Level 

Translating a quarter of a million text messages for families, The Hechinger Report 

Boston to replace school buses with electric ones by 2030, AP News

Central Maine school districts turning to emerging bus scanning technology to address safety, driver shortages, Portland Press Herald

Vans, Transit Passes & Changes to State Law: How Bus Driver Shortages & Soaring Costs Spurred Innovations in Getting Indianapolis Students to Class, The 74

Study of 6 ‘Grow Your Own’ Teacher Prep Programs Shows How They Can Improve the Diversity of the Workforce, The 74

Using tech and circuit riding to beat the pandemic, New Mexico in Depth

How a Diverse School District Is Using a Strategy Usually Reserved for ‘Gifted’ Students to Help Everyone Overcome COVID Learning Loss, The 74

California schools press ‘play’ on esports leagues during pandemic, EdSource

3 summer program strategies to address learning loss, support emotional health, K-12 Dive

Iowa nurse creates virtual mental health service with focus on rural schools, Iowa City Press-Citizen

‘More than a warm body’: Schools try long-term solutions to substitute teacher shortage, The Hechinger Report

– Dulce Rivera Osorio

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , ,

Education Innovations Around the World: The HundrED Global Collection for 2023

Posted on November 9, 2022 by | Leave a comment

This week’s post shares highlights from the HundrED Global Collection for 2023.  This year’s collection includes innovations that emphasize teacher professional development, the development of skills for the 21st century, student mental health and wellbeing, as well as student agency and educational equity. The report was announced at the HundrED Innovation Summit 2022 where guest speakers also highlighted resilience, the role of creativity in educational futures, and innovations to bridge gaps through education.

What kinds of educational innovations are taking off? Where can they be found? These are two of the questions that HundrED seeks to answer with their yearly collection of education innovations from all around the world. Since 2016, HundrED has been curating the annual collection in order to increase the recognition and visibility of educators working to spread child-centered, personalized, and passion-based educational initiatives that complement traditional forms of schooling. This year’s innovations address a variety of different goals to support teacher professional development and skills acquisition, recognizing the role of teachers in creating classroom environments, introducing new technology, and adapting methodological approaches; developing “soft skills” in social emotional learning, entrepreneurship, and global citizenship education to address the gap between traditional schooling and the demands of a rapidly changing world; fostering student agency while addressing mental health and wellbeing in a post-pandemic education landscape; and addressing equity in education, with a focus on gender, special needs, Indigenous education, and education for marginalized communities. 

HundrED Global Education Report: 2023

The innovations came from 54 countries around the world; 67.5% were from the Global South, while 34.3% were from the Global North.

HundrED’s team of 188 leaders, educators, academics, and funders evaluated 3,488 programs for their final selection. Programs that were highlighted in this year’s report were selected on the basis of scalability, impact, ability to create systems change, and measurability. The 100 innovations included Tec.la, acSELerate, Cybersmart Africa, Girl Rising, In their shoes, Masahati Children’s Club, opEPA, and Kidogo.

Tec.la, Argentina 

Tec.la trains teachers from diverse backgrounds and locations in Latin America to empower students with digital skills to meet the demands and opportunities of the 21st century. Since its founding in 2018, Tec.la has spread to 5 countries and reached over 2000 trainers through more than 100 workshops.

acSELerate, India

AcSELerate was founded in 2016 to create lasting change in social and emotional learning (SEL) processes to supplement traditional education practices. AcSELerate approaches SEL holistically by engaging parents, teachers, and students in its programs to improve school and home environments. The organization currently serves over 175,000 students, teachers, and parents within India.

CyberSmart Africa, Senegal

CyberSmart Africa creates innovative ways of engaging students who attend school without electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa. It works to ensure content and instruction are up to date by supporting learners online and developing the professional networks of teachers. Established in 2008, the platform has over 1.25 million users throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

Girl Rising, United States

Girl Rising creates videos to expose the barriers that girls face around the world due to poverty, gender violence, child marriage, and trafficking. The organization aims to illuminate what can happen when these barriers are dismantled and young people realize their capacities to create change. Founded in 2013, Girl Rising reaches 500,000 children in 144 countries across the world.

In Their Shoes, Spain

Since its founding in 2017, In Their Shoes had worked to prevent violence and instill emotional literacy in students through theater programs. These programs aim to make students aware of their own emotions and the emotions of others as well with the hope of promoting coexistence and ending bullying. In Their Shoes currently operates in Spain and Morocco, reaching 20,000 students. 

Masahati Children’s Club, Jordan

Masahati Student Club is an after-school program that aims to foster well being in humanitarian contexts and build cohesive societies through education. The programs use sports, arts, and civils to foster inclusive and protective practices that support community development and quality education. Established in 2016, Masahati Children’s Club reaches 23,300 students in Jordan.

OpEPA, Columbia

OpEPA uses a nature-based approach to activate holistic learning in students. The programs combine academic, social, emotional, and experiential learning through an approach that allows students to see the interconnected nature of their relationship to the earth. OpEPA has reached over 130,000 users since its founding in 2018. It operates in Colombia, the United States, and Chile. 

Kidogo, Kenya

Kidogo supports female entrepreneurs in Africa’s low-income communities to create innovative approaches to affordable early childhood education programs. Through Kidogo’s support, women are able to create micro-businesses to solve problems that directly impact early childhood education their communities. Established in 2015, Kidogo reaches 15,000 users in Kenya. 

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , ,

Exploring Democratic Student Leadership and Active Citizenship: Virtual Visits to a Kenyan and an Italian school

Posted on November 2, 2022 by | Leave a comment

This week, IEN goes inside schools in Kenya and Italy as part of a series of posts based on the “virtual school visits” offered as part of the 2022 (virtual) Conference of the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI). This post was produced by Sara Romiti, a Senior Researcher at INVALSI (National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education and Training System) in Rome and Kristina Westlund a PhD Student at Kristianstad University. During the ICSEI conference session discussing the virtual visits, they hosted Stephen Derwent Partington and Mutheu Kasanga, School Principal and Board member at Lukenya schools in Kenya and Giacomo La Montagna and Flavia Passi, School Principal and primary school teacher at Istituto Comprensivo Boville Ernica, Italy . This is the second post  in a series that began with Promoting equity through language access: A virtual visit to Liceo San Nicolas (Chile) and Easton Academy (UK).

What does democratic student leadership look like in a Kenyan school? What does support for active citizenship look in an Italian school? And how are they related? These are just some of the questions raised by virtual visits to the Lukenya Academy British Curriculum School in Kenya and the Istituto Comprensivo Boville Ernica in Italy.

Lukenya Academy British Curriculum School, Kenya

A virtual visit Lukenya Academy British Curriculum School

Situated in Machakos County, Kenya, Lukenya Academy British Curriculum School is an international-system school that offers the IGCSE qualification. In their presentation, Lukenya schools takes pride in its deliberate ‘Uniquenesses’ in relation to other Kenyan schools:

  • They are a mixed-gender boarding school, which is quite rare in the country, and particularly notable in a clearly patriarchal society. 
  • They explicitly seek to admit mixed ability students, unlike many private schools in Kenya, which are highly selective.  Nonetheless, they have won several national prizes including in a  Great places to School Competition, a competition for all private secondary schools. They note they won because of their academic performance and “value added” (the difference in performance between a pupil’s arrival and their graduation from Lukenya) but also point out they are “deliberately mixed ability and concentrate on helping every child, regardless of intake grades.”
  • They take an entirely democratic approach to student governance – pupils vote for their leaders who, through consultation, work to shape all aspects of school life from co-curriculars to academics.

The video created by Lukenya schools illustrates several of the school’s characteristics, including highlighting student voices and the roles of students in leadership and organization.

Students’ Council meeting at Lukenya schools (See time signature 0.57)

“It’s been challenging to run and coordinate a school of mixed students, both boys and girls, which is pretty rare in Kenya. However, leadership has been very fun.
We believe in democracy; we believe in listening to people’s opinions. We don’t believe in making rules that other ones follow” – Shawn Omondi, student council leader

Israel Polar and Esline Osano, co-curricular prefects present sports and other co-curricular activities at Lukenya schools. They are wearing the sport uniform for boys and girls (See time signature 6:09)

The engagement of students in arranging activities at Lukenya provides another striking example of student leadership. These activities include a wide range of sports and other co-curricular (e.g. extracurricular) activities like football for both boys and girls, basketball, swimming, cooking club, drama club, and environmental club.

After watching the video, the Italian professionals asked their Kenyan colleagues an interesting question: how do you reconcile the British curriculum with your traditional culture? Board member Mutheu Kasanga replied:

“The law does require that all the schools, from any curriculum, teach Civics and Local History. In addition, the British curriculum allows us to use what is available locally. For instance, when we are teaching a subject like business studies, all the key studies are local. So, in Lukenya we are using the local business around the school, to teach the students who come from these communities how to apply these international concepts into the local business.

Kenya is an English-speaking country, so we don’t have particular problems with English language, even though as an international school we do receive students from other countries, especially in the East African region, so we get French speakers as well and other languages.

In our school we are able to even go an extra mile and bring in aspects of our culture. Culture in Kenya is difficult, we have many small cultures within the country. Everybody speaks at least three languages in Kenya, along with English and Swahili there is another language. So, bringing “Kenyanness” into that, is made easier by the fact that the curriculum allows us to bring these elements within the curriculum: local history and using the local areas to bring all the projects that we require to bolster the curriculum.”

Istituto Comprensivo Boville Ernica, Italy

Boville Ernica is a small town in the centre of Italy, about 90 km from Rome. The Istituto Comprensivo there includes three school levels: preschool, primary and secondary school. Some of the keywords selected by the school to introduce itself are taking care of each other and promoting active citizenship. As principal Giacomo La Montagna and teacher Flavia Passi described it: “Taking Care means for us investing in time and space to achieve quality in social relationships in order to increase wellbeing and social exchanges and to improve learning. Teaching how to take care of each other and of our home planet is our challenge to build a better future. The strategical identity criterion of the Institute is the promotion of Active Citizenship.”

“Teaching how to take care of each other and of our home planet is our challenge to build a better future.” – Flavia Passi

A virtual visit at Istituto Comprensivo Boville Ernica

The video presentation emphasizes these values, illustrating  many “special events” organized during the school year such as the International day for the elimination of violence against women, the Global day for climate action, and the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Some of the issues that the school is fighting for are deeply felt problems in Italian society, such as mafia culture or gender-based violence.

International day for the elimination of violence against women, student works, IC Boville Ernica
Chess lessons to improve logical thinking, concentration, and memory at IC Boville Ernica
Secondary school orchestra, IC Boville Ernica

After watching the video, many of the participants in the ICSEI session wondered how the school manages to combine so many extracurricular activities with the curricular programs of the different subjects. Flavia Passi explained that a new curricular reform In Italy has introduced Civic Education as a subject that is taught by every teacher in their lessons:

“Each subject contributes to these important issues. For instance, environmental education and sustainability, some of the goals of the 2030 Agenda, are strictly connected to Science or Geography. Education to legality, the knowledge of political, social and economic organization, individual rights, are not only the principles on which our constitutional law is based, but they are related to historical and literary debates. Civic education is based on three main themes: the knowledge of the Italian Republican Constitution, Sustainable Development, and Digital Citizenship. These themes are transversely developed from different points of view, in order to create connections between disciplinary knowledge and real-life experiences.”

Passi concluded with a description of the key challenges at Istituto Comprensivo today that serve as a call to action to schools all around the world:

“Our challenge in relation to this matter is finding always new education methods to educate our children in having positive relationships with others, in respecting the rules of a democratic society, being aware of their rights, duties and responsibilities, knowing how to confront peacefully, and taking care of themselves, of their community, and their home planet.”

ICSEI 2023 will be in Chile in January 2023 and schools’ visits will again be held virtually. For more information: https://2023.icsei.net and https://2023.icsei.net/school-visits/

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , , ,

Critical tensions in educational policy and practice: Lead the Change interview with Davíd G. Martínez

Posted on October 26, 2022 by | Leave a comment

In this month’s Lead the Change interview Davíd G. Martínez highlights challenges and opportunities for students and educators to work toward fostering systemic equity in schools. Martinez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policies at the College of Education of the University of South Carolina where he focuses on connecting policy knowledge and praxis through multi-method inquiry. 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.

Lead the Change: The 2023 AERA theme is “Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth” and charges researchers and practitioners with creating and using education research to disrupt institutionalized forms of discrimination. The call urges scholars to challenge traditional methods of inquiry in order to create increasingly useful, responsive, and equity-oriented research that can be used by schools to develop informed policies and practices to better support students. What specific responsibility do educational change scholars have in this space? What steps are you taking to heed this call?

Davíd G. Martínez: Educators, practitioners, and scholars often work together to ameliorate the challenges in education, (e.g, lack of sufficient school funding, educator and leadership burnout and churn, anti-Blackness, and lack of cultural context) (Baker et al., 2021; DeMatthews et al., 2022; Martínez & Vasquez-Heilig, 2022; Watson & Baxley, 2021). Change is occurring, and all stakeholders should be hopeful, but transformation is slow in public schools. At times, seemingly indifferent political regimes exacerbate pre-existing challenges (Tran et al., 2022). Schools are extremely intricate organizations teeming with energy and nuanced in so many ways, and hardworking partners in practice (i.e., students, teachers, administrators) work tirelessly to maintain schools despite these challenges.

The membership of AERA is a community of thought-provoking individuals who care deeply about education, kids, teachers, leaders, parents, and each other. AERA’s 2023 theme focused on systemic inequity continues to guide this focus through an intellectual and spiritual community of Educational Change scholars. The 2023 AERA theme reminds scholars that to support education is an act of daring and an act of strength. To realize this power, scholars must act in solidarity with practitioners. AERA urges its members to critically consider the potential for supporting equitable educational praxis through research that directly informs policy and practice. The 2023 AERA theme is meaningful because it asks scholars as individuals in unique positions of power to acutely recognize our unfinished-ness, recognize our partners in practice, and recognize how we can best support their work.

So, what can the AERA community do? Many of AERA’s members are already engaged in positive practices that build community. Many scholars collaborate with partners in practice to understand the intricacies of education. From my purview, many of AERA’s members listen to practitioners and do so intently. We seek partners in practice who can support our working knowledge of students, classrooms, schools, and districts, and the daily challenges they face. Many of us seek this knowledge to understand how we can best situate our work so it is practical and useful. The 2023 AERA theme is a positive way to acknowledge that our work is not done and to challenge our academic community to continue cultivating the solidarity we require to create positive change in schools.

LtC: In your work, you use legal, policy, and finance frameworks to examine funding inequity and its dire consequences for minoritized school districts, arguing that poverty and racism are systemic issues to be addressed as such. What are some of the major lessons the field of Educational Change can learn from your work and experience?  

DM: In my research, I seek to provoke and create purposeful, critical tension. From my perspective, I want to make explicit that historical policy and law which persecuted people of color, or sanctioned our murder, lead to modern socio-economic constraints (Bell, 2004; Martínez & Vasquez-Heilig, 2022; O’Connell, 2012). To understand modern socio-economic constraints, we must acknowledge the oppression of minoritized peoples, and the advent of laws entrenched in white supremacy that prevented minoritized people from accumulating wealth (Osworth, 2022; Rothstein, 2017). This system of oppression still exists and a cursory, even anecdotal, assessment of schools as a microcosm of this reality requires our consideration.

For instance, one of the major sources of funding for districts/schools are local property tax levies (Green, 2021; Martínez, 2021). Those districts with higher community wealth, and greater commerce, then leverage this community wealth through levies to fund their schools (Kelly, 2020; Knight, 2017). Often the districts with the most severe school funding and resource disparity are districts serving higher proportions of Indigenous, Black, and LatinX students (Baker et al., 2020; Kelly & Maselli, 2022). This then envelopes how I engage in my own research.

In my research, it is important to center the historical context of modern policy. How does policy extend from history and impact communities here and now? For instance, in Martínez et al. (2019) we wanted to understand school finance disparity in the current policy landscape of Arizona and the historical treatment of Indigenous Peoples. This includes the abject degradation of Indigenous sovereignty and policies that have historically, and continue to, impede sovereignty. From my purview, it is important to think about the history of the phenomena we are studying, and how this can help us illuminate the disparities in school funding we found in real time.

“Historical policy and law which persecuted people of color, or sanctioned our murder, lead to modern socio-economic constraints.”

Another lesson I have learned is to understand the phenomena I am interested in from the purview of practice. Before I engage in research, I go out and seek knowledge and guidance from partners in practice. There are many great ideas for research, but our partners in practice who operate our schools are inundated with challenges they must address. Before putting code to program, I’ll often take a little time to ask questions to understand my phenomena of interest from this practitioner perspective. I’ll then sit and think about why school finance disparity persists and whom the disparity targets. Grounding myself in this knowledge helps me a great deal to understand the phenomena I’m studying.

LtC: In your recent work you argue that persistent school finance disparity matters for BIPOC communities, is an equity issue, and must be ameliorated as civil right. How might your findings help scholars and practitioners imagine and implement changes to school finance policy and practice more effectively?

DM: Nationally, schools are about much more than learning. For example, public schools/districts across this country are often one of the largest employers in the geographical area (Jenkins, 2007; Tieken & Williams, 2021). Many public schools/districts across this country offer students public transportation services to and from school, especially in areas with no other public transportation (Buehler, 2009; Phillips et al., 2007; Zhang & Du, 2022). Every public school/district across this country provides full-service meals twice a day, not including mid-day or after school snacks. Many public schools/districts offer healthcare services, and at the very least every school/district offers in-house medical personnel (i.e., nurse).

“Society does not need another Theranos, we do need schools, and to applaud one, and denigrate the other, is a national failure.”

Many, but unfortunately not all, provide temperature-controlled workspaces, working plumbing, and fresh clean drinkable water. Public schools/districts provide entertainment and cultural enrichment (i.e., recitals, theater, arts, live music; cultural celebrations). Public schools/districts provide large scale organized athletic events. Public schools/districts provide mental-health counseling. Public schools/districts provide skills training as part of the curriculum and often as a secondary duty (e.g., photography club, car club, coding club, game club, math club). Many public schools/districts across the country provide post-graduation counseling including test-preparation to support students’ long term educational goals. Most of all, every public school/district across the country provides content, curriculum, and pedagogical experts who have trained to support our kids’ learning. Oh, and we can’t forget the Chief Executive management that keeps the entire organization working as smoothly as possible every day, helping our communities flourish.

Schools/districts provide a high level of service and forcing them to operate with sparse funding for all the services they provide is a tragedy. Billions of dollars flow to start-ups annually, yet school leaders are forced to operate their schools with meager funding increases. I’ll be clear, society does not need another Theranos, we do need schools, and to applaud one, and denigrate the other, is a national failure. To open the faucet of funding to one, while starving the other is a failure of national and state policy. Hopefully, my work in some small way supports discourse about the complications of funding, how we direct funding to schools, which students are served at the highest level, and which are not.

LtC: Educational Change expects those engaged in and with schools, schooling, and school systems to spearhead deep and often difficult transformation. How might those in the field of Educational Change best support these individuals and groups through these processes?

DM: Work directly with practitioners and grass roots advocates/activists! I cannot overstate this enough. We must, as a research community, from a certain position of power, value our partners in practice and our educational community to make certain we are supporting schools in meaningful, practical ways. We must think of how we can go beyond publication, or partnerships to obtain grant funding that supports our career. What practical things are we doing, and what can we do every day?

I admire those scholars who’ve run for school board, or get involved in their children’s schools, or engage in areas outside of their research agenda. I admire those scholars who build pipeline programs for students to access higher education, or support services. I admire those scholars who build coalitions to ameliorate oppressive policy agendas. I think these are practical ways many of us can help support our schools. Many of us are engaged, and it is inspiring to see my peers so committed.

LtC: Where do you perceive the field of Educational Change is going? What excites you about Educational Change now and in the future?

DM: I think the field of school finance continuing to focus on disparities in funding and resources as a function of racism, white supremacy, and segregation is exciting. Thus far, I have exclusively focused on this area. I recently published a paper (Martínez & Spikes, 2021) that examined school finance disparity through a critical policy lens. We sought to understand how Arizona funded its English Learners and found that, by and large, the higher the proportion of English Learners in a district, the less English Learner targeted funding. Baker et al. (2020) recently published a paper examining the disparities between high proportion LatinX districts, and low proportion LatinX districts. The authors found that as the share of LatinX students increases, per pupil spending and revenue decrease. This type of research focuses on much more than socio-economic status and elicits dialogue about the historical nuances of racism that impede economic mobility, and thus educational opportunities. Expounding this type of research can inform policy, and practical solutions, to equitably fund schools that educate our Indigenous, Black, and LatinX students.

I am excited to read work that focuses on policy coalitions and the strength of communities to inform the political and educational landscape for all students. Coalitions cultivate political resistance to ameliorate the status-quo (Tran et al., 2022; Weiss & McGuinn, 2017). There is so much potential then to continuing supporting grassroots organizations engaged in coalition with educational advocates/activists to inform policy agendas.

I am excited about the possibilities of expanding our ontology of education and schools. What phenomena will scholars study? What policy or practice decisions will scholars support through research? How will scholars ensure that partners in practice are practically supported through scholarship? How will scholars use research to resist educational oppression and persecution? Is there space for visceral resistance? I am excited to see how we continue to confront white supremacy and fight the encouragement of fascism through research and scholarship in the United States of America.

“My excitement for the future is grounded in Educators’ power to resist oppressive policy through praxis and scholarship.”

MacLean’s (2017) book Democracy in Chains, describes an historical assault on democratic participation by the “Radical Right” that includes controlling the policy landscape, the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Senate, the economic stability of the country, and dismantling public education. MacLean’s depiction is quickly becoming the reality, the United States Supreme Court is under a conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, and conservative state legislators across the country passed or proposed legislation that threatened public schools with economic sanctions if Critical Race Theory was taught in public schools (Epps & Sitaraman, 2022; South Carolina House Bill 4325, 2021). My excitement for the future is grounded in educators’ power to resist oppressive policy through praxis and scholarship. Finally, freedom and democracy are rooted in collective action to seek justice and transformation. Transformation of a country that is intimately comfortable with violence against people of color, violence against the LGBTQIA+ community, violence against women, violence against prisoners, violence against the unhoused, and certainly violence against educators. Through collective action with partners in practice, scholars can support justice for those communities who do not know the luxury of higher education, academia, or the safety of academic spaces.

References

Baker, B. D., Weber, M., & Srikanth, A. (2021). Informing federal school finance policy with empirical evidence. Journal of Education Finance, 47(1), 1-25.

Baker, B. D., Srikanth, A., Cotto Jr, R., & Green III, P. C. (2020). School funding disparities and the plight of Latinx children. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 28(135), n135.

Bell, D. (2004). Silent covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the unfulfilled hopes for racial reform. Oxford University Press.

Buehler, R. (2009). Promoting public transportation: Comparison of passengers and policies in Germany and the United States. Transportation Research Record, 2110(1), 60-68.

DeMatthews, D. E., Knight, D. S., & Shin, J. (2022). The principal-teacher churn: Understanding the relationship between leadership turnover and teacher attrition. Educational Administration Quarterly, 58(1), 76-109.

Epps, D., & Sitaraman, G. (2019). How to save the Supreme Court. Yale Law Journal, 129(1), 148-206.

Green III, P. C., Baker, B. D., & Oluwole, J. O. (2020). School finance, race, and reparations. Washington & Lee Journal of Civil Rights & Social Justice, 27(2), 483-558.

Kelly, M. G. (2020). The curious case of the missing tail: Trends among the top 1% of school districts in the United States, 2000–2015. Educational Researcher, 49(5), 312-320.

Gardner Kelly, M., & Maselli, A. (2022). School finance policies, racial disparities, and the exploding educational debt: Egregious evidence from Pennsylvania. Journal of Education Human Resources, e20220003.

Jenkins, C. (2007). Considering the community: How one rural superintendent perceives community values and their effect on decision-making. Rural Educator, 28(3), 28-32.

Knight, D. S. (2017). Are high-poverty school districts disproportionately impacted by state funding cuts? School finance equity following the Great Recession. Journal of Education Finance, 169-194.

MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. New York, NY: Penguin.

Martínez, D.G. (2021). Interrogating social justice paradigms in school finance research and litigation. Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education, 52(1), 297-317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-021-09418-4

Martínez, D.G., & Vazquez-Heilig, J. (2022). An opportunity to learn: Engaging in the praxis of school finance policy and civil rights. Minnesota Journal of Law and Inequality, 40(2), 311-334. Retrieved from https://lawandinequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Vol.-402-Full-Issue.pdf.

O’Connell, H. A. (2012). The impact of slavery on racial inequality in poverty in the contemporary U.S. South. Social Forces, 90(3), 713-734.

Osworth, D. (2022). Looking toward the field: A systematic review to inform current and future school takeover policy. Research in Educational Policy and Management, 4(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.46303/repam.2022.1

Phillips, R., Harper, S., & Gamble, S. (2007). Summer programming in rural communities: Unique challenges. New Directions for Youth Development, 2007(114), 65-73.

Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing.

South Carolina House Bill 4325, 124th Session (2021).

Tieken, M., & Williams, S. (2021). Commentary: Times article on rural school misses half the story—Educational success. The Rural Educator, 42(3), 72-73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35608/ ruraled.v42i3.1289

Tran, H., Martínez, D. G., Aziz, M., Frakes Reinhardt, S., & Harrison, T. (2022). Of coalition and resistance in Abbeville v. South Carolina: A policy regimes analysis. Educational Studies, 1-21.

Watson, T. N., & Baxley, G. S. (2021). Centering “Grace”: Challenging anti-Blackness in schooling through motherwork. Journal of School Leadership, 31(1-2), 142-157.

Weiss, J., & McGuinn, P. (2017). The evolving role of the state education agency in the era of ESSA and Trump: Past, present, and uncertain future. Philadelphia, PA: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.Zhang, Y., & Xu, D. (2022). The bus is arriving: Population growth and public transportation ridership in rural America. Journal of Rural Studies, 95, 467-474.

Leave a comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged ,

Scanning the headlines for results from OECD’s Education at a Glance: October 2022 Edition

Posted on October 19, 2022 by | 1 comment

This week, IEN scans the headlines of stories reporting on OECD’s Education at a Glance for 2022. OECD’s Education at a Glance 2022 provides an annual overview of comparative education statistics. The scan includes aspects of the report emphasized by media outlets around the world. See IEN’s Education at a Glance 2021 Scan and Education at a Glance 2019 Scan for comparison.

The unparalleled growth in tertiary education was the focal point of this year’s Education at a Glance report. The OECD notes women now make up the majority of young adults with a tertiary degree, at 57% compared to 43% for males. Across all 25-34 year olds, tertiary education has become the most common educational attainment level, which the OECD attributes to the labor-market advantages tertiary degrees provide. The indicators in the report included student participation, progress, and outcomes, as well as the resources countries invested in tertiary education. Additionally, the report explored educational outcomes from the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, described by OECD as “a return to normalcy.” Correspondingly, many of the headlines, both those discussing the report in general and highlighting results from particular countries, focused on the results related to tertiary education. As in the past, a number of headlines emphasized problems that the report revealed (Australia; Finland; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Japan) with only a few highlighting more positive findings (Portugal; Spain). 

Figure 1: Trends in the share of tertiary-educated 25-34 year-olds (2000 and 2021), OECD

International 

Education at a Glance 2022: Higher Education Still Pays Off, OECD and NCEE

“We must grow multiple pathways to success through an array of post-secondary options, including, of course, the rich array of some baccalaureate options and apprenticeships. ” – Amy Loyd, President of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

Tertiary education rates reach record high, with more efforts, Mirage News

“The share of young adults with advanced qualifications across the OECD, driven by the growing need for advanced skills in labor markets, reached a record 48% of 25-34 year-olds in 2021, compared to just 27% in 2000. Shares of tertiary educated 25-34 year olds are highest in Korea (69.3%) and Canada (66.4%), according to a new OECD report.”

Many students choosing useless decrees over learning skills, OECD official says, The National

“We have large shares of young people choosing degrees that actually may not exist when they graduate.” – Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for Education and Skills

Education at a Glance: Addressing the need to build a more effective and equitable education system, International Education

“Only three countries reported mainstreaming all four aspects of the SDG 4.7.1 on Global Citizenship Education and Education for Sustainable Development which includes policies, curricula, teacher education, and assessment, (Brazil, France, and Spain).”

Australia 

Australia’s public education funding went backwards during COVID pandemic, ABC

“The latest OECD Education at a Glance report shows Australian public education expenditure was cut by nearly 2 per cent from 2019 to 2020, by comparison the OECD average rose by around 1.5 per cent.”

Finland

OECD comparison: educational attainment of Finnish young people fallen below average, Finnish Ministry of Education

“In 2000, the proportion of highly educated younger adults in Finland was among the highest in the OECD countries, in the same league as the United States and South Korea. In 2021, instead, Finland’s position had dropped well below the OECD average, ranking at the level of Chile and Turkey.”

Ireland 

Ireland is worst in OECD for education spending as percentage of GDP, report finds, The Irish Times
“Ireland spends less than 36 other developed countries on its education system, when spending is measured as a portion of countries’ gross domestic product (GDP), according to a new report from the OECD.”

Israel 

The OECD report: about a quarter of the young Israelis are neither working nor in school, Globes

“According to the report, the rate of young people neither working nor in school (NEET) is considered quite high in Israel, standing at 22%, compared to 16% in the OECD average.”

Italy

OECD says 34.6% of 25-29-yr-olds in Italy are NEETS [Not in Education, Employment or Training], ANSA

“The proportion of young people in Italy who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) has increased significantly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic… the proportion of 25-to-29-year-olds who are NEETS climbed to 31.7% in 2020 and then rose further to 34.6% in 2021.”

Figure 2: Trends in the share of NEETs among 18-24 year-olds (2019 and 2021, annual date), OECD

Japan

Japan ranked last in women staff in tertiary education: OECD, The Japan Times

“Japan had the lowest share of female staff in tertiary education in 2020 among 32 comparable member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, at 30%…Women represent 45% of academic professionals across OECD countries on average.”

New Zealand 

How NZ education compares to other OECD countries, RNZ

“The number of young New Zealanders with tertiary qualifications had grown in the past 10 years, but not as much as in most other OECD nations… In New Zealand the percentage of 25 to 34-year-olds with tertiary qualifications rose 16 percentage points from 29 percent in 2000 to 45 percent in 2021.”

Portugal

University graduates in Portugal earn more than double salaries of those that left school at 18, Portugal Resident 

“The findings appear to show that graduates everywhere receive higher salaries in the workplace than colleagues without degrees – particularly in Portugal where they can end up earning double the salaries of less qualified counterparts. The report cites Information Technology and Communication as the sector in Portugal paying the highest salaries.”

Scotland 

How do Scottish head teacher salaries compare?, TES

“Scottish head teachers tend to be paid more than the average earned by their counterparts in countries such as Finland, New Zealand and France – but they lag behind heads in England, new figures show.”

Spain

Nearly 50% of Spanish Students Aged 25-34 have a Higher Education Degree, Erudera News

“This was an increase of 8.4 points more than in 2011 and nearly 15 points or 34 percent compared to 2000. Moreover, the figure is above the average for the OECD countries, where the percentage is 46.9 percent, and also above the average for 22 EU countries (45.9 percent), Erudera.com reports.”

Switzerland

Vocational training drives tertiary qualification rise in Switzerland 
“The proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with a tertiary qualification has doubled in Switzerland within 20 years, and at a faster pace than many other countries, according to an OECD study. A key factor in this: Swiss-style higher vocational training and degrees for apprentices.”

United States

U.S. Teachers work more hours than their global peers. Other countries are catching up. EducationWeek 

“U.S. elementary school teachers’ work hours haven’t changed much since 2019, but at more than 1,000 a year on average, American educators work more than 200 more hours than their peers worldwide.”

1 Comment

Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged , , , ,