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Collaboration and Equity in Educational Change: Lead the Change Interview with Max Yurkofsky

Posted on June 28, 2023 by | Leave a comment

In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview Max Yurkofsky shares his experience as an educational change scholar working to dismantle racial injustice and foster collaborative and equitable approaches to spreading educational change. Yurkofsky is an Assistant Professor at Ranford University in the Doctor of Education program. His research centers on how school systems can organize for continuous improvement toward more ambitious and equitable visions of learning. 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 2024 AERA theme is “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action.”  This theme charges researchers and practitioners with confronting racial injustice directly while imagining new possibilities for liberation. The call urges scholars to look critically at our global past and look with hope and radicalism towards the future of education. What specific responsibility do educational change scholars have in this space? What steps are you taking to heed this call?

Max Yurkofsky (MY): Two responsibilities stand out to me. The first is to involve those whom we are trying to serve (and/or whose behavior or beliefs we want to influence) in all aspects of the research and change processes. I am particularly inspired by the work of Brandi Hinnant-Crawford (2020) who pushes leaders to continuously ask “Who is involved? Who is impacted?” when leading improvement, as well as the work of Sasha Costanza-Chock (2020) who articulated the principle that we must “center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes” of any design or change process.

I’ve tried to align my research and teaching to this principle in a few ways. As I teach in Radford University’s EdD program, which has students inquire into and address a complex problem of practice in their setting as a central component of their dissertation, I’ve tried to develop much more explicit guidelines, resources, and expectations for how my EdD students will involve those impacted by the problems they are trying to address in the research and change process.

I have also tried to center the perspectives of those I am trying to serve in my research. For me, this involves engaging in research on how students and alumni are experiencing our program—what they do, and do not, end up using in practice and why, and what their perspectives on the strengths and limitations of our program are—with the aim of quickly incorporating what we learn into our teaching.

I also am working to collaborate more with educators in the region to see if there are shared problems we might work to address together. This is complex and messy work that I am finding requires a whole different set of skills than what we are trained for in doctoral programs. For example, how to listen for and draw out the problems that are most energizing to educators, how to convene spaces that are engaging enough to regularly draw in full-time practitioners, and how to balance a respect for educators’ busy lives with a friendly push to keep momentum going on shared projects.

The second responsibility of researchers is to interrogate the theoretical perspectives and theories of change we typically rely on: To what extent do these theories account for structural racism? Who developed these theories, and what roles did these theories play in the maintenance of our current system of schooling? What might it look like to infuse these theories with more critical perspectives that grapple with structural racism and other fundamental critiques of our school system?

“Interrogate the theoretical perspectives and theories of change we typically rely on: To what extent do these theories account for structural racism?”

I’ve been particularly excited by how this work is playing out in the field of organizational theory. Most prominently, Victor Ray (2018) has advanced a theory of racialized organizations, which explores the role organizations play in maintaining or disrupting racism in society and calls out the troubling ways in which organizational theory has been color evasive over its history. Inspired by this work, I’m examining some of my favorite theories and considering how they might be made more relevant by centering issues of race and equity. For example, I’m working with Sarah Woulfin on a project related to how institutional logics perspective can better account for structural racism. And, as part of my teaching in the EdD program—which uses improvement science as a signature methodology—I have also worked with my team (Edwin Bonney and Sarah Capello) to identify places where continuous improvement methods can benefit from taking a more critical approach that centers racial justice.

LtC: In your work, you examine continuous improvement as a mechanism for more equitable teaching, learning, and leading. What are some of the major lessons the field of Educational Change can learn from your work and experience? 

MY: One central question I wrestle with in my research and teaching is whether the best approach to leading change depends on the kinds of changes we are trying to achieve. For example, are we trying to increase scores on state assessments or are we seeking something more transformational—like dismantling racial inequities or re-imagining the means and ends of schooling?

A dominant perspective in organizational theory, often referred to as contingency theory, proposes that leading improvement in more complex and uncertain domains (e.g., trying to dismantle racial inequities or reimagine schools) requires fundamentally different approaches than trying to support more incremental improvement. More certain and stable problems are often seen as benefiting from quantitative, systematic, and variation-reducing approaches to change (or “ordered” approaches). Meanwhile, complex and uncertain challenges are often seen as requiring more “emergent” (maree brown, 2017) approaches that emphasize exploration, qualitative inquiry, and social learning. The continuous improvement and design methods I study (e.g., improvement science, design-based implementation research, design thinking, and the Data Wise Improvement Process) are interesting and exciting to me in part because they contain a mix of these ordered and emergent approaches.

In a couple of different studies, my colleagues and I have explored whether educators take different approaches to engaging with continuous improvement and design methods depending on the complexity and uncertainty of the problems they are trying to address. One was a 4-year comparative case study of districts using improvement science, design-based implementation research, design thinking, and the Data Wise Improvement Process (with Jal Mehta, Amelia Peterson, Kim Frumin, Rebecca Horwitz, and James Jack). The other was a smaller study with Candice Bocala of two different schools that were using Data Wise to address a problem related to equity.

In both cases, we found that educators did initially experience more success when enacting these methods in more ordered ways to address known problems and more emergent ways to address more complex or uncertain problems. However, we also noticed an important nuance. Educators often ran into problems when leaning too heavily into an ordered or emergent approach to improvement. Instead, the most successful educators learned to rebalance their use of ordered and emergent approaches over time, as they organized for learning on a larger scale and navigated issues of racial inequity. For example, one team focused for many years on developing a valid and reliable practical measure of whether students’ experienced equitable learning environments in the classroom. The team described how they wished they had devoted more attention to supporting educators in interpreting this often-sensitive data to improve their teaching and hoped to accomplish this over the next year of their work.

My hunch is that all educational change efforts consist of different degrees of ordered and emergent approaches. Contingency theory offers a helpful starting point in leading change: it may be useful to begin by taking a more emergent approach to change when addressing complex and uncertain problems (e.g., dismantling longstanding racial inequities, moving towards a more learner-centered vision of instruction), and a more ordered approach when tackling well-known and measurable problems (e.g., improving reading instruction in early elementary school). However, it is essential that leaders recognize that any equilibrium they achieve will be fleeting—that they will need to continuously rebalance over time, especially as they seek to spread change on a larger scale and as they navigate issues of inequity.

LtC: In some of your recent work, you investigate the pressures schools face both to foster equity and increase accountability all within the context of uncertainty. How might these discussions help scholars and practitioners better support schools in making change? 

MY: It turns out that what I was learning about the interdependence of ordered and emergent approaches to improvement was a specific example of a broader trend in organizational theory and management research over the past fifteen years. Scholars in these fields are increasingly arguing that, due to the growing complexity, turbulence, and interdependence of today’s world, leaders must navigate intensive and conflicting expectations that can never be fully resolved; they can only be managed. As a result, leaders cannot get away with asking either/or questions (e.g., should I take an emergent approach to change or an ordered approach to change?). Instead, they must ask both/and questions (e.g., how can I effectively balance ordered and emergent approaches to change over time?). This view is typically called the “paradox” perspective.

“The most successful educators learned to rebalance their use of ordered and emergent approaches over time.”

I was drawn to this perspective both because of the studies described earlier, but also because of my work with leaders in Southwest Virginia in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of state and local elections that brought into power candidates who ran against mask mandates and addressing racial inequities in schools. Navigating paradox seemed like an apt way of describing the work of my doctoral students who were seeking to lead equity-focused change in this politicized and racialized context.

In a recent paper with Don Peurach (2023), I sought to use a paradox perspective to make sense of the challenges educational leaders today were facing. As you mention, we conceptualized the paradox facing educational leaders today as resulting from a collision between:

  • A rationalizing press to use technically sophisticated processes to improve measurable outcomes.
  • A democratic press to involve historically marginalized communities in defining these outcomes and how they might be achieved.
  • A more reactionary manifestation of this democratic press, which involves protecting the power of more privileged groups in educational decision-making.

“Our task is to support leaders in striking an appropriate balance of these two approaches in a context that favors one over the other.”

We argue further that this collision is exacerbating entrenched uncertainties that pervade schools related the aims of education and how these aims might be achieved or measured.

How might leaders navigate this complexity? We elaborate two dominant perspectives that are rarely in conversation with one another. One focuses on mitigating uncertainty by building systems, establishing routines, improving measurement systems, and more broadly developing an in-depth and coherent infrastructure around a shared vision. The other focuses on leveraging this uncertainty as an opportunity to question taken-for-granted aims, practices, and measures or to amplify the voices of those who have historically been left out.

Both approaches have a logic and an allure, but also significant drawbacks. We show how reframing these two perspectives as a paradox provides leaders with a framework for navigating these limitations. Specifically, a paradox perspective offers different metaphors and strategies for balancing these seemingly conflicting imperatives over time. It also makes visible a deeper challenge—that in most societies and systems, uncertainty mitigation is seen as the more legitimate approach to leadership. Our task then is to support leaders in striking an appropriate balance of these two approaches in a context that favors one over the other.

To briefly illustrate, lets connect this to the prior discussion of ordered and emergent approaches to change. A common trap that can occur is that, drawing on dominant perspectives on educational change and available sources of data, leaders will not view their problem as deeply complex or uncertain, and will reflexively apply more ordered approaches to addressing the problem. A paradox perspective might help intervene in this dynamic in two ways. First, it may prompt leaders to question why they are gravitating towards seeing the problem as certain (versus uncertain) and using ordered (versus more emergent) approaches to addressing that problem. Second, it reminds leaders of the incompleteness of any approach they take, and thus can help alert leaders to evidence that they are not digging deeply enough into the problem to grasp its full complexity.

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?

MY: Supporting leaders in spearheading deep and difficult transformation requires attention to two seemingly contradictory approaches to change.

One approach is more ordered, systematic, quantitative, and focused on reducing and mitigating uncertainty for all stakeholders. We might say it focuses on the technical side of the change process. The other approach is more emergent, social, exploratory, and attentive to ways of leveraging uncertainty to reach deeper insights. This approach focuses on the relational side of the change process.

Both these approaches are essential to leading transformative change. Leaders need the ability to craft a shared vision across multiple different perspectives and then help educators see the connection between this vision and their own values and aspirations. They need to support educators and community members with the sensitive and high-risk work of critically examining how their own beliefs and practices might be contributing to undesirable and inequitable outcomes. At the same time, leaders also need to provide some stability and order for educators who must navigate enough uncertainty as part of their daily work. They need to find ways of effectively coordinating the work of improvement across different organizational contexts and providing some expectations around where this work is headed. As a field committed to deep and transformative change, I fear that we will leave educators astray if we a) focus too much on either one of these approaches at the expense of the other, or b) allow the work in these two camps to remain siloed from one another.

“As a field committed to deep and transformative change, I fear that we will leave educators astray if we focus too much on either one of these approaches at the expense of the other.”

I encourage scholars and leaders to consider how they might bridge these two approaches in their own work. Those who focus on the technical aspects of the change process might explore further the relational work that must take place for these processes to be carried out effectively. Those who focus on the relational side of change might consider where processes or tools that can scaffold this work for leaders or opportunities to build routines and systems that help capture and store the knowledge that arises out of this relational work.

To further complicate matters, I don’t believe these two approaches are on an even playing field. Not only are technical, ordered, and uncertainty-mitigating approaches to change more legitimated by school systems and society but—almost by definition—these approaches are often easier to operationalize in practice. It is much easier to offer leaders routines, change processes, and measurement tools, and much more challenging to provide guidance on the relational work of carrying out change as part of one’s daily work. Considering this, it might be helpful as a field to look inwardly and continuously assess how well we are balancing technical and relational approaches to change. We might also think about further theorizing and investigating the work of balancing relational and technical approaches in a system that tends to privilege the latter.   

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

MY: What excites me about educational change is just how many scholars and leaders in the field I can turn to for inspiration on some of the things I’ve discussed here, like incorporating ideas about structural racism into the theoretical perspectives that guide our work and involving those who we aim to serve through our research.

For example, as a discipline, organizational theory has historically engaged very little with questions of race, equity, and justice. However, over the past few years there has been a tremendous surge of empirical and theoretical work (from prominent scholars, early career scholars, and doctoral students) applying and extending organizational theory to account for, interrogate, and explain racial injustice. Here, I am thinking of the work of Jeannette Colyvas, John Diamond, Joann Golann, Decoteau Irby, Ann Ishimaru, Maya Kaul, Amanda Lewis, Heather McCambly, Jacqueline Pedota, Sola Takahashi, to name just a few (of many) scholars engaged in this work (see references for examples of these scholars’ work).

I see a similar momentum regarding theories of educational change. As an illustrative example from my own experience, around 2018 I began reviewing the research on continuous improvement and design methods in education for the project I described earlier. At the time, racial equity and justice were typically not central to how scholars conceptualized and studied these methods. As I’ve gone back to the literature over the past couple years, I’ve been amazed by how much things have changed. There is now a wealth of guidance about how to engage in these methods that focuses squarely on how to use these methods to advance racial equity and justice (e.g., Biag, 2019; Bocala & Boudett, 2022; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2022; Datnow & Park, 2018; Farrell et al., 2021; Hinnant-Crawford et al., 2023; Peurach et al., 2022; Peterson & Carlile, 2021) as well as empirical scholarship that interrogates these methods from a critical lens that centers racial equity and justice (e.g.,  Bush-Mecenas, 2022; Farrell et al., 2023; Sandoval, 2023; Valdez et al., 2020). Virtually of this theoretical and empirical work has been carried out in the context of collaborative research, where scholars are working alongside practitioners to understand and address the problems that are most essential to them.

Each reference I cited is teaching the field something unique about how to enact transformative change. This could result in a dazzling but fleeting fireworks display of a thousand insights branching off into their own corner of the sky. My hope is that, instead, scholars participating in this exciting and important work will engage and connect with one another—even if they are using different methods, in different contexts, or using different theoretical frameworks—so that we can build on what we are learning from this diverse (and ever-growing) field, and, I hope, converge upon new and better theories for how to lead transformative and racially just change in this current moment.

References:

Biag, M. (201). “Navigating the improvement journey with an equity compass.” In R. Crow, B. N.  Hinnant-Crawford, & D. T. Spaulding (Eds.). The educational leader’s guide to improvement science: Data, design and cases for reflection. Myers Education Press.

Bocala C. & Boudett., K. P. (2022). Looking at data through an equity lens. Educational Leadership, 79(4).

Bush-Mecenas, S. (2022). “The business of teaching and learning”: Institutionalizing equity in educational organizations through continuous improvement. American Educational Research Journal, 59(3), 461-499.

Cohen-Vogel, L., Century, J., & Sherer, D. (2022). A framework for scaling for equity. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. The MIT Press.

Datnow, A., & Park, V. (2018). Opening or closing doors for students? Equity and data use in schools. Journal of Educational Change, 19, 131-152.

Hinnant-Crawford, B. N. (2020). Improvement science in education: A primer. Myers Education Press.

Hinnant-Crawford, B., Lytle Lett, E., & Cromartie, S. (In Press). ImproveCrit: Using Critical Race Theory to guide continuous improvement. In E. Anderson & S. D. Hayes (Eds.), Continuous improvement: A leadership process for school improvement

Farrell, C. C., Singleton, C., Stamatis, K., Riedy, R., Arce-Trigatti, P., & Penuel, W. R. (2022). Conceptions and practices of equity in research-practice partnerships. Educational Policy, 37(1), 200-224. https://doi.org/10.1177/08959048221131566

Golann, J. W., & Jones, A. (2021). How principals balance control and care in urban school discipline. Urban Education, 00420859211046824.

Irby, D. J. (2018). Mo’data, mo’problems: Making sense of racial discipline disparities in a large diversifying suburban high school. Educational Administration Quarterly, 54(5), 693-722.

Ishimaru, A. M., & Takahashi, S. (2017). Disrupting racialized institutional scripts: Toward parent–teacher transformative agency for educational justice. Peabody Journal of Education, 92(3), 343-362.

Ishimaru, A. M., & Galloway, M. K. (2021). Hearts and minds first: Institutional logics in pursuit of educational equity. Educational Administration Quarterly, 57(3), 470-502.

Kaul, M. (2023) Mapping the institutional terrain of teacher education: How institutional logics shape teacher education program design. A Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association.

Lewis, A. E., & Diamond, J. B. (2015). Despite the best intentions: How racial inequality thrives in good schools. Oxford University Press.

McCambly, H., & Colyvas, J. A. (2023). Dismantling or disguising racialization?: Defining racialized change work in the context of postsecondary grantmaking. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 33(2), 203-216.

maree brown, a. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. AK Press

Pedota, J. (2023). Institutionalization of a campus culture center: Exploring racialized administrative burdens faced by students and staff. A paper presented at the American Educational Research Association.

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

Peterson, D. S., & Carlile, S. P. (Eds.). (2021). Improvement science: Promoting equity in schools. Myers Education Press.

Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26-53.

Sandoval Jr, C. (2023). Synthesizing as a power-laden facilitation practice in a networked improvement community. Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 8(1), 47-61.

Valdez, A., Takahashi, S., Krausen, K., Bowman, A., & Gurrola, E. (2020). Getting better at getting more equitable: Opportunities and barriers for using continuous improvement to advance educational equity. WestEd.

Yurkofsky, M. M., & Peurach, D. J. (2023). The paradox of leading amidst uncertainty: maintaining balance on an unstable beam. Journal of Educational Administration, 61(3), 185-204.

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School Closures, Internet Access and Remote Instruction in Vietnam:  A Conversation with Chi Hieu Nguyen (Part 1)

Posted on June 1, 2023 by | 4 comments

This week, Chi Hieu Nguyen talks with Thomas Hatch about the after effects and developments in education in Vietnam following the COVID-19 school closures. Nguyen is the CEO, and co-founder of Innovative Education Group (IEG). Innovative Education Group is an umbrella group of more than 10 education ventures. The interview includes a brief discussion of IEG’s work before Nguyen discusses what happened in Vietnam’s schools following the COVID-19 outbreak, how the education system has responded and what has happened since.

Thomas Hatch: Before we talk about the school closures, can you give us a sense of the kind of work you and your colleagues at IEG do in Vietnam?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: We serve the entire spectrum of the education landscape in Vietnam. We work with policymakers, researchers, school leaders, teachers, parents, and students, and each venture tackles a different problem. We manage education consulting companies but we also run full scale K-12 school systems; we’re involved in publishing, assessment, online learning models, and after school learning models, and even a nonprofit foundation to rebuild public schools in remote areas or provide scholarships and mentorship to underprivileged college students. But the majority of my work focuses on K-12 schools in terms of building new schools, upgrading schools, and transforming old schools. I focus mainly on the academic operation side.

The School Closures in Vietnam

Thomas Hatch: Can you give us a sense of what happened in schools in Vietnam after the COVID-19 outbreak?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: I think Vietnam is a very interesting case. If you look at the data, for example, in South Asia in general, during COVID-19, Vietnam had a longer stretch of lockdown compared to other countries because we were quite late in getting vaccinations going. So the closures started in March 2020, and, in total, we were probably online for a year and a half, and, at least for certain areas, it could be longer.

Thomas Hatch: Was that a government-wide shutdown? Was there any discussion or planning up to it? Or was it one day the schools were open, and the next day they were closed and online?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: In Vietnam it’s usually a top-down decision of the Government to shut down. But this time, it wasn’t uniform across the country. They started shutting things down depending on where the outbreak took place. Shutdowns could also happen based on the district. For example, there are 16 districts, and when a district had an outbreak, that district got shut down, and the others districts could stay open. So the school system operated in a very flexible way, but only in the beginning.  Then there was an intense period with the biggest outbreaks in summer and fall of 2020. That’s when pretty much the entire country got shut down, including the schools. Then, as we recovered, opening schools was really based on the city again – which had the highest amount of a percentage of vaccination and things like that. But the Government decided to have a target of 100% vaccination, and that is the reason why when it got back to normal it was pretty much every city and every province that came back to normal schooling. That happened around February–March of 2022. It was almost 2 years or a year and a half on and off, but mostly off.

Source: WHO & Google, Temasek and Bain, e-Conomy SEA 2020

Thomas Hatch: Who was making the decision about closing down schools? Was it the central government who would essentially say, okay, if you have an outbreak, you need to close? Or was it up to the local officials?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: It was the local authorities. Each province or municipality made those decisions depending on the outbreak. The central government gave a very general directive, but it was the authority of the province or the city that made the decision to shut down.

Thomas Hatch: Is that typical of decision making in the Vietnamese education system? Or is it usually more centrally controlled than that?

Chi Hieu Nguyen:  Over time, they have tended to give more leeway for local authorities to make the decisions. In 2018, after many years, we had an entire revamp of the national curriculum. That revamp produced the first competency-based curriculum nationally. But before that there was only a “one textbook” approach. That meant that, before 2018, for the entire public school system, we used the same textbook. From 2018 onwards, there’s a set of textbooks to choose from, so there’s a lot more leeway and flexibility for schools in different districts and different provinces and cities. It’s still a centrally controlled system, but there is increasing flexibility for the local authority to make those decisions. Over the past 5 or 6 years, there’s certainly more loosening of regulations to support the growth of the private sector as well, but it’s more obvious in education.

“Like a Survival Instinct” – The Initial Response to the School Closures

Thomas Hatch: What was the first step, the first reaction in terms of the school closures? Was it that people said, “oh my, we’re going to have to teach online and nobody has broadband access? And nobody has computers?”

Chi Hieu Nguyen: That’s really what it was. It was like a survival instinct. Everyone got online as much as they could. It’s actually accelerated the speed of adoption of technology and the Internet in a lot of schools. Many people and schools got online quickly, within about one or 2 months. But in contrast to many other Asian countries, in Vietnam, most of the new adoption of the Internet and digital devices — almost 75% — were in the metro areas. That means that in terms of the continuity of education, the metro areas did pretty well, but that the gap between the metro areas and rural areas widened because of COVID-19. For the Metro areas, COVID was a big kick that got a lot of people online, and now there are a lot of new digital products and services that are available. But in my work, even now, we still have to provide computers and teachers to teach online for students in the most remote area of Vietnam.

Source: Google, Temasek and Bain, e-Conomy SEA 2020

Thomas Hatch: That’s a pretty incredible increase in digital use in the metro areas. How was that response possible? Was it led by the Government? Or by local authorities? Or business?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: For private schools, the schools did it themselves, but I think the local education departments were also very responsive. For example, my province, the leadership of the public schools didn’t even need to wait for the local government or the central government to decide. They got students connected very quickly. I think there’s also that agility in the teachers. It’s a very young generation of teachers in Vietnam, and many of them are technologically enabled in their daily life. I think there’s just this passion in Vietnamese teachers in general that might have helped even in more rural areas where there was less internet penetration and technology is very limited. But, overall, I think the infrastructure was in place except for the very poorest areas. Vietnam is a very fast adopter of technology in general, and we saw that kind of a quick transformation in education. Students at most of the schools I know, both private and public schools, get online very quickly within just about 2 months.

Vietnam is a very fast adopter of technology in general, and we saw that kind of a quick transformation in education. Students at most of the schools I know, both private and public schools, get online very quickly within just about 2 months.

Thomas Hatch: What about devices? Did the schools have to hand out devices or did kids have enough mobile phones?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: Phones are something very common in Vietnam. Vietnam is a very e-commerce economy so the infrastructure is there. Almost every house has a smartphone with a data plan connected with the Internet.  I think it’s only with those with the lowest incomes or in the most remote areas where infrastructure is not strong enough. The majority of the country is pretty much connected.

Managing through Remote Instruction

Thomas Hatch: Then what? What were some of the first steps in terms of making sure that remote education would be effective? Was it training teachers in zoom and things like that? Was it creating a curriculum? And was that done centrally at the national level or at the local level?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: For one thing, the Ministry of Education worked together with the national television station to produce learning programs for every subject from grade 1 all the way to grade 12, so that even when students didn’t have internet they could actually watch the TV and learn the programs. But at schools, the effort was focused on just getting kids online and using the internet as a medium to get connected with students within the first, maybe 6 months to 9 months. There was not much of any conversation about teaching methods. But then, towards the end of 2020, and for most of 2021, there were more conversations and conferences about pedagogies, methods, and how to use technology. There was also new explosion of technological products and services in 2021. But for the first 6 months it was pretty much just getting online as much as possible.

Thomas Hatch: That’s very helpful. It’s really interesting the way you describe the COVID-19 response in phases, with an explosion of edtech technologies and things that teachers could use. It wasn’t necessarily focused on pedagogy. Can you give some examples of some of the more interesting edtech developments from your perspective?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: In just about 2 months it seemed like Zoom or Microsoft Teams were in every school. Then in 2021 Microsoft education came in, and suddenly there was an explosion in the number of teachers going for Microsoft education training to become a Microsoft Education Expert or to learn how to use the entire suite of packages and services. Google education followed as well. Vietnamese parents in general are also very keen on learning English with technology, and suddenly there is an explosion of pronunciation apps, reading apps, grammar apps, tons of this. There’s even an investment company translating the entire Khan Academy in Vietnamese.

For me, I also started using ClassIn. It’s a product from China, and it’s a platform that was built for the classroom. It’s different from things like Zoom that were designed as platforms for meetings and were hijacked into the classroom. On Zoom, for example, if you want to us another education tool, you have to ask students to switch platforms: “Okay, let’s go to Padlet” or you have to share a screen. And the moment you share a screen, with limited broadband, you often can’t stream a video or anything. Everything is just disrupted. But ClassIn brought everything together in one platform. You have a blackboard. You have a timer. You can store your video and your lesson plan, or whatever you want to share in ClassIn. Even if the students have very low broadband, they can still watch the video without distraction. It’s called like an online-offline model.

Thomas Hatch: But are schools still using these technologies and online tools?

Chi Hieu Nguyen: There are different aspects. Schools are more aware that something like COVID-19 could happen again and disrupt everything, so they’ve converted from paper-based into more digital resources. Now you see Vietnamese schools are starting to think about learning management systems like Canvas and everything digital lives there.

Schools are more aware that something like COVID-19 could happen again and disrupt everything, so they’ve converted from paper-based into more digital resources.

The second aspect is the way they approach the lessons. There now might be a combination between online activities and in person activities. The students before class, during class, and after class spend a lot of time on the digital platform, and of course, in class, they have discussions and they have in-person activities. The third aspect is that classroom organization may be more flexible. It’s no longer just one teacher and the entire class. You can have the class study from a different location, doing something for a field trip and then have a class study online, for example. You can start to invite teachers from all over the world to teach and start to explore other possibilities. Of course, you see this most at pioneering schools. One I’m involved in is The Olympia Schools, a private K-12 school system that is a part of our school network. They’ve started talking about deeper learning, about virtual reality, how to take advantage of AI and virtual reality. Now they’ve started to bring ChatGPT into daily teaching as well so there is almost no resistance to the wave of technology anymore because of that COVID-19. Now they have that mentality that we have to be very agile with every new technology coming out.  I think every city, in every major city in Vietnam, there should be about 4 or 5 schools like that. They are really pushing the boundaries, and they become like model schools that others can learn from.

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Conditions Conducive to Learning that Promote Educational Change

Posted on March 15, 2023 by | 2 comments

This week, IEN shares the second in a series of posts featuring presenters from the Educational Change Special Interest Group sessions at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association.  This post includes excerpts from Lead the Change (LtC) interviews with the presenters from the session titled: Conditions Conducive to Learning that Promote Ed Change. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website. The LtC series is produced by Alex Lamb.

Excerpts from the LtC interview with Jennifer R. McGee, Tim Huelsman, Terry McClannon, Appalachian State University, whose presentation is titled: “Examining Teacher Job Satisfaction Through Conversations with Elementary School Teachers”

Lead the Change(LTC): What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?

Jennifer R. McGee, Tim Huelsman, Terry McClannon: Our work centers on the working conditions of public school (BK-12) teachers. As employees of state and local governments, teachers are directly impacted by educational policy. Policy decisions can impact the classroom, the school, and the public’s view of education as a whole. Our data from multiple studies shows that this influences teacher job satisfaction and burnout, which we believe ultimately has an impact on retention. It is of course difficult to prove this empirically.

None of this is new information to members of AERA. What might be nuanced in our study is that we examined job satisfaction qualitatively, instead of relying on instrumentation. This particular study does have a smaller sample size, but what we found is that teachers were able to share both positive and negative factors that influence their satisfaction. We believe that this leads to the examination of teacher job satisfaction on a continuum instead of a dichotomy. We would urge the field to consider this as we continue to see large numbers of teachers leaving the profession altogether. Our data show that teachers can be satisfied with some parts of their jobs but dissatisfied with others. We feel that our duty is to highlight and elevate the voices of those teachers who are telling us what could be better about their jobs and try to make changes both with policy from the top and logistics within school buildings.

We are excited to be presenting in the Educational Change SIG because we believe that this is the right group to begin having conversations about how to make the lives of teachers better. As educational researchers, we often have ideas about what might work but need to be able to test and evaluate those ideas.

Excerpts from the LtC interview with Chanteliese Watson, Michigan State University, Corrie Stone-Johnson, University of Buffalo, Sheneka Williams, Michigan State University, whose presentation is titled: “Leading through Crisis: School Leadership and Professional Capital During COVID-19”

LTC: What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?

Chanteliese Watson, Corrie Stone-Johnson, Sheneka Williams: Findings from our study have important implications for school leaders who want to cultivate more professional capital in their schools. Undergirding our study is the relatively underexplored concept of professional capital. Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) describe professional capital as an “investment” that “requires teachers to be highly committed, thoroughly prepared, continuously developed, properly paid, well networked with each other to maximize their own involvement, and able to make effective judgments using all their capabilities and experience” (p. 3). Professional capital includes a mix of three other capitals: human capital, or “the talent of individuals”; social capital, “the collaborative power of the group”; and decisional capital, “the wisdom and expertise to make sound judgments about learners that are cultivated over many years” (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013, p. 37).

Our findings suggest that professional capital may not be a static concept but rather a fluid one. Understanding the fluid nature of professional capital can lead to strengthening its core components (human, social, and decisional capital), which are associated with better outcomes for schools. Our focus in this paper is on decisional capital, as the pandemic paradoxically allowed leaders to make many decisions about teaching, learning, and communication that are typically more centralized.

We also found that while many schools demonstrate “high” professional capital, they frequently differed in terms of how the three forms of capital were operationalized. For example, one school might have high social and high human capital but low decisional capital, and another might have low social and high human and decisional capital. With our ranking system, these schools rated the same but clearly differ in terms of how capital is operationalized. As such, our findings are somewhat counterintuitive; school leaders may not need to strive simply to increase social capital and create more collaborative relationships between school employees and others working in the education system, for example, in order to strengthen professional capital, but rather to understand what challenges their schools face and which forms of capital will help them reach their goals by devoting more time and resources to these efforts. In continuing with our above example, instead of strengthening its social capital with more relationships, the school may need to focus on strengthening its decisional capital by increasing communication with parents and teachers to provide uniformed school operations. By using the AERA annual meeting as a stage to introduce the importance of identifying professional capital at work in the school context, researchers and practitioners can work together to address these questions and strengthen the bridge between scholarship and practice.

Excerpts from the LtC interview with Dr. Mia Treacy Dr. Margaret Nohilly Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, whose presentation is titled: “New Child Protection Mandatory Reporting Requirements for Irish Teachers: Implementation Challenges and Barriers“

LTC: What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?

Dr. Mia Treacy Dr. Margaret Nohilly: We hope that our research can reinforce the need for mandated systemic change to be accompanied by thoughtful, incremental, practical support for teachers, if such educational policy change is to be implemented as intended at a practical level in a school context. Specifically, we hope that our research can dispel the myth that a linear relationship exists between the existence of mandated reporting requirements, even when underpinned by legislation, and teachers’ actual reporting of child protection concerns. Whilst protocols and procedures, including mandated reporting, assist in streamlining processes and promote standardization, there is little evidence to suggest that such initiatives in isolation result in increased numbers of children being protected from harm. Any such initiative requires tangible supports including targeted training and mentoring because we know from research that reporting child abuse is a complex process for teachers. Worryingly, there is also international research highlighting teachers’ under-reporting of child protection concerns. Several factors have been found in research to influence reporting of child protection concerns including reporter knowledge; reporter fears and concerns; reporter belief systems; specific case characteristics; compassion fatigue; inadequate training; and secondary traumatic stress.

This research is important because it reports on the experiences of Irish primary schools at a unique point in time, a time in which teachers must adhere to mandatory reporting obligations for child abuse and neglect for the first time. However, this research highlights the many implementation challenges and barriers that teachers face in fulfilling their statutory obligations including DLPs’ unfamiliarity with the procedures, and their dissatisfaction with the training for their role; low levels of teacher preparedness for the mandated reporting role; teacher concerns about the consequences of reporting; and a dearth in quality teacher education. It is recommended that such educational change be supported by quality, sustained support for teachers including improved teacher education that provide opportunities for in-person interaction and meaningful participation.

Excerpts from the LtC interview with Jayson W. Richardson and Sahar Khawaja, University of Denver, whose presentation is titled: “Systematic Review of Leadership for Deeper Learning”

LTC: What are some of the ideas you hope the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA can learn from your work related to practice, policy, and scholarship?

Jayson W. Richardson and Sahar Khawaja: The hope is that the audience will better understand the current body of literature around leading schools for deeper learning which involves giving kids more choice, voice, and agency and initiating systemic changes like project-based learning, competency-based assessments, internship, and graduate profiles. Given that the literature body is not that robust, we hope that the audience will be inspired to pursue new lines of inquiry that focus on inspiring the field around leading schools for deeper learning.

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Looking ahead in 2023: Scanning the predictions for education

Posted on January 18, 2023 by | 1 comment

This week, Thomas Hatch pulls together IEN’s annual collection of articles that look into the future of schools and education. Last week’s post featured articles reviewing key stories and developments from 2022 and you can also revisit posts looking back on previous years (2021, 2020, 2019 part 1, 2019 part 2) and looking to the future (2022, 2021 part 1, 2021 part 2, 2020).

2023 already seems to be shaping up to be the year of CHAT-GPT and AI in education so it is perhaps not a surprise that many forward-looking articles focus on educational technology, but some efforts are also attempting to anticipate the future for business, financing and philanthropy in education. Readers can also explore a few articles that anticipate key issues that will be on the agenda in a specific region (Ireland, California, Ohio), and you can even look to see whether the National Center for Education Statistics predictions for 2023 (made in 2016) have come true. Although the predictions in the articles overall suggest some reasons to be hopeful, the challenging economic conditions and a looming financial cliff in the US stemming from the influx of funding to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic indicate some significant problems ahead. For other perspectives on the future, on January 25th, Getting Smart will be holding its annual “What’s Next in Learning?” town hall to explore innovations “driving the most equitable and scalable changes in education.”

With ChatGPT, Education May Never Be the Same, AEI

The Future of the High School Essay: We Talk to 4 Teachers, 2 Experts and 1 AI Chatbot, The 74

Imagining What Comes Next:  Schools Must Embrace the Looming Disruption of ChatGPT, The 74

How AI will change Education, Transcend Newsletter

4 K–12 Tech Trends to Follow in 2023, EdTech

“The biggest trends have an eye on physical security, virtual reality and a clear transition away from the front of the classroom as the focus.” 

37 predictions about edtech’s impact in 2023, eSchool News

Discover the Top Hurdles, Accelerators and Tech Enablers Driving K-12 Innovation in 2023, COSN

“The three most important hurdles for education in 2023 will be attracting and retaining educators and IT professionals, designing effective digital ecosystems and digital equity.”

2023 State of Edtech Fundraising, Transcend Newsletter

6 Essential Predictions for the Education Market in 2023, EdWeek Market Brief

The public finance outlook for 2023: Prepare to slog, Governing

“Disinflation and economic deceleration will dominate state and local budgets and investments. Cash is king, at least for a while. Payroll costs will outrace revenues. It’s going to be a year for muddling through.“

Educators, buckle up: A bumpy economic ride lies ahead, District Administrator

“We’re actually calling 2024-25 ‘the bloodletting’… Public education has not seen this sort of right-sizing, fiscal cliff, whatever you want to call it, of this magnitude at any time, including the last recession”—Marguerite Roza quoted in District Administrator

Philanthropy Trend Watch: A Few Ways the Sector Is Changing for the Better — and the Worse, Inside Philanthropy

Steal These Resolutions: 7 Experts Share How Schools Can Tackle Climate Change in 2023, Education Week

What’s next? Our predictions on the issues to dominate education in 2023, The Irish Times

California education issues to watch in 2023 — and predictions of what might happen, EdSource

Five predictions for Ohio education in 2023, Fordham Institute

Projections of Education Statistics to 2023, NCES

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Happy New Year from IEN!

Posted on December 28, 2022 by | Leave a comment

IEN will be taking a break over New Year’s returning with our first stories of the year on January 9th. In the meantime, please revisit some of our most viewed stories of the year and have a restful, peaceful, and healthy New Year!

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

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

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

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

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

Liceo San Nicolas Virtual School Visit (Chile)

Promoting equity through language access: A virtual visit to Liceo San Nicolas (Chile) and Easton Academy (UK)

https://fountfornations.org/

Building equal learning opportunities for differently-abled children in Malawi: An interview with Patience Mkandawire on the evolution of Fount for Nations (Part 1)

Central Square Foundation 

From a “wide portfolio” to systemic support for foundational learning: The evolution of the Central Square Foundation’s work on education in India (Part 1)

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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

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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

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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. 

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The Role of Research, Advocacy, and the Law in Educational Equity: A conversation with Preston Green

Posted on September 21, 2022 by | Leave a comment

In this month’s Lead the Change interview Preston Green highlights issues, challenges and opportunities for scholars to use legal theories and tools to pursue educational equity. Green is the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the University of Connecticut, where he is also a professor of educational leadership and law. 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. Where does research focused on the legal principles and ramifications of particular policies fit in with the call? With educational change more broadly?

Preston Green: Scholars, through their research and advocacy, can help bring about the passage of laws that cause schools to adopt equitable policies and practices. School desegregation is an example. Indeed, the most famous instance of the power of research is the expert social science testimony co-authored by Dr. Kenneth Clark, which the Supreme Court cited in Brown v. Board of Education (Legal Defense Fund, 2022). To this day, scholars are conducting research that identifies the benefits of school desegregation and the policies that bring about desegregation, even though the judiciary is less supportive. 

“Scholars, through their research and advocacy, can help bring about the passage of laws that cause schools to adopt equitable policies and practices.”

Additionally, educational research can encourage the passage of laws that cause schools to cease classroom practices that disproportionately harm minority groups. For example, scholars have documented the disparate suspension and expulsion rates experienced by Black students and students with disabilities. They have urged policymakers to use the legal tools at their disposal to guard against the educational practices that create these disparities. This effort helped lead to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issuing a Dear Colleague Letter in 2014 that provided guidance for implementing disciplinary policies that do not unduly impact Black students. Although the Trump administration subsequently rescinded this guidance, the Biden administration is considering its reinstatement (Belsha, 2022). The Biden administration also issued federal guidance advising school districts to protect the civil rights of students with disabilities (Belsha, 2022). Researchers can continue to provide support for the adoption of policies and laws at both the federal and state levels that cause schools to develop disciplinary practices that do not unduly impact Black students.

Similarly, scholars can conduct research and develop legal theories that will protect LGBTQ+ students from discriminatory treatment and harassment. Due in part to their research and advocacy, the OCR issued a notice of interpretation declaring that Title IX, the federal statute that forbids sex discrimination by schools, encompasses “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). However, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Carson v. Makin (2022), which held that Maine could not prohibit parents from using tuition assistance funds for education at parochial schools, is very concerning for LGBTQ+ students, parents, and teachers. Scholars can continue to play a role in this ongoing fight against discrimination.

With respect to educational change more broadly, research based on legal principles can help policymakers adopt laws that protect students and communities. Educational privatization is illustrative. Supporters of privatization have asserted that educational reforms, such as school vouchers and charter schools, will help minority communities obtain educational outcomes that have proven elusive in the traditional public-school setting. However, in exchange for these educational benefits—which are not guaranteed—students and communities may forfeit constitutional rights and community resources (Green & Connery, 2022). This example shows that scholars must be sure to study the possible legal tradeoffs posed by any broad proposal for educational change.

LtC: Recently, there have been a rash of Supreme Court decisions that have fundamentally reshaped American society and schools including, but not limited to, women’s rights to bodily autonomy, guns, the use of public funds for religious schooling, and shifting rules regarding prayer in schools. Your work examines how law shapes education broadly and specifically. How might educational change scholars understand the impact of some of these rulings on the U.S. education system?

PG: Educational scholars should understand that the recent outbreak of Supreme Court decisions signals the Court’s willingness to reject decades of legal precedent. Legal precedent refers to the concept that court decisions serve as legal authority for deciding future cases with similar facts and issues (Legal Information Institute, 2020). Individuals and institutions come to rely on the protections and rights created by these decisions. Because of this reliance on precedent, many supporters of abortion were shocked by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973). Justice Clarence’s Thomas’s concurrence, which declared that protections for birth control, same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage were also in danger, was even more stunning.

Similarly, the Court’s religion decisions this past term indicate that long-standing legal precedents in education are no longer safe. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Court ruled that a school district violated the Free Exercise Clause by disciplining a public-school coach for praying after games in view of his players. Lupu and Tuttle (2022) explain that the Court’s decision ignored sixty years of precedent under the Establishment Clause, which gave schools the authority to police the “communication between a coach or teacher and those under their charge.” Instead, the Court implemented a rule requiring the Establishment Clause to be interpreted based on the historical understanding of the Founding Fathers. One can infer from this language that the Court might soon permit teachers to lead students in prayer (Lupu & Tuttle, 2022).

In addition to the concerns about LGBTQ+ discrimination discussed above, Carson v. Makin (2022) has major implications for charter schools. Charter schools are often defined as public schools that must operate in a secular manner. However, charter schools have many private characteristics, which could cause the Supreme Court to categorize them as a private school option. If the Court ruled this way, then states would have to provide funding for religious charter schools. Indeed, Justice Breyer raised this possibility in his dissenting opinion in the Carson case. States that disagree with this situation might respond either by capping the number of charter schools or dismantling this choice option altogether. 

LtC: How can those educational scholars and practitioners who wish to take civic action against discriminatory legal precedent engage in such efforts effectively? 

PG: Because of the solid conservative majority in the Supreme Court, it will be difficult for scholars and practitioners to challenge discriminatory practices in the federal courts. Therefore, they should also look to state law for protections. School finance litigation provides an example of this approach. After the Supreme Court ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez in 1973 that the Equal Protection Clause permits school funding disparities created by local property taxation, plaintiffs then challenged school finance formulas through state courts. School finance scholars, educational historians, and legal theorists have provided the research that have helped attorneys push for increased resources for disadvantaged communities.

A school desegregation case, Sheff v. O’Neill (1996) also demonstrates how educational researchers can help litigators challenge discriminatory practices in state courts. After the Supreme Court ruled that de facto segregation – racial separation that is not caused by intentional governmental policies – did not violate the Constitution, the federal courts became a much less effective venue for combatting school segregation. Lead attorney John Brittain and his colleagues responded to this obstacle by convincing the Connecticut Supreme Court that de facto segregation violated the state constitution. Brittain supported this claim using expert testimony from educational scholars who showed the negative impact that school segregation had on Hartford’s urban schools.

LtC: What issues of law, education, policy, and change do you see as ripe for research in the coming months and years?

PG: One topic that is ripe for research is the relationship between race and school funding. Despite decades of school desegregation and school finance litigation, a report by the non-profit group EdBuild found that school districts serving predominantly nonwhite students received $23 billion less than white districts during the 2015–16 school year. According to the report, the average nonwhite district received $2,226 less than a white school district per student. Racial disparities remained even after controlling for wealth: Poor-white school districts still received around $1,500 more per student than their poor-nonwhite counterparts (cited by Green, Baker, and Oluwole 2021).

“Scholars and practitioners should also look to state laws for protections.”

Scholars have begun to explore the reasons for these disparities. Culprits include an array of local, state, and federal housing discrimination policies and practices over the course of more than a century (Baker, DiCarlo, & Green, 2022; Lukes & Cleveland, 2021). I sincerely hope that scholars help litigators develop legal strategies and policy solutions to tackle these disparities in the courts and through legislation.

References
Baker, B., DiCarlo, M., & Green, P. (2022). Segregation and school funding: How housing
discrimination reproduces unequal opportunity. Retrieved August 8, 2022 from https://www.shankerinstitute.org/segfunding

Belsha, K. (2022, July 19). Feds urge schools to reexamine discipline of students with disabilities, calling it ‘an urgent need.’ Retrieved September 1, 2022 from https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/7/19/23270102/school-discipline-guidance-students-with-disabilities.

Carson v. Makin, 142 U.S. 1987 (2022).

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, 142 U.S. 2228 (2022).

Green, P., Baker, B., & Oluwole, J. (2021). School finance, race, and reparations. Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice, 27, 484-558.

Green, P., & Connery, C. (2022). Beware of educational blackmail: How can we apply lessons from environmental justice to urban charter school growth? South Carolina Law Review, 73, 643-74.

Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist., 142 S.Ct. 2407 (2022).

Legal Defense Fund. (2022). A revealing experiment: Brown v. Board and the “Doll Test.” Retrieved September 1, 2022 from https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/significance-doll-test/.

Lukes, D., and Cleveland, C. (l2021). The lingering legacy of redlining on school funding, diversity, and performance (Annenberg Institute EdWorkingPaper: 21-363).

Lupu, I. & Tuttle, R. (2022, July 26). Response, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District – A Sledgehammer to the bedrock of nonestablishment. George Washington Law Review On the Docket, https://gwlr.org/kennedy-v-bremerton-school-district-a-sledgehammer-to-the-bedrock-of-nonestablishment/.

Legal Information Institute. (2020). Precedent. Retrieved August 29, 2022 from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/precedent.

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).

Sheff v. O’Neill, 678 A.2d 1267 (Conn. 1996).

U.S. Department of Education. (2021, June 16). U.S. Department of Education confirms Title IX
protects students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Retrieved September 1, 2022 from https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-confirms-title-ix-protects-students-discrimination-based-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity.

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Going back to school in 2022 (Part 3): Scanning the headlines from around the world

Posted on September 16, 2022 by | 3 comments

In recognition of the UN-sponsored Transforming Education Summit, Part 3 of our roundup of back-to-school headlines draws together links to the stories we’re seeing in some of the major sources of education news outside the US. Part 1 revealed some of the back-school issues highlighted in US (Hope and trepidation:  Scanning the back-to-school headlines in the US) and Part 2 looked specifically at the impact on schools of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic 2 (“Over it” but enable to escape it: Going back to school with COVID in 2022). A future post will survey some of the many stories we are seeing about the discussions, questions and challenges of the “teacher shortage.”  For back-to school headlines from fall 2021 see Going Back to School Has Never Been Quite Like This (Part 1): Pandemic Effects in the US; Going Back to School Has Never Been Quite Like This (Part 2): Quarantines, Shortages, Wildfires & Hurricanes; For fall 2020 see What does it look like to go back to school? It’s different all around the world…; for 2019 see Headlines Around the World: Back to School 2019 Edition.

A return to school after the COVID closures and hopes for a “bounce back” characterize some of the back-to-school headlines; but in Ukraine and some parts of the developing world, many of the headlines focus on critical challenges including violence, war, floods and famine that are continuing to keep some students, particularly girls, out of school.

“[F]or many students here and around the world, especially girls, there is no excitement around supply shopping or reuniting with their friends again — because none of that will happen at all. Between schools staying closed over fears of a new COVID-19 wave and other barriers to getting an education, back-to-school doesn’t look quite as bright.” – Back to school? Think again, Plan International

Afghanistan

For most teenage girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a year since they set foot in a classroom, AP

Bangladesh

Frequent blackouts, school and office hours cut: Is Bangladesh going way of Sri Lanka?, Firstpost

Seven classes a day during new school year in Bangladeshi high schools, bdnews24

“The government says it has changed the routines so that the students do not fall behind in lessons due to the two-day weekends”, bdnews24

France

French schools are back today: what changes for the year ahead?, The Connexion

Kenya 

Kenya postpones schools reopening a second time over vote tallying, The East African

India 

Parents in India choosing homeschooling for the new school year, The Indian Express

Italy

Italy reopens schools without masks, Wanted in Rome

Norway

At the same time that the students are going back to school, a major strike is simmering, Norway Posts English

Pakistan

Over 2 million students could give up education due to floods in Sindh, Pakistan, Pro Pakistani

No back-to-school for thousands of children as nearly 19,000 schools damaged, destroyed by floods in Pakistan, Save the Children

Philippines

Philippine kids back in school after 2 years lost to virus, AP News

Sri Lanka

Education Ministry in Sri Lanka announces change in conducting schools, Sri Lanka Internet Newspaper

Switzerland

Swiss apprenticeships bounce back after Covid-19 pandemic, Swissinfo

“Every August a new cohort of students begin their apprenticeships across Switzerland. The appetite for vocational training remains strong despite the impact of Covid-19, with experts pointing to a return to pre-pandemic levels.”

Thailand

Thai schools, unis fully reopen after 5 months of lockdown, The Nation Thailand

Uganda

Teenagers in Uganda offer insight into their return to school after enduring the world’s longest COVID school closure, NPR

Ukraine

The race is on across Ukraine to build new bunkers. Not for soldiers on the front lines, but students in schools, CNN

“The new school year is a day of celebration in Ukraine, where children dress up and give bouquets of flowers to their teachers. But Russia’s invasion has cast a shadow on the happy day. Now educational facilities across the country are racing to build bunkers and bomb shelters for returning students,” CNN

Pencil, chalk and first-aid kits: Ukrainian children return to school in the midst of war, New York Times

Traumatized and displaced but determined, kids in Ukraine head back to school, NPR

Ukrainian Refugees Head Back To School In Poland, Forbes

‘We are in this together’: the Ukrainians starting a new German school year, The Guardian

 “Ukrainian teachers vital for providing ‘welcome classes’ to 150,000 children who fled to Germany after Russian invasion”, The Guardian

Back to school for Ukranian Refugees, Expats means Fresh Start with Old Fears, The74

Yemen

Children in war-torn Yemen skip class to survive ‘misery’, France 24

Venezuela

““Right now, I don’t even have a pencil for my children to start classes in September,” said Florena Delgado, who teaches first and fifth grades at two schools in one of the lowest-income neighborhoods of the capital, Caracas”- NBC News

 Teachers in Venezuela march, threaten to strike over low pay, few resources, NBC News

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