Tag Archives: Lead the Change

Teaching in the Age of Generative AI: Lead the Change Interview with Bernardo Feliciano

Posted on November 6, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

In October’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview Bernardo Feliciano’s discusses his work through the AITeach Co-design Lab at UMass Lowell; this work brings educators, researchers, and technologists together to co-create strategies and tools for teaching in this age of AI. The LtC series is produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.

Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?

Bernardo Feliciano (BF): Currently I am working with colleagues to build a co-design lab that brings together educators from very different contexts to develop approaches to teaching and learning in a world where generative AI is a reality. The lab is called the AITeach Co-design Lab @ UMass Lowell. (The hyperlink goes to one of many one-pagers we have been developing for partners representing different disciplines and sectors).

In the AITeach Co-design Lab, as collaborators we aim to create a structured space where we as a diverse group of educators, researchers, and technologists co-develop practical tools, strategies, and prototypes that respond to the reality of generative AI in education. The intention is not only to design usable products but also to study how to structure co-design itself to help schools navigate AI’s challenges and opportunities. In our co-design sessions, educators, researchers, and technology build spaces where we can address challenges in education and AI that are too complex for any one actor to solve (Snowden & Boone, 2007; Senge, 1990). The Lab functions as a structured environment where we can bring our problems of practice, iterate on small pilots, and use those cycles to build local capacity rather than waiting for top-down policy.

As an adjunct professor, I am also teaching a class on family and community engagement with schools. These roles constantly remind me that people bring distinct personal, professional, and institutional histories into every space. For me, futuring is less about projecting a single vision of “Education with a capital E” and more about the relational, actor-to-actor work of helping people shape their futures from the personal, professional, and institutional histories they inherit. That’s the direction my work is taking me.

The way I approach this is by convening diverse groups around developing tangible projects. The process matters as much as the specific product, whether it’s a research article, curriculum binder, a chatbot teaching/learning companion prototype, or a strategy for helping parents connect to schools. What is essential is how people can communicate their histories, connecting, adapting, negotiating, and reworking them to address problems in the present into a viable future. The varied personal and institutional histories participants bring are neither external resources to be tapped nor barriers to be overcome, but active materials in our negotiation of effective, situated teaching and learning. Innovation emerges as members work through these histories, adapting them in relation to one another to meet particular needs. I may not care whether my own work is labeled research, practice, or a mix of both, but as co-designers we must respect each other’s perspectives, even as those perspectives shift through negotiation. AI brings this into focus. At its core, AI is an immense bank or reservoir of the past, trained on and providing access to what is already known or has already been done. The future is not contained in the AI itself—nor can it be left to AI to imagine for us. The future comes from how we draw on that past to build something meaningful with and for the people in front of us. We explore generative AI as both a design partner and an object of study. Co-designers prototype tools like tutoring agents or parent communication bots, while also interrogating what it means to teach with, against, or around AI in everyday classrooms.

Of course, I have to use my own history, experience, and learning as a researcher, teacher, administrator, entrepreneur, and non-profit professional to leverage the network of histories that generative AI offers. But more than before, I can inform, contextualize, and connect the convening and teaching I do now with the work of so many more people and peoples (to some extent) who came before.

LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?

BF: One lesson is that teachers cannot be treated as passive implementers of someone else’s design. Too often, educational change is imagined as developing a curriculum or program in one place and distributing it everywhere. That assumes context does not matter and is peripheral rather than integral to learning and teaching. Our relationship to knowledge is always relational and always contextual.

Education has always lived in the complex space where cause and effect are only clear in hindsight (Snowden & Boone, 2007). Simon (1973) describes these as ill-structured domains existing in a state of dynamic heterogeneity in which diverse elements and relationships continually shift, preventing stable equilibrium and requiring ongoing adaptation (Pickett et al., 2017). Ill-structured problems cannot be solved by importing outside solutions but only by negotiation among those struggling with them. I do not believe that educational change—or improvement—comes from a fixed product or process delivered with fidelity. It is an ongoing process of learning through which people shape what they inherit—choosing what to keep, what to adapt, what to reject, and what to forget. It is a process I have found universally involves dynamics of local alliances, conflicts, and negotiations. The lesson I take from this is that if you want to improve schooling, you have to engage with the people who are doing the teaching and learning.

“We explore generative AI as both a design partner and an object of study . . . If you want to improve schooling, you have to engage with the people who are doing the teaching and learning.”

Working on my dissertation underscored this point. I wrote about using one-on-one meetings in a researcher-practitioner partnership to organize co-designing a computer science (CS) curriculum for middle schools. My experience brought home to me that there is no such thing as “shared understanding.” What emerges is never a single, final agreement but alignment good enough to act together, sustained through negotiation as perspectives shift. For example, teachers and researchers sometimes differed on how much detail a lesson plan should contain. Some wanted highly specified steps, others only broad outlines. Rather than force uniformity, we kept both versions and moved forward. That flexibility allowed the work to continue without pretending the difference had been resolved.

My work with different kinds of organizations has shown me how funding and infrastructure shape what is possible. This point is kind of obvious but still seems to bear repeating. Creativity and goodwill are not enough without sustainable and intentional support. For example, in the CS Pathways partnership, we shifted from MIT App Inventor to Code.org’s App Lab during remote learning. That solved one problem but created new ones around district procurement and accounts, showing how infrastructure shapes outcomes. In our recent Lab kickoff meeting, one participant noted that even when AI-enabled data tools existed, district procurement rules blocked their use — showing how funding and infrastructure filter what is possible.

At the same time, I saw that students’ and teachers’ own histories can be powerful resources for change, if we work out how to support them as they need to be supported. In one part of the CS Pathways project, students framed their app design around civic issues in their community, such as neighborhood safety and access to resources. Their lived experiences pushed the curriculum beyond abstract coding skills into work that mattered locally. This reframed computer science as a civic as well as a technical practice and shaped how we sequenced and supported instruction in those classes.

LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?

BF: In my experience, the field often moves toward building monoliths: “the system,” “the conceptual framework,” “the workforce,” “education technology.” Instead of these monoliths, we need to work with lesson plans and pacing decisions that make up “the system,” the overlapping frameworks that guide practice rather than a single “conceptual framework,” the varied teacher and student histories that constitute “the workforce,” and the specific tools and artifacts, from binders to chatbots, that become “education technology.” Monoliths can make things easier to talk about but also risk obscuring the negotiations and translations that are inseparable from those very systems. These relational dynamics are not add-ons. They are the system itself, as much as the actors are (Latour, 2005). As in the earlier example of teachers’ differing preferences for lesson plan detail, the system took shape through the negotiation itself, not through a fixed agreement imposed from outside.

“Relational dynamics are not add-ons. They are the system itself.”

I would like to see the field shift toward paying closer attention to the actor-to-actor interactions and dimensions. That is where change takes shape: when people with different histories and contexts negotiate how to carry those histories forward. I see promising work moving in this direction: Playlab.ai’s participatory approach to AI tool-building, Victor Lee’s co-design of AI curricula with teachers, Penuel and Gallagher’s (2017) and Coburn et al.’s (2021) and others’ emphasis on research–practice partnerships , and Bryk et al.’s (2015) improvement science cycles. The Cynefin co-design principles we are enacting in AITeach — probe, sense, respond — are themselves evidence of a field moving toward valuing negotiation and adaptation over fixed models (Snowden & Boone, 2007).

This is also where I find hope. In my dissertation research, I have seen how a small change in the structure of a meeting can reshape how colleagues relate to one another. Having a teacher go first in one-on-one meetings shifted the dynamic, allowing their concerns to set also frame a negotiation rather being a response to requirements. I have seen middle school students reframe ideas in ways that exceeded what I could have planned, such as attempting to build an app to help students and teachers share resources more effectively in school. Students translated apps they were familiar with into tools for their own purposes, which required reimagining instruction around their designs rather than trying to make pre-existing apps seem interesting. This approach may cause an instructional headache but least it provided an authentic motivation for learning an aspect of coding.

Some might call this the interest or work “micro-level,” but I avoid that term because it suggests hierarchies and fixed layers. I prefer to describe it as the translational dimension: the ongoing work of shaping futures from inherited histories by deciding what to keep, what to adapt, and what to let go.

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Posted in Interviews, Lead the Change

Tagged AERA, ai, artificial intelligence, education, Educational change, Educational Leadership, Lead the Change, Teaching, technology

Teachers, Teaching and Educational Change in Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Israel, Malaysia, Scotland, South Korea, Switzerland, and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 7)

Posted on April 24, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

Teacher led learning circles, teacher collaboration, and tacit and unspoken logics of educational change take center stage in the last post with excerpts of Lead the Change interviews with presenters from the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association this week. These excerpts are from three symposia sponsored by the Educational Special Interest Group. For previous posts featuring presentations at this year’s AERA conference see Part 1 “Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change,” Part 2 “Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2),” Part 3 “Educational Transformation in Schools and Colleges in the US and South Africa: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 3),” Part 4 Teacher Education, Teacher Certification, and Teacher Meetings in Israel, Korea, Switzerland and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 4), Part 5 “Anti-discrimination policies in Massachusetts and socioeconomic education reform in Türkiye,” and Part 6 “Critical Consciousness, Digital Equity, and Critical Unschooling in the United States: Lead the Change Interviews.” The Lead the Change interviews are produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.

Sustaining Productive Teacher Collaborations: Infrastructures Across International Contexts – Bryant Jensen (BJ), Brigham Young University, Amanda Datnow (AD), University of California, San Diego, Sarah Woulfin (SW), University of Texas at Austin

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

BJ, AD, & SW: We hope the session audience will take at least three ideas from our session. First, that instructional infrastructures matter a great deal in realizing and sustaining productive collaborations among teachers. They include, for example:

● A regular time and place for small teams of teachers to plan and study their practice (Borko, 2004; Gallimore et al., 2009);

● Common pacing and instructional aims (Garet et al., 2001; Supovitz, 2002);

● Peer facilitation of team meetings (Andrews-Larson et al., 2017); and

● Protocols to guide teacher inquiry (Little and Curry, 2009; Segal, 2018).

“Instructional infrastructures matter a great deal in realizing and sustaining productive teacher collaboration.”

Chapman et al. show how conditions across Dundee schools shaped the collective agency of teachers and school leaders alike. They provided opportunities for building trust among collaborating teachers and shared beliefs in themselves and in their schools which can influence the sustainability of equitable practice. Drawing on Sarason’s (1972) idea of “settings,” Jensen et al. illustrate the nested nature of instructional infrastructure to sustain improvement. In their ten-year case study, teacher teams in a middle school were led by peer teacher leaders; teacher leaders met monthly to debrief, plan, and prepare their team meetings; and settings for teacher leaders were organized by school administrators who also maintained a monthly setting. This system of settings sustained instructional change from the bottom up and top down; student academic performance gains on state tests over a ten-year period demonstrate sustainability.

Second, sustaining and scaling productive collaborations for equity in teaching and learning are related but distinct. In previous research, Tappel et al. (2022) showed how sustainability concerns the continuity, integration, and adaptability of change, whereas scale is about expansion and replication of change–to reach more teachers and students. In our session, Lefstein’s paper—an account of expanding a teacher collaboration program in Israel from 11 teams in 4 schools in the first year to 458 teams in 158 schools in the fifth year—illustrates tensions between sustainability and scale. He shows how smaller-scale change in Israel was more feasible because external resources enabled the infrastructure teachers needed whereas large-scale change was much less effective at sustaining change because existing infrastructures were poorly equipped to support the collaborative learning processes that researchers and designers sought to cultivate.

Third, sustainability should consider the perspectives and experiences of teachers. In their paper, Datnow and colleagues show that teachers change their routine ways of interacting and talking together as they change in the ways they think—about students, about teaching, and about collaborating. Infrastructures to sustain productive collaboration, they argue, should acknowledge how teachers’ thinking and practice develop and change over the course of reform. In their qualitative analysis of teacher and administrator data from four schools across four years, the authors identify institutional impediments or threats to teachers becoming more collaborative: accountability pressures, complex team dynamics, and the conclusion of capacity-building support provided by their research project.

Resilient pathways: Toward political theories of action for achieving educational equity – Aireale J. Rodgers (AR), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Heather N. McCambly (HM), University of Pittsburgh, Román Liera (RL), Montclair State University

AR, HM, & RL: Given the precarity of this sociopolitical moment and people’s varied sensemaking around it, we understand and appreciate the urge toward action. So often, educational change work focuses on doing something differently. Indeed, now is a moment where bold action is required. Yet, lessons from radical organizer-educators like Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (2023) teach us that a move to action without critical reflection and collective organizing won’t free us. At worst, moving too quickly to action can rebirth the same system in a different form.

“A move to action without critical reflection won’t free us.”

So rather than move directly to action, our intention with this symposium is to provide AERA members with an opportunity to explore where we should persist and where we might break from common theories of change toward equity and liberation in higher education. Through empirical cases focused on ethnic based community organizations (Hailu, 2025), Boards of Trustees (Rall, 2025), faculty cluster hiring (McCambly et al., 2025), and scholarly papers exploring the permanence of racism (Tichavakunda, 2025) and the fallacy of white supremacy (Davis III et al., 2025) in postsecondary institutions, we offer a generative pause to consider the often tacit and unspoken logics that guide our actions in an attempt to better name and collectively restrategize for future change efforts.

Teacher-Led Learning Circles: Professional Learning for Teachers’ Use of Formative Assessment to Improve Students’ Learning – Carol Campbell (CC), University of Edinburgh, Chris DeLuca (CD), Nathan Rickey (NR) & Danielle LaPointe-McEwan (DL), Queen’s University, Martin Henry (MH), Education International

CC, CD, NR, DL, MH: The research and practices connected to the Teacher-Led Learning Circles project offer hope for the powerful combination of effective professional learning for teacher leadership and the use of formative assessment to benefit students’ learning. It has long been established that teacher quality and teaching quality are central to educational change (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Education International and UNESCO, 2019; OECD, 2021; Thompson, 2021). Similarly, the potential of formative assessment and feedback has been integral to educational change, for example, in developments stemming from the seminal review by Black and Wiliam (1998) with the Assessment Reform Group, establishing foundational principles for assessment for learning (AfL).
Through the experiences and evidence from seven countries participating across four continents in the Teacher-Led Learning Circles project, overarching lessons identified in our final report (Campbell et al., 2024a, 2024b) include:

While sustained education renewal would require comprehensive educational change at the systems level, we found that professional learning can contribute to successful change efforts at the local level when:

● Supporting teachers in identifying and focusing on goals linked to their students’ needs and for teachers’ own professional learning needs. These twin goals can enhance both student agency and teacher leadership.

● Differentiating for teachers’ professional contexts and experiences and for their goals and approaches to formative assessment, including further differentiation with changing experiences over time.

● Offering quality content. However, quality of content needs to be balanced with quantity and differentiated to be relevant and practical.

● Providing active and collaborative professional learning opportunities. Supports for collaboration across geographical contexts is necessary and requires attention to both availability of online and in-person activities.

● Ensuring adequate resources such as funding to support access to expert resources, including facilitators, and time for professional development.

● Combined with system leadership, including teacher unions. Growth in teachers’ leadership, confidence, skills, and practices was beneficial, with impacts within and beyond their schools. It is also essential to engage and educate formal school leaders.

Moreover, we found that for change efforts were more likely to successfully reach the classroom through the use of formative assessment that:

● Involves a suite of highly interconnected practices that are all aimed at supporting student learning. The heart of the formative assessment process—i.e., teachers and students interpreting and using evidence of student learning to guide and promote learning—can be accessed and encouraged in multiple ways.

● Are adapted for local contexts and assessment systems. Formative assessment can operate within a variety of assessment cultures, even if specific practices are operationalized differently within these contexts.

● Occur across a range of teaching contexts, regardless of access to technology. When students had consistent access to devices and reliable internet connections, this could support formative assessment. Yet similar formative assessment practices were reported by teachers whose classes had limited or no access to devices or the internet.

● Is intentionally integrated into teachers’ pedagogical practices in their classrooms. In some cases, teachers’ strategies did not integrate or maximize the potential of formative assessment to further benefit students’ learning.

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Tagged education, Lead the Change, Learning, Teachers, Teaching, technology

Critical Consciousness, Digital Equity, and Critical Unschooling in the United States: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 6)

Posted on April 16, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

This week’s post includes excerpts from interviews with presenters discussing “Redefining leadership and equity in evolving educational spaces” at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association next week. For previous posts featuring presentions at this year’s AERA conference see Part 1 “Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change,” Part 2 “Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2),” Part 3 “Educational Transformation in Schools and Colleges in the US and South Africa: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 3),” Part 4 Teacher Education, Teacher Certification, and Teacher Meetings in Israel, Korea, Switzerland and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 4), and Part 5 “Anti-discrimination policies in Massachusetts and socioeconomic education reform in Türkiye.” The Lead the Change interviews are produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.

Action spaces to support teaching critical consciousness: Risk-taking within professional learning communities – Christina L. Dobbs, Boston University – Madora Soutter, Villanova University – Daren Graves, Simmons University – Elianny C. Edwards, College of the Holy Cross – Scott Seider, Brianna C. Diaz, Babatunde Alford, Kaila Daza, Sarah E. Fogelman, Trang U. Le, Alexandra Honeck, Hannah Choi, Yuwen Shen, & Hehua Xu, Boston College.

CD, MS, DG, EE, SS, BD, BA, KD, SF, TL, AH, HC, YS, & HX: We will present a project from the past several years called the Critical Crew Project. This project sought to teach middle grade students about critical consciousness (Freire, 1973), the ability to challenge and navigate oppressive forces, and to document how those schools used professional learning community (PLC) spaces to learn and teach critical consciousness with students during advisory meetings….We learned a great deal across this project about systems of multi-level change to build support for learning at a range of levels. Teachers needed space and support to learn about teaching critical consciousness that had structure without prescription. Our approach of having flexible tools with lots of space for specialization for contexts and particular students seemed to resonate with teachers. We found also that, as university partners, we served as conduits to research and other materials for PLCs and to use their feedback for refining the work, without being overly directive about the project. We also learned about producing a range of work products as a result of the project – academic papers, curricular materials, videos from classrooms, etc. – which has helped us push different levers, such as publishing research or presenting teacher workshops or building curriculum and participate in different conversations as a result of the work.

“Teachers needed space and support to learn about teaching critical consciousness that had structure without prescription.”

From Left to Right: Dr Christina Dobbs, Dr Scott Seider, Dr Daren Graves, Babatunde Alford

From Left to Right: Brianna Diaz, Dr Elianny Edwards, Kaila Daza

From Left to Right: Dr Trang Le, Alexandra Honeck, Hannah Choi

From Left to Right: Sarah Fogelman, Hehua Xu, and Dr Madora Soutter

Digital Equity and Inclusion: Insights into Educational Change and School Initiated Improvements – Christopher Sanderson, University of Arizona

CS: My research offers insights into the challenges and strategies facing K-12 school districts in their efforts to promote digital equity and inclusion, providing valuable lessons for practice, policy, and scholarship. My work emphasizes the importance of integrating digital tools and providing professional development for educators to address disparities effectively. For example, I highlight the need for further training to bridge digital literacy fissures. From a policy perspective, I encourage sustained district-level planning and collaboration to tackle systemic barriers, such as the expiration of temporary programs like the CARES Act and ACP (Federal Communications Commission, n.d.; US Department of Education, 2024). Digital equity must be treated as a long-term priority rather than a short-term response to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic (Petersen, 2024).

I also emphasize holistic definitions of digital equity and inclusion, which include access to affordable internet, devices, and the necessary digital skills. Collaborative approaches are essential, and I focus on engaging administrators, teachers, parents, and community members in co-creating solutions to foster a shared vision of digital equity and inclusion. My research highlights the importance of addressing systemic inequities and recognizing biases in policy and practice. For instance, I noted that federal programs often exclude K-12 schools, advocating for tailored, inclusive, sustainable, district-level strategies (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2024).

My work offers frameworks to explore the intersections of digital inclusion, systemic inequities, and community collaboration in educational change. It contributes to the growing body of literature on digital equity by providing insights into how schools can navigate barriers to ensure every student has the tools for success. Focusing on localized, context-driven solutions and collaborative efforts, this research aims to inform and create more equitable learning environments that address both immediate needs and long-term goals. This study may support school districts in assessing their progress toward digital equity and inclusion, offering recommended actions for transformative change. Through the collection and analysis of data, districts can identify patterns and make informed decisions on future steps.

The findings from this study can serve as a catalyst for action-oriented planning beyond its conclusion. The ultimate goal is to develop actionable strategies that help school districts achieve equitable student access. While an outsider can only begin to grasp the challenges students, communities, and schools face regarding technology access, internet connectivity, and digital skills development, addressing these barriers requires strategic, locally driven planning. Schools are complex and diverse, with digital equity and inclusion needs varying from one site to another. For example, one school might require more digital literacy training for caregivers, while another may need additional internet hotspots to ensure students can access devices outside school hours.

“The ultimate goal is to develop actionable strategies that help school districts achieve equitable student access.”

Achieving Excellence Academy: Critical Unschooling and the Promise of a Humanizing Education – Dr. María del Carmen Salazar & Nadia Saldaña-Spiegle, University of Denver, Ashlea Skiles, Denver Public Schools

MS, NS, AS: One of the central contributions of this research is the expansion of the concept of critical unschooling. We, the researchers, extend this concept by conceptualizing “home-based” as one’s sense of “home” which is inclusive of home culture, community, native language, intersectional identities, history, heritage, ancestors, and ultimately, of one’s full humanity. We, the researchers, put the concept of critical unschooling on the ground and bring to live a real-world example in an educational setting with secondary students and teachers of color. This is an important contribution to the field because it extends theory into practice.

Another important contribution of this research is that student voices are centered and the concept of critical unschooling is shaped by their experiences and insights. One of the most impactful findings is how students redefine excellence as a result of the Achieving Excellence Academy (AEA). As an example, one student stated, “Excellence is not just holding onto your goals, it’s going after and representing yourself, and reflecting yourself in your goals.” Another student emphasized, “Before, I only thought about excellence athletically and academically, but after this program, I think it’s cultural too…pride in your own culture, accepting other people’s cultures, and being woke.” The AEA expanded students’ perceptions of excellence to include a focus on their well-being and cultural pride. Moreover, teachers of color extended this concept into teaching and learning by sharing how they enacted critical unschooling.

“Before, I only thought about excellence athletically and academically, but after this program, I think it’s cultural too…pride in your own culture, accepting other people’s cultures, and being woke.”

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Posted in About K-12 International Education News, educational technology, equity, Home Schooling, Lead the Change, Teachers

Tagged education, educational technology, equity, homeschooling, Lead the Change, Learning, Professional Learning Community, Teachers, Teaching, technology

Anti-discrimination policies in Massachusetts and socioeconomic education reform in Türkiye

Posted on April 10, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

In Part 5 of the Lead the Change (LtC) interviews, IEN shares excerpts from interviews with the presenters discussing “Critical analysis of policy and school reform: Reimagining more just futures” at the upcoming Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association. For the other posts featuring presenters from this year’s AERA conference see Part 1 “Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change,” Part 2 “Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2),” Part 3 “Educational Transformation in Schools and Colleges in the US and South Africa: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 3),” Part 4 Teacher Education, Teacher Certification, and Teacher Meetings in Israel, Korea, Switzerland and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 4). These interviews are a part of a series produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.

‘Even-handed treatment of all sides’: A critical policy analysis of Massachusetts anti-discriminatory school committee proposals – Erin Nerlino (EN), Clark University, & Lauren Funk (LF), Boston University

EN & LF: By engaging in this work, we aim to enhance the knowledge that the field of Educational Change and the audience at AERA have about how some threats to equal education and student belonging occur locally within cities, towns, and school district communities. While much attention has rightly been focused on states that have more widespread discriminatory laws in place, such as Florida and Texas (Johnson, 2020), local communities in states such as Massachusetts are also facing divisive and discriminatory policies. Educators, parents, students, and community members are organizing in response to resist such policies in many districts; however, an increasing number of these discriminatory and divisive policies are arising (Feingold et al., 2023). We hope to shed light on the communal threat that these policies pose and break the silos of individual districts facing these policies to share resources, strategies, and experiences in successfully resisting.

“Threats to equal education and student belonging occur locally within cities, towns, and school district communities.”

Furthermore, much of the language and concepts used in these policies can initially seem benign, suggesting that all viewpoints are just and reasonable. For example, the four policies under study in this work use words and phrases such as “neutral,” “unbiased,” and “even-handed treatment of all sides.” These phrases assert the false idea that presenting all sides of a social policy issue constitutes neutrality and that neutrality itself is ideal and not taking a position. Many of the underlying implications impact already vulnerable student populations and hamper the efforts of educators. To refer back to the previously-mentioned phrase of an “even-handed treatment of all sides” as an example, this assertion opens up the classroom as a space that has the potential to deny students’ identities as it allows for individuals to voice problematic ideas based on race, sexual orientation, religion, social class, etc., in the name of covering “all sides” of an issue. By elucidating some of the problematic language, we hope to prepare fellow allies in practice, policy, and scholarship to productively challenge ideas that might threaten the belonging of all students in schools.

The implications of educational change on socioeconomically disadvantaged students – Elif Erberk (EE) Van Yuzuncu Yil University, & Yasar Kondakci (YK) Middle East Technical University

EE & YK: This study critically evaluates the impact of educational reforms on socioeconomically disadvantaged students and invites both policymakers and practitioners (e.g., teachers and principals) to tailor measures that mitigate the negative impact of the reform on those students. The active involvement of teachers and principals in the design phase of the reform, empowering them during the implementation by providing additional resources, and granting decision-making latitude to contextualize the implementation in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas are practices highlighted by the teachers and principals. However, specific recommendations are made for policymakers, who are encouraged to demonstrate participatory and democratic practices during the design phase of the reform. Additionally, fostering a collaborative climate and inviting both internal (teachers and principals) and external (e.g., universities, labor unions) stakeholders to contribute to the design and implementation of reforms is vital for diminishing the impact on socio-economically disadvantaged students.

“Policymakers are encouraged to demonstrate participatory and democratic practices during the desire phase of the reform.”

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Teacher Education, Teacher Certification, and Teacher Meetings in Israel, Korea, Switzerland and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 4)

Posted on April 7, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

This week IEN shares Part 4 of the Lead the Change (LtC) series interviewing presenters participating in the Educational Change Special Interest Group sessions at the upcoming Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association. This post includes presenters from the session titled: “Equity-minded leaders transforming the global educational landscape.” For Part 1 see “Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change,” Part 2 “Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2)” and Part 3 “Educational Transformation in Schools and Colleges in the US and South Africa: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 3).” These interviews are part of the Lead the Change series produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.

Historical changes in teacher education in Israel: An analysis of professional perceptions from 1960 to 2020 – Ayelet Becher (AB) & Izhak Berkovich (IB), The Open University of Israel

AB & IB: Our work offers valuable contributions to the practice of teacher education. Teacher education curricula should respond to the cyclical nature of educational change, preparing teachers for shifts in pedagogical trends and the potential return of seemingly outdated practices. Instead of presenting a singular “best-practice” model, teacher education programs should equip pre-service teachers with the adaptability and critical thinking skills to navigate fluctuating pedagogical paradigms. For example, this could involve teaching both content-centered and student-centered methods and conducting simulations to help teachers practice adjusting their approach based on different classroom scenarios. This also necessitates supporting prospective teachers in forming a strong professional identity and developing reflexive skills. Curricula could integrate historical analysis and context-awareness practices, enabling teachers to understand the deeper social and political forces that shape educational policy and practices in their local context. Our study’s [Historical changes in teacher education in Israel: An analysis of professional perceptions from 1960 to 2020] findings underscore the importance of teachers’ adaptive expertise in responding to changing societal conditions and emerging needs. Teacher training should equip prospective teachers with versatile knowledge and skills to adapt to various contexts and specific learners while preserving their established pedagogic creed.

The study also contributes to educational policymaking. Given the cyclical nature of educational reform, it is crucial to focus education policy on incremental, sustainable improvements rather than rapid, radical shifts that may prove unsustainable. This requires developing adaptable teacher education policies that respond to shifts in societal values and priorities without abandoning fundamental principles of educational equity and justice. A “one-size-fits-all” approach is unlikely to succeed; effective policy requires adapting to specific contexts and addressing the unique needs and challenges of national systems. The long-term perspective necessary to address cyclical patterns demands a shift from short-term policy cycles to long-term planning horizons. Policymakers must avoid pursuing quick fixes and instead focus on fostering sustained, systemic changes that can withstand shifts in ideology and priorities. This might involve establishing broader cross-sectoral collaborations that include policymakers, teacher educators, researchers, and community stakeholders.

“Policymakers must avoid pursuing quick fixes and instead focus on fostering sustained, systemic changes that can withstand shifts in ideology and priorities.”

Lastly, our work contributes to the relatively limited body of scholarship that explores the historical path dynamics of educational change (e.g., Berkovich, 2019; Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006), shedding light on the interplay between past trends and present educational challenges. Our 60-year study highlights the significance of adopting a long-term perspective to understand educational shifts. Researchers would also benefit from examining the nuanced sociopolitical circumstances that mobilize, stabilize, and destabilize educational changes within specific contexts. We encourage a comparative analysis of long-term cyclical patterns in other national contexts to determine the scope and applicability of the cyclical model in diverse settings.

Developing the Korean version of the equity scenario survey: Pilot study – Sojung Park (SP), Nicholas S. Bell (NB), Elizabeth Slusarz (ES), University at Albany, State University of New York

SP, NB, & ES: Our study [Developing the Korean version of the Equity Scenario Response Survey] highlights a critical gap between teacher candidates’ self-perceived readiness to address racism and ableism in the classroom (as seen in quantitative data) and their actual preparedness (as revealed by scenario-based responses). To examine these discrepancies, we employed the Korean-adapted Equity Scenario Response Survey (ESRS-K)—a scenario-based tool derived from the ESRS (Bell & Codding, 2021)—which we translated and culturally tailored to capture equity-related dilemmas specific to Korean classrooms.

From a policy perspective, our results offer a roadmap for educational leaders in South Korea and other societies facing similar demographic shifts. Policymakers should leverage these findings to set clearer teacher certification requirements or require mandatory equity modules in teacher education curricula. By explicitly targeting racism, ableism, and related forms of discrimination, policy reforms can foster inclusive practices throughout national teaching standards.

“Policymakers should leverage these findings to set clearer teacher certification requirements or require mandatory equity modules in teacher education curricula.“

In terms of scholarly contributions, our research applies QuantCrit [a theory that uses quantitative methods in ways consistent with the tenets of Critical Race Theory] in a novel way, both theoretically and methodologically. Adapting the ESRS for a Korean setting not only refines its cultural relevance but also expands the global discourse on equity assessment tools. This contextualized application of QuantCrit can guide teacher education in other rapidly diversifying contexts, offering a model for how researchers and practitioners might evaluate teacher readiness in settings undergoing similar demographic changes.

Taken together, our work bridges theory—Critical Race Theory (CRT) through QuantCrit—and practice in the form of teacher training and classroom realities. We invite the AERA community to critically examine how traditional self-report measures can be supplemented with tools like scenario-based assessments. These tools uncover the complexities of equity education, moving beyond surface-level self-perceptions to provide deeper insights into candidates’ readiness to enact equitable practices.

Are team meetings a place for teacher learning? An ‘in situ’ analysis of meeting practices – Enikö Zala-Mezö (EZ), Zurich University of Teacher Education, & Amanda Datnow (AD) University of California San Diego

EZ & AD: In our paper, we address the question: How does professional learning—which is similar to “collective trial and error” in Haslanger’s (2023, p. 169) wording—unfold in team meetings in schools? We describe meeting practices ‘in situ’. Driven by practice theory (Reckwitz, 2002), ‘in situ’ means we focus on daily practices in schools as the unit of analysis. We analyze detailed audio-recorded data gathered in team meetings in three Swiss schools and two different teams within each school. We attend to discourse sequences with potential for knowledge generation, where future practices or new insights are produced. We build on the definition of generative sequences from Beech et al. (2010): “engagement between two or more people that goes beyond the trivial, which changes some meanings or processes and/or creates some new knowledge” (p. 1342). In other words, we are looking for instances in which educators engage in deeper discussions that are characterized by inquiry and problem solving.

A non-generative discussion would be one in which the team does not engage issues of teaching and learning in much depth and jumps to quick solutions, such as blaming students for their underachievement.

Our analysis reveals that, in the Swiss schools we studied, educators often organize highly structured meetings with full agendas that last around an hour (with some exceptions). These meetings tend to have very short sequences discussing up to 12 topics, which limits opportunities for deeper understanding, and joint learning. The generative aspect of the discourse was found to be low in many cases, yielding few opportunities for teacher learning. Additionally, the high level of structuring activities (introducing, summarizing, coordinating the discussion), along with the dominant role of the meeting leaders (who often have the lion’s share of speech time) and full agendas, suggests an underlying bureaucratic approach to team meetings. Managing organizational tasks tends to overshadow the learning opportunities for teachers, emphasizing administrative concerns over collaborative learning or reflective discussions. This structure implies that the primary focus of the meetings is on fulfilling organizational needs rather than fostering meaningful, collaborative learning experiences for the educators involved.

We believe these findings have important implications for research and practice. Our hope is to raise the consciousness of educational leaders, teachers, and external partners about the discourse in team meetings. Teacher collaboration meetings are expected to be a vehicle of educational improvement (Vescio et al., 2008; Lefstein et al., 2020), and our analysis suggests they could be much more generative of learning than they presently are. There is of course no recipe for changing practices; rather, shifts happen through continuous inquiry, a trial-and-error process drawn on educators’ deep professional knowledge. The research community could also play a role through gathering and sharing micro-analytic data of meeting practices and conditions and partnering with educators in an inquiry process.

“Our hope is to raise the consciousness of educational leaders, teachers, and external partners about the discourse in team meetings.“

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Tagged education, Educational Policy, Interview, Israel, Korea, Lead the Change, Learning, Professional Developmnat, Switzerland, teacher education, Teachers, Teaching, technology, United States

Educational Transformation in Schools and Colleges in the US and South Africa: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 3)

Posted on April 1, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

In part 3 of this month‘s Lead the Change (LtC) interviews, IEN shares excerpts from interviews with the presenters discussing “Equity-minded leaders transforming the global educational landscape,” at the upcoming Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association. These presenters will address topics like quantifying superficial institutional social justice policies in universities and the importance of rejecting copy paste reform models in grade schools. These interviews are a part of a series featuring presentations sponsored by the Educational Change Special Interest Group produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website. For Part 1 see “Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change” and Part 2 “Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2)”

“It’s not always about college”: Teachers’ sense-making around the shifting purpose of high school —Aaron Leo (AL) & Kristen Wilcox (KW), University at Albany (SUNY)

AL & KW: NYKids’ research offers a unique contribution to the field of Educational Change considering we are investigating schools which have sustained above-predicted outcomes for an extended time. As all schools are unique, our findings are not meant to be copied and pasted onto every location; instead, we view the lessons learned from positive outlier schools as a partial roadmap which can inspire and inform educators grappling with challenges in their own particular school-community contexts. Moreover, our qualitative approach provides a way to hear directly from educators as they describe, in their own words, their unique school and community ecologies, the obstacles they have encountered, and the particular policies, practices, and programs they have designed to overcome them. Our full dataset from the seven participating schools include: 70 interviews, 43 focus groups, 361 collected documents, and field notes taken during four school tours.

“As all schools are unique, our findings are not meant to be copied and pasted onto every location.”

One aspect common to the positive outlier schools we studied was an effort to make curriculum relevant, engaging, and responsive – especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closures. For instance, at Lafayette Jr.-Sr. High School, educators have worked to ensure that the sizeable population of students from the Native American Onondaga Nation were provided culturally relevant activities and were represented in the school’s activities, appearance, and values. This process took many forms such as flying the Onondaga flag outside the school, creating a section in the school library featuring Native American authors, and working with a Native American liaison and My Brothers’ Keeper Coordinator to foster positive connections between the school and Onondaga community. At Fillmore, educators also developed culturally responsive approaches, but these looked different in a rural locale with a long history of agriculture. In this context, educators reinstated the Future Farmers of America program and provided hands-on opportunities for students to care for plants and animals on school grounds. To engage their students, Fillmore teachers worked together to create cross-disciplinary lessons and project-based learning opportunities.

We feel that these findings are of high value to the field of Educational Change as they provide examples of educators working to identify and address challenges in varied contexts. As our improvement hub has been supported by the state for over two decades, our research, and research-based tools have attracted the attention of the New York State Department of Education and have been highlighted by our advisory board member organizations including the New York State Council of School Superintendents, The New York State School Boards Association and several others that in turn influence policy in our state.

Call for efficacy: Changes in prior learning assessment (PLA) measures in the Florida college system — Giang-Nguyen T. Nguyen (GN) & Carla Thompson (CT), University of West Florida, Rashmi Sharma (RS), Western Illinois University

GN, CT, & RS: The researchers hope that AERA and the field of educational change could be the space to share research that directly impacts the students of the underserved community. The audience at AERA could learn about the current landscape of prior learning assessment (PLA) in Florida. This one segment of research from Florida has far-reaching implications beyond the US. By shedding light on PLA, the researchers hope that the participants from other states and internationally can advocate for transparency and support the community college students. Moreover, the audience at AERA could make the change by being the change they want to see in practice.

“The audience at AERA could make the change by being the change they want to see in practice.”

The researchers are advocating for uniform and sustainable policies at the state level guided by federal guidelines as a critical step in ensuring equitable access to PLA opportunities for community college students. The researchers are hoping that the participants will engage in scholarly discussion about the following implications of the research and provide their insights and actionable suggestions:

Sustainability in Education Systems. Researchers hope to see a shift in thinking about the sustainability of educational reforms related to educational practices and policies. We are advocating for creating a system for continuous improvement on PLA for community college students, where changes could be implemented and evaluated regularly to take into account the needs of different groups of students.
Bridging research to practice. Research shows that students have limited access to PLA information so it is important to provide multiple avenues of information for easy access. Using evidence from the research to inform the practice, the researchers propose changes at the state and federal level policies that involve multiple stakeholder groups.
State-Level Uniformity. Advocate for state-level uniform policies that ensure consistency across institutions, making it easier for students to understand and access PLA opportunities. Such policies can standardize some processes like credit evaluation, eligibility criteria, and application procedures. State mandates can require institutions to make PLA information readily available through multiple channels, such as websites, orientation sessions, social media, and advising services.
Federal Guidelines as a Framework. Federal guidelines can establish minimum standards to ensure that PLA policies promote equity, inclusion, and access for all students, particularly those from underserved communities. The federal government can incentivize states to adopt uniform PLA policies by tying funding or grants to comply with these guidelines. Federal guidelines can encourage states to adopt reciprocity agreements, ensuring that PLA credits earned in one state are recognized in others, thereby supporting student mobility.
Collaboration Across Stakeholders. Encourage collaboration among educators, policymakers, and advocacy organizations to align state policies with federal guidelines. There is a need to consider local needs and provide professional development opportunities to ensure administrators and faculty are well-equipped to implement uniform PLA policies effectively.

Youth and institutional change: The impact of student protests on curricula transformation in higher education — Tafadzwa Tivaringe (TT), Spencer Foundation

TT: A key insight from this work [with students in higher education in South Africa and the US] is that practical efforts to facilitate institutional change that are rooted in research stand a better chance of delivering on the promise of transformation. For example, my work finds that while there was a statistically significant increase in course offerings that aligned with students’ demands for more social justice curricula, sentiment analysis of the syllabi of those classes in both country’s colleges demonstrated that a significant proportion adopted neutral framings on the subject. Furthermore, while colleges in both countries adopted courses that had titles and/or course descriptions that referenced social justice, most of the goals of those courses did not involve pedagogical outcomes that explicitly involve addressing injustice. This was despite explicit student demands for curricula transformation that includes ethical commitments to social justice during the #FeesMustFall and #BlackLiveMatter protests (Nyamnjoh, 2016; Taylor, 2016; Tivaringe & Kirshner, 2024). These findings show that there is a gap between students’ input and institutional responses that, if not fully understood, undermines our collective capacity to deepen equity within higher education institutions.

My research underscores a growing call by many educational change scholars on the importance of centering the experiences of those most affected in the policy process (Furlong & Cartmel, 2006; Henry et al., 2013). Too often, policies and programs designed to support people marginalized in the policy making process fail to take their input seriously. This can lead to a false sense of redress and repair. Even more, it can erroneously shift attribution of bad outcomes to individuals, rather than a proper interrogation of the inadequacies of said policies in achieving desired outcomes.

Lastly, there is often a discomfort with the use of quantitative and computational methods in educational change. I must admit that this skepticism is not without cause: those tools have historically been used to stall and/or attack efforts to advance social justice in education (DiGarcia et al., 2018; Dixon-Román, 2017). However, by leveraging a combination of text-mining machine learning algorithms and longitudinal structural equation models to examine the impact of student protests in South Africa and the United States, I join a growing group of critical scholars (e.g., de Freitas & Dixon-Román, 2016; Lukito & Pruden, 2023) who believe and indeed demonstrate that sustainable and effective research on educational change ought to include such tools in its repertoire. Additionally, given the global nature of inequities, it is imperative that reparative efforts learn across contexts. Yet, as we have argued in our work (Kirshner et al., 2021; Tivaringe & Kirshner, 2021) insights in the field of education are disproportionately drawn from the global North. As such, insights that could be critical in learning how to deepen social justice are marginalized. My conference paper offers one instantiation of a comparative approach that, while neither perfect nor exhaustive, ensures that change efforts are informed by both local and global insights.

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Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2)

Posted on March 26, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

This week IEN shares part 2 of our Lead the Change (LtC) series interviewing presenters participating in the Educational Change Special Interest Group sessions at the upcoming Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association. This post includes presenters from the session titled: “Equity-minded leaders transforming the global educational landscape.” For Part 1 see “Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change.” These interviews are part of the Lead the Change series produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.

Working to dismantle enduring educational inequity: Actions and beliefs of equity-minded educational leaders — Betty Alford (BA), Liane Hypolite (LH), California State Polytechnic University

BA & LH: [In our studies] through interviews, the voices of equity-focused leaders provided examples of practices that contributed to remedying past inequities and attaining a more just future in education.

BA & LH: Through interviews, the voices of equity-focused leaders provided examples of practices that contributed to remedying past inequities and attaining a more just future in education… We hope the audience at AERA is inspired by the commitment demonstrated by these educational leaders to enact equity focused policies and use these policies to make positive changes for achieving the equity-focused goals. Their actions and words serve as examples of how analysis of community needs, an openness to change and inquiry, a commitment to culturally responsive pedagogy and equity-focused leadership, and engagement in reflection and ongoing learning can contribute to positive change. These educational leaders were knowledgeable of issues that have been identified in the research literature of the importance of asset not deficit-based approaches, authenticity as a leader, students of diverse ethnic groups seeing themselves in the curriculum and school initiatives, parent engagement, and fostering sustained dialogue amongst collaborative groups to bring about change (Gurr et al., 2019; Fullan, 2016; Johnson, et al., 2017; Radd et al., 2021).

“Sustained professional development was one way that practices, policy, and scholarship merged to contribute positively to equity-focused change efforts.”

Successful, focused leadership for equity and social justice in these districts included increasing Board members’ understanding of needs and involvement in listening sessions and professional development. In both districts, educational leaders emphasized that the focus was strongly supported by the superintendents’ ongoing attention to process as well as to implementation. As an educational leader stressed, “The superintendent always asks, ‘What was your process for reaching this decision?” The process was always to include involving multiple individuals in the decision making. In both districts, resources were provided to fund sustained professional development opportunities on developing the equity focus. For example, in one district, the Board and administrative teams took part in multi-week leadership development sessions. In the other district, teachers and educational administrators and teachers on special assignment participated in ten days of summer professional development to prepare for offering ethnic studies in the school followed by monthly professional development sessions throughout the year. This sustained professional development was one way that practices, policy, and scholarship merged to contribute positively to equity-focused change efforts in the schools.

Betty Alford, PhD, *California State Polytechnic University*

Liane Hypolite, PhD, *California State Polytechnic University*

Leading change: School leaders’ support for culturally and linguistically diverse students amidst emerging multiculturalism — Soon-young Oh (SO) Michigan State University

SO: This study illuminates how school leadership can support culturally and linguistically diverse students [CLD] students in societies [like Korea] that are only beginning to experience multicultural shifts. By examining school leaders’ strategies at the intersection of practice, policy, and scholarship, my research highlights key considerations for the field of educational change.

In practice, the research reveals how school leaders in Korea reframe existing cultural values to create more inclusive environments. Confucian values and hierarchical structures have traditionally shaped educational leadership and organizational culture, emphasizing social harmony, respect for authority, and collectivism (Lee, 2001). Some scholars have noted that such cultural foundations, when rigidly applied, can make it difficult to address individual differences, as they often prioritize group cohesion over personal identity (Nukaga, 2003). However, this study finds that school leaders in Korea are actively reinterpreting these values to support CLD students. Rather than reinforcing conformity, they leveraged collective harmony to create spaces where CLD and non-CLD students could naturally interact and build cross-cultural friendships. They also promoted bilingual learning by integrating students’ home languages into school-wide initiatives while maintaining an emphasis on group cohesion.

From a policy perspective, my findings suggest that effective educational change requires greater flexibility in policy design. Current approaches to multicultural education often assume that schools can apply standardized strategies (Alghamdi, 2017; Banks et al., 2016), but the schools in my study emphasized the importance of locally adaptive policies. Some leaders prioritized linguistic support programs, while others focused on strengthening partnerships with families and communities. These varying approaches highlight the need for policies that empower school leaders to shape multicultural education in ways that are responsive to their specific school contexts.

In terms of scholarship, this research contributes to ongoing efforts to expand educational leadership theories beyond Western-centric models. Much of the existing literature on school leadership in multicultural settings, such as Khalifa et al. (2016), has been developed in societies with long histories of diversity (e.g., Cuéllar et al., 2020), but my study illustrates how school leaders in newly diversifying contexts navigate educational change. Rather than imposing pre-existing frameworks, this research advocates for a more nuanced, globally inclusive perspective that acknowledges the diverse ways in which school leadership practices emerge across different cultural landscapes.

“This research contributes to ongoing efforts to expand educational leadership theories beyond Western-centric models.”

By bridging these insights across practice, policy, and scholarship, my research advances the conversation on how school leaders can meaningfully support CLD students in societies where multiculturalism is still evolving.

Soon-young Oh, PhD candidate, Michigan State University

Leading collaborative educational change: Lessons from the Hong Kong context — Paul Campbell (PC) University of Hong Kong

PC: One of the challenges in researching relational practices such as collaboration, leadership, and governance is achieving definitional agreement. Towards this end, I consider common conceptual characteristics provided in existing literature to offer some definitions.

Collaboration can be understood as a process of joint work around a shared focus (Ainscow et al., 2006; Henneman et al., 1995), where individuals share connected domains of expertise (John-Steiner et al., 1998), commit to sharing this expertise, and use it to think, plan, decide, and act based on a shared understanding of social norms, expectations, and behaviors needed for successful collaboration (Cilliers, 2000). This conceptualization highlights the importance of considering the dimensions of people, structure, and culture in understanding the forms, drivers, and influences on collaboration.

Leadership can be examined through a broader critical lens, focusing on what it means to lead, be a leader, and exercise leadership (Courtney et al., 2021). Leadership can be understood as a relational practice of influence, underpinned by personal and professional values, and focused on pursuing a shared vision for practice and outcomes (Bush & Glover, 2014).

Governance, on the other hand, can be understood as the standards, incentives, information, and accountability that guide policy and practice in schools and systems (Lewis & Pettersson, 2009). Governance can be exercised through networks at various scales, spanning local, national, and global contexts, intersecting public, private, and philanthropic sectors (Milner et al., 2020). Forms of self-governance, characterized by the development of shared norms, values, and trust, can also enable and sustain collaborative change (Sullivan & Skelcher, 2002).

Considering these definitions in relation to insights from my critical policy analysis and interviews with Hong Kong principals, there are a few key lessons that the field of educational change could take from my work to foster a more inclusive and effective collaborative educational change. My work suggests that, in leading collaborative educational change, school and system leaders should consider certain participatory and socio-cultural dynamics. Key participatory dynamics include the nature and construction of a participative culture and strong communication mechanisms in governance arrangements that influence the process and outcomes of change. Socio-cultural dynamics to consider include the purposes behind collaboration, the role of individual values, beliefs, and identities in engaging in collaborative educational change, and the transparency of purposes, processes, and outcomes.

“My work suggests that, in leading collaborative educational change, school and system leaders should consider certain participatory and socio-cultural dynamics.”

Careful consideration of who is involved in change processes, their roles, and clarity of what guides practice and decision-making, including individual values and beliefs, can lead to more meaningful and sustainable outcomes from collaborative educational change. Regarding organizational dynamics, leaders need to understand and act on policy drivers at macro- and meso-levels and contextual characteristics at the micro level of systems. Opportunities for community members to engage in interaction, sensemaking, and exchange processes during periods of change, supported by clear communication channels and frameworks for decision-making and evaluation, can lead to better outcomes of collaborative change efforts.

Paul Campbell, EdD, University of Hong Kong

Transforming challenges into success: Perspectives on successful school principalship practices — Rong Zhang (RZ), University of Alabama

RZ: Through my research, I hope to contribute meaningful insights to ongoing conversations in the field. First and foremost is the understanding that leadership practices must be adaptive and responsive to the unique contexts in which they are enacted. While it’s easy to advocate for certain leadership frameworks, my research highlights the importance of tailoring strategies to local conditions—whether that’s addressing the needs of immigrant students, navigating centralized or decentralized governance structures, or fostering equity in culturally diverse communities.

One of the most compelling findings from my study is that successful school leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all. While certain practices, such as building shared visions, fostering collaborative cultures, and improving instructional programs, are common across contexts, how these practices are implemented varies significantly. For example, principals in centralized education systems, like China, often work within top-down administrative structures, while those in decentralized systems, like the U.S., have more autonomy to engage stakeholders and drive innovation. Understanding these differences is crucial for policymakers and practitioners aiming to apply leadership frameworks effectively.

“Successful leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all.”

Another idea I hope to share is the power of relational leadership in driving meaningful change. Across the cases I’ve studied, the most successful principals were those who prioritized relationships—with teachers, students, parents, and community members. These leaders recognized that trust, collaboration, and shared purpose are foundational to improving outcomes, especially in disadvantaged schools. For scholars, this underscores the need for research that not only identifies best practices but also explores how those practices can be adapted to foster equity and inclusivity.

Lastly, I hope to contribute to conversations about how research can better inform policy. My study demonstrates the value of using cross-national data to identify both universal and context-specific strategies, offering policymakers a more nuanced understanding of what works in different settings. By sharing these insights, I aim to help bridge the gap between research and practice, encouraging evidence-based approaches that are both practical and impactful.

Rong Zhang, PhD candidate, University of Alabama

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Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 1)

Posted on March 12, 2025 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

This week’s Lead the Change (LtC) interviews explore the power of partnerships, networks and collaboration for supporting system improvement. This is the first in a series of posts that will featuring excerpts of interviews with presenters participating in the Educational Change Special Interest Group sessions at the upcoming Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association in Denver in April. This post includes presenters from the session titled: “Organizing Systemic Change in Education: Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration.” These interviews are part of the Lead the Change series produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from AERA’s Educational Change Special Interest Group. The full interviews can be found on the LtC website.

Networks for Knowledge Brokers: A Typology of Support-Seeking Behaviors — Anita Caduff (AC) University of Michigan, Alan Daly (AD) & Marie Lockton (ML) University of California San Diego, Martin Rehm (MR) University of Southern Denmark

AC, AD, ML, & MR: Our research offers important insights into the field of Educational Change, particularly for practitioners, policymakers, and scholars interested in understanding the critical role of knowledge brokers in improving education for all learners. Knowledge brokers do not operate in isolation; instead, they are embedded within relational ecosystems that provide access to various forms of support, such as financial resources, infrastructure, strategic advice, capacity building, networking, and knowledge mobilization. We define knowledge mobilization as the movement of knowledge and resources to where they will be most useful through a multidirectional process that supports the co-construction and use of knowledge. By examining how knowledge brokers navigate these ecosystems and engage in support-seeking behaviors, our study highlights three major contributions to practice, policy, and scholarship.

“Knowledge brokers do not operate in isolation.”

To begin with, we surfaced seven distinct knowledge broker profiles based on their social network dynamics and support-seeking behaviors: (1) networked strategist, (2) resource-driven strategist, (3) balanced strategist, (4) capacity-centered networker, (5) self-sufficient mobilizer, (6) balanced mobilizer, and (7) well-funded all-rounder. For example, the self-sufficient mobilizer operated without any financial support to sustain their operations; they focused solely on knowledge mobilization and strategic advice. In contrast, the well-funded all-rounder had high levels of support in all dimensions: infrastructure and finances, strategic advice, networking, and knowledge mobilization. Understanding these profiles helps the field to have a better grasp on the activities of these important educational actors as well as to support knowledge brokers in designing tailored strategies to enhance their effectiveness based on their unique circumstances and needs.

Additionally, the study surfaced three significant tensions that influence knowledge brokers’ support-seeking behaviors. For example, knowledge brokers often compete for scarce resources (e.g., grants) while recognizing the potential benefits of collaboration to achieve shared goals (i.e., the tension between competition and collaboration). Further, brokers balance efforts to create immediately observable, focused outcomes with aspirations for broader, systemic, and long-term impact. The third tension that emerged was between autonomy and interdependence. While autonomy enables alignment with internal organizational goals, interdependence with partners offers access to critical resources but sometimes requires compromising on internal priorities. For example, a knowledge broker may rely on their partners for funding, networks, and expertise and, as a result, occasionally need to cater to the external demands of these partners. These tensions highlight knowledge brokers’ complex balancing act and underscore the importance of creating policies and practices that encourage collaboration, sustainable funding, and alignment between short- and long-term goals.

By mapping knowledge brokers’ relational ecosystems and differences in support-seeking behavior and tensions, this study shifts the focus away from knowledge brokers alone to include the supports they leverage in their broader relational ecosystems. As such, this study suggests that knowledge mobilization is not exclusively an attribute of the knowledge brokers, but is influenced by, and distributed within, a wider knowledge mobilization ecosystem. This reframing opens new avenues for research and practice, including questions about how brokers’ ecosystems influence their effectiveness and how to strengthen these ecosystems. This shift in perspective encourages researchers and practitioners to consider not only the actions of knowledge brokers but also the systemic supports and partnerships that enable their work.

*From left to right:* Anita Caduff, Ph.D., Marie Lockton, Ed.D., Alan J. Daly, Ph.D., & Martin Rehm, Ph.D.

Reimagining the role of broker teachers in cross-sector partnerships — Chun Sing Maxwell Ho (CH) The Education University of Hong Kong, Haiyan Qian (HQ) The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Chiu Kit Lucas Liu (CL) University of Oxford

CH, HQ, & CL: This research highlights the transformative power of Hong Kong school–university partnerships (SUPs) in reshaping middle leaders (ML) within schools, offering valuable insights for practice, policy, and scholarship in educational change. We demonstrate how SUPs enhance MLs’ connectivity and brokerage across the school, promoting a layered and collaborative leadership structure. This finding aligns with previous research that highlights the importance of distributed leadership in fostering school improvement. For instance, Leithwood et al. (2020) argue that effective school principals distribute their leadership to engage both formal and informal teacher leaders, thereby enhancing their influence through interactions with others. Similarly, Spillane and Kim (2012) emphasize that leaders enact practices differently according to the school context, which supports the notion that SUPs can tailor development activities to meet specific needs. Furthermore, Bryant and Walker (2024) suggest that principal-designed structures can significantly enhance middle leaders’ professional learning, which is consistent with our findings on the positive impact of SUPs on MLs’ connectivity and brokerage.

“Our findings underscore the necessity for policies supporting sustained, context-specific leadership development.”

Key takeaways include the importance of designing SUPs to foster reflective dialogue and interaction among all school members, thereby nurturing an inclusive, interdisciplinary learning community. Schools can involve interdisciplinary projects where teachers from different subject areas worked together with university researchers to develop integrated curricula. These projects encouraged teachers to engage in reflective dialogue about their teaching methods and explore new ways to connect different subjects. By working together, teachers were able to create a more cohesive and interdisciplinary learning environment for students, promoting a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement (Ho et al., 2024). Our findings underscore the necessity for policies supporting sustained, context-specific leadership development and integrating university resources to facilitate these changes. For scholars, this study provides a model for examining the effects of leadership training on organizational dynamics, emphasizing the role of middle leaders in driving school improvement and fostering a collaborative professional culture.

Transforming school systems to support adolescent learning and well being: Evidence from four California districts — Sarah M. Fine (SF) University of California San Diego, Santiago Rincon-Gallardo (SR) Liberating Learning

SF & SR: The first takeaway is that there is a growing number of spaces of vitality and deep learning in California’s high schools, but these remain mainly outside the academic core. The local education agencies (LEAs) in our sample are leveraging new funding to expand and transform Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses into incredibly vibrant places for applied learning. Most LEAs we have visited in California are working successfully to de-stigmatize CTE, to disrupt patterns of social reproduction, and to add “high skill, high wage” pathways for all. Young people are incredibly alive and engaged in these courses, doing work ranging from building fully functional tiny homes for unhoused populations in their community to producing, running, and broadcasting live shows for their school and the larger community, to designing and testing rovers that can explore Jupiter’s moons. Visual and performing arts are also incredibly vital spaces. In less optimistic news, in many of the systems we visited, the academic core seems to have been left on life support, with many classes still featuring low-complexity tasks, teacher-centered instruction, and traditional assessments. This is consistent with research and theory on the remarkable power of the default culture of schooling to maintain the dynamics within the pedagogical core stable despite deliberate attempts to change it (Elmore, 1996; Mehta & Fine, 2019; Tyack & Cuban, 1995) Linked Learning, an approach to student learning that intentionally and strategically links together student’s personal purpose with hands-on, immersive learning opportunities, and disciplined knowledge, is a promising but generally immature effort to connect the vitality that characterizes CTE to core academic classes.

A second takeaway is about the importance of steadiness, systemness, and symmetry when undertaking system-level work to improve adolescent learning and wellbeing. To draw on the work of our shared mentor Richard Elmore (2004), all of the LEAs in our sample were engaged in impressively steady work, developing a clear set of goals and then pursuing those goals over the long haul without succumbing to mission creep or being buffeted by changes in the political winds. In most of the systems that we visited, we also encountered strong evidence of what Michael Fullan (2025) calls systemness – meaning, a broad range of stakeholders (parents, educators, leaders, learners, even crossing-guards) recognized their roles in shaping and enacting the goals of the system. And finally, most of the leaders in the sample clearly recognized the importance of what Sarah and Jal Mehta (2019) call symmetry, e.g.an overall stance and set of values and beliefs about learning that applies both to young people and to adults.

“Successful system transformation requires deprioritizing old academic obsessions.”

Last but not least, our work suggests that successful system transformation requires deprioritizing old academic obsessions. In many of the systems that we visited, there has been a strategic and courageous decision to de-prioritize or eliminate the programs and metrics connected to “the old game” of No Child Left Behind-style academic achievement. One district, for example, decided to deprioritize state standardized tests, while another phased out all Advanced Placement courses and replaced them with dual enrollment opportunities. Elsewhere, system leaders have started to move attention away from California’s college and career readiness indicators, focusing more on the quality of student engagement and learning every day in schools, as well as on indicators of lifelong learning.

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Conditions Conducive to Learning that Promote Educational Change

Posted on March 15, 2023 by T Hatch | 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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Culturally Responsive Leadership, Faith, and School Reform: A Conversation with Miriam D. Ezzani

Posted on August 20, 2021 by T Hatch | Leave a comment

This month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview features Miriam D. Ezzani, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the College of Education at Texas Christian University. Dr. Ezzani studies culturally responsive leadership within the contexts of district and school reform and Islamic school leadership. The Lead the Change series highlights promising research and practice and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change to spark conversation and collaboration. The LtC series is a product of the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association; Jennie Weiner, Chair; Olga O. Fellus, Program Chair; Corinne Brion, Secretary/Treasurer; Alexandra Lamb, Series Editor; Cynthia Wise, Social Media Coordinator. A pdf of the fully formatted interview is available on the LtC website.

Lead the Change: The 2021 AERA theme was Accepting Educational Responsibility and invites those of us who teach in schools of education to accept greater responsibility for the inadequate preparation of educators for work in racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse P–12 schools and postsecondary institutions. For example, when educators discipline African American students at disproportionately higher rates, misdiagnose them for special education, identify too few of them for advanced placement and international baccalaureate programs, deliver to them a culturally irrelevant curriculum, teach them in culturally disdaining ways, and stereotype their families as careless and hopeless, the schools of education that produced these professionals are just as responsible as the professionals themselves. Furthermore, if scholars who study and document these trends do too little to make our findings actionable, then we, too, are contributors to the cyclical reproduction of these educational inequities. Given the dire need for all of us to do more to dismantle oppressive systems in our own institutions and education more broadly, what specific responsibility do educational change scholars have in this space? What steps are you taking to heed this call?

Miriam D. Ezzani; Given what we know, and have known, for some time, about the need to dismantle oppressive systems within the field of education, educational change scholars have a moral responsibility to develop educational leaders who are change agents for social justice. Like many of my colleagues, we entered the field of education to make a difference in the lives of the people whom we serve, and the society in which we live. The culmination of our everyday work is ultimately our legacy, individually and collectively. One of the steps I take to heed the call is to ask myself, “What legacy do I aspire to achieve? How will I get there?” Data are leverage points for change in our lives and our everyday work. From qualitative and quantitative research, we know how systemic racism manifests in our society and specifically in schooling systems (e.g., inequitable funding, disproportionate discipline, persistent opportunity gaps, tracking, low expectations, under and over-representation of students of color in advanced academics and special education, respectively (Datnow & Park, 2018; Fabelo et al., 2011; Khalifa, 2020; Liou et al., 2016)). To date, we have yet to make good on the promise of public education, which should be defined as success for all children, no matter their race/ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation, faith, ableness, and/or socioeconomic status. Those in power who inherited and benefit from these systems are lashing out to maintain the status quo.

Case in point-there is strong resistance to educational change scholars and educational leaders trying to dismantle existing systems and structures of racism, such as policies that maintain tracking, unfair discipline, and policing practices in schools, which contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. Some state legislators are adopting laws to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12 public schools and colleges and universities. Lawmakers in Texas (HB 3979) and states such as Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Dakota filed bills that would cut funding to schools with curricula that include the Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times 1619 project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. In a powerful effort to speak truth to power, the 1619 project places slavery and racism as central to the founding and history of America. It links it to the systemic racism that plagues our country today. Yet, the existing power structure is fiercely working to stomp out academic freedom.

“The existing power structure is fiercely working to stomp out academic freedom.”

Meanwhile, on the higher education front, there are 78 institutions that have joined the Universities Studying Slavery consortium (USS). I’m proud to say my institution, Texas Christian University (TCU), is a member. The consortium is a collaboration between universities to share best practices and guiding principles to engage in “truth-telling projects” that address their institutional histories. These institutions have committed to invest resources to research and acknowledge and atone for their ties to the slave trade and racism in their institution’s history, policies, and practices. Because educational change scholars reside in higher education, yet influence K-12 public education, we have a dual responsibility. We must leverage our scholarship by forging relationships within and outside of our universities to dialogue and take action toward dismantling systemic structures that hamper the advancement of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and question leaders when they are unaware or turn a blind eye to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the curriculum or student recruitment, or faculty hiring and retention practices.

I serve on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at the college and university levels. In collaboration with my colleagues in the College of Education at TCU, we form partnerships with K-12 school districts to research and develop plans to enact educational change that provides access and equity for students from historically minoritized communities. With every relationship, we increase our bandwidth and opportunities to influence the field of education. Most educators do not realize inequity exists due to biases in their education. Therefore, the most powerful action we can take collectively is to design our educational leadership programs and what we teach in our classrooms to develop leaders for social justice.

LtC: Given some of your work focused on how principals can create systems and structures to support reflective and anti-oppressive practices, what would be some of the major lessons the field of Educational Change can learn from your work and experience?

MDE: Formative experiences as a student at the University of Southern California, as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and as a school leader inspired my focus on underserved students vis-à-vis education reform aimed at equity and social justice. I define underserved as students who do not receive equitable resources due to racism, ethnicism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, lingualism, or faithism. My concern for these students is rooted in my personal experience. As the daughter of Yemeni Muslim immigrants, I am aware of the role, or lack thereof, that education plays in one’s life. My research foci align with a unifying goal to examine how educational leaders plan, implement, and sustain reform efforts to support equitable and socially just schooling experiences for historically minoritized students, specifically on issues of race and faith.

My recently published piece in the Journal of School Leadership highlights the work of a school principal, Ms. DiFalco (pseudonym), who instituted systems and structures that challenge systemic racism (Ezzani, 2021). We could learn from how she implemented reflective and anti-oppressive practices at Lyon Elementary School. The findings of this two-year study reinforce that social justice advocacy and action can be leveraged by data-informed leadership. Black students made up 15 percent of the school’s population but accounted for more than 80% of written discipline plans. The principal coupled quantitative data with qualitative data. She spent more than half of her time in the hallways and classrooms, monitoring teachers’ behaviors and interactions with students. She met privately with teachers to reflect their mannerisms back to them. The intention behind these coaching conversations was to help teachers understand what it looked like and felt like to be a student in their classroom and guide them through critical self-reflection. The learning of self-reflective skills was anchored in the very core values that the teachers themselves created. Her role as the school leader was to help teachers through the reasoning process to make meaning of their experiences with their Black students and also to see that their actions were incongruent with their espoused core values.

“Social justice advocacy and action can be leveraged by data-informed leadership.”

The use of reflective practice in social justice leadership offers a way to respond to oppressive practices. At the end of the day, educational change scholars and their colleagues need to develop educational leaders who practice what some scholars describe as critical activism or courageous leadership (Brooks, 2012; Singleton, 2012). Ms. DiFalco engaged in systemic professional learning focused on race, despite district leaders’ avoidance of the topic. Her act of deviance for the benefit of her Black students was viewed as renegade leadership, where the leader shifts allegiance from the district to the students. Lastly, professional learning should extend beyond the school walls to involve parents and community members. The results suggest that humanizing practices toward Black students should be pursued through professional learning within our districts/schools, in preparation programs, and through university–district partnerships – recognizing that power and “politics is an inescapable reality of educational practice” (Connery & Weiner, 2017, p. 21).

LtC: In some of your recent work, you describe how principals provide processes and supports through the educational system to challenge oppressive social structures. Given your findings on the persistence of various forms of discrimination in schools today, what do you see as the most needed changes to policy/practice to address these issues in the field, in educators’ daily practice and interactions with colleagues and students alike?

MDE: Further to my research on education reform, I’ve engaged in extensive data collection at schools with culturally responsive leaders. I focused on the structures, processes, practices, and strategies implemented by these leaders to make the schooling environment safe and supportive of minoritized populations. Some of these studies were interdisciplinary; thereby, providing a more nuanced focus on culturally responsive leadership. As a result, I published a historiography on an American Muslim school leader in collaboration with Kelley King, an educational historian. With another colleague, Melanie Brooks, who studies Islamic and international education, we explored (a) the complexities of faithism in a study on Islamic education in the U.S. and (b) the development of American Muslim identity focusing on organizational leadership. With a third colleague, Rachel Mun, who studies gifted education, we examined how district and school leaders attend to systemic policies and practices to change the education trajectory for students of color excluded from gifted and advanced academic programs. These studies revealed how and in what ways culturally responsive leaders advance practices and policies that support the development of critical consciousness in teachers and students.

As I mentioned earlier, one of my lines of inquiry is on reform efforts to support equitable and socially just schooling experiences for historically minoritized students, specifically on issues of race and faith. With a focus on faith, Melanie Brooks and I examined how leaders in an Islamic school in the United States engage in culturally relevant leadership to develop the critical social consciousness of their students (Ezzani & Brooks, 2019). This is important given the current intensification of supremacist, anti-immigrant, and nationalist discourse. With such ideologies taught and learned (Apple, 2019), we see these ideologies as educational problems that have critical implications for Muslim students, teachers, and school leaders. Consequently, school leaders must consider their moral responsibility to their Muslim students and arguably society regarding how we teach critical thinking, develop media literacy skills, and guide experiences that cultivate understanding and compassion rather than mistrust and hate (Banks, 2007).

Our findings confirmed the critical role of authentic dialogue, which is learner-centered, to help students recognize and seek to upend oppressive social structures (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Theoharis & Brooks, 2012). These dialogues were inside and external to their faith tradition. For example, Muslim students engaged in interfaith dialogue with Jewish students. In this way, leaders sought to raise the critical consciousness of their students by facilitating dialogue with a faith tradition often perceived to be in conflict with Islam. This is important given that American Muslim students must navigate a world often hostile to Islam and Muslims. Reflexive leadership created an environment for cultural syncretism, wherein space is made for students to both identify as American Muslims and identify with the global ummah, a supranatural community where global Muslims are viewed as equal in light of geographic, cultural, and linguistic differences. In summary, the study speaks to the daily practices and interactions of educators and students. It sheds light on the importance of raising educator and student consciousness while imparting skills on how to be actively and civically engaged. With a dearth of books on American Muslims, and even fewer on leadership and progressive Islamic schooling, Melanie and I are in the throes of writing a book based on recent data collection. The book will provide novel perspectives on formal and informal leadership practices in how a progressive Islamic school develops its youth amid the backdrop of a divisive landscape, vis-à-vis Islam and Muslims.

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?

MDE: Educational change scholars and those whom we prepare, school and district leaders, are inextricably tied in the effort of transforming K-12 public education as we know it. One strand of my research agenda is the preparation of educational leaders. In a study that examined students’ perceptions of an educational leadership doctoral program, we looked at the redesign of the program (Ezzani & Paufler, 2018; Paufler et al., 2020). The program sought to prepare students to lead learning organizations, engage ethically with the community, advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and develop theory-to-practice solutions that are comprehensive and systemic. The findings provided a better understanding of changes in the program redesign, which supports broader national efforts to reconstitute the doctorate in educational leadership in ways that better prepare scholarly practitioners committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in K-12 public school systems.

“Educational change scholars and those whom we prepare, school and district leaders, are inextricably tied in the effort of transforming K-12 public education as we know it.”

As educational change scholars continue to learn more about the process of program redesign to transform the field, essential features seemed to support students when preparing them to become exceptional scholarly practitioners. For instance, front-loading a research-to-practice approach helped students appreciate complex and systemic problems of practice. We also learned that the cohort model provides a support system for educational leadership students who come to the program from various districts. The study we conducted provided a point of departure, confirming and disconfirming notions in the continuous improvement needed to prepare future leaders that can innovate and generate new ways of developing rigorous, relevant educational opportunities for students. The student’s voice is powerful evidence of program effectiveness. However, evaluating program impact would require the collective engagement of faculty to agree on how to challenge students’ assumptions, involve them in action, and find a way to assess their practices continually. Lastly, we ended by posing the following question: How are students in educational leadership applying their knowledge and skills to affect meaningful change in practice? To this end, Jimerson et al. (2021) articulated that we need to establish data-sharing agreements with school districts to holistically assess the performance of the leaders developed, and whether faculty are achieving the desired programmatic outcomes.

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

MDE: I’m an optimist at heart. I hope that scholars in the field of educational change across the country play their part in transforming the current educational system – one cohort of educational leadership students at a time. It’s also critical that we work alongside our colleagues in teacher preparation programs so that we’re developing teachers and leaders who can abandon their fears and courageously work toward an anti-racist education system (Diem & Welton, 2020). As educational change scholars, we must rethink what and how we teach. It’s simply not enough to create one diversity course in a program or one cultural foundations class. Several exceptional programs have found ways of integrating content relevant to ethics, equity, social justice, and policy (see Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate).

“I hope that scholars in the field of educational change across the country play their part in transforming the current educational system – one cohort of educational leadership students at a time.”

We need to redesign programs to include mandatory courses that discuss the various intersections of oppression in our society rather than leave them as electives. As long as courses related to diversity, equity, and inclusion largely remain as a one-off to existing curricula (to meet accreditation requirements), we are abrogating our responsibility and contributing to ongoing inequities in our educational system. We need to address more strategically how academic programs are designed and what courses are required to meet the pressing need of developing educational leaders for social justice. However, higher education institutions also need transformation, where teaching is honored and valued equally with scholarship. Faculty will then be motivated to collaboratively revise programs in ways that meet the challenge of Accepting Educational Responsibility to defy social and educational inequities.

References

Apple, M. W. (2019). Ideology and curriculum, 4^th edition. Routledge.

Banks, J. A. (2007). Educating citizens in a multicultural society. Teachers College Press.

Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (2021). Retrieved from https://www.cpedinitiative.org/

Connery, C., & Weiner, J. M. (2017). Direct Democracy’s Threat to Democratic Schools: Ron Unz and the Case of Bilingual Education. in a Democracy, 6.

Datnow, A., & Park, V. (2018). Opening or closing doors for students? Equity and data use in schools. Journal of Educational Change, 19(2), 131-152.

Diem, S., & Welton, A. D. (2020). Anti-racist Educational Leadership and Policy: Addressing Racism in Public Education. Routledge.

Ezzani, M. (2021). A principal’s approach to leadership for social justice: Advancing reflective and anti-oppressive practices. Journal of School Leadership, 31(3), 227–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052684620908347

Ezzani, M. D., & Brooks, M. C. (2019). Culturally relevant leadership: Advancing critical consciousness in American Muslim students. Educational Administration Quarterly, 55(5), 781-811. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X18821358

Ezzani, M. D., & King, K. M. (2018). Whose Jihad? Oral history of an American Muslim educational leader and U.S. public schools. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 50(2), 113-129. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2018.1448369

Ezzani, M.,& Paufler, N. (2018). Doctoral program in educational leadership redesign: Utilizing a multi-criteria framework. Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice, 3(2). http://impactinged.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/ImpactingEd/article/view/70

Fabelo, T., Thompson, M. D., Plotkin, M., Carmichael, D., Marchbanks, M. P., & Booth, E. A. (2011). Breaking schools’ rules: A statewide study of how school discipline relates to students’ success and juvenile justice involvement. Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Jimerson, J. B., Atwood, E. D., Cook, K. S., Corder, P. F., & McGhee, M. W. (2021). A Retrospective Look at a Partnership-Based Educational Leadership Program Redesign. Partnerships for Leadership Preparation and Development: Facilitators, Barriers and Models for Change, 13.

Khalifa, M. (2020). Culturally responsive school leadership. Harvard Education Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1995a). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34, 159-165.

Liou, D. D., Marsh, T. E., & Antrop-Gonzalez, R. (2016). The Spatiality of Schooling: A quest for equitable classrooms and high expectations for low-income students of color. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2).

Paufler, N. A., Ezzani, M. D.,Murakami, E. T., Viamontes Quintero, J., Pazey, B. L. (2020). Educational leadership doctoral program evaluation: Student voice as the litmus test. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, https://doi.org/10.1177/1942775120976705

Theoharis, G., & Brooks, J. S. (2012). What every principal needs to know to create equitable and excellent schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

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Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged Culturally Responsive Leadership, Educational Leadership, Lead the Change, School reform

Tag Archives: Lead the Change

Teaching in the Age of Generative AI: Lead the Change Interview with Bernardo Feliciano

Teachers, Teaching and Educational Change in Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Israel, Malaysia, Scotland, South Korea, Switzerland, and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 7)

Critical Consciousness, Digital Equity, and Critical Unschooling in the United States: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 6)

Anti-discrimination policies in Massachusetts and socioeconomic education reform in Türkiye

Teacher Education, Teacher Certification, and Teacher Meetings in Israel, Korea, Switzerland and the US: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 4)

Educational Transformation in Schools and Colleges in the US and South Africa: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 3)

Leaders, Leadership Practices, and Educational Change in the US, Korea, and Hong Kong: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 2)

Leveraging Partnerships, Networks and Teacher Collaboration for Educational Change: Lead the Change Interviews (Part 1)

Conditions Conducive to Learning that Promote Educational Change

Culturally Responsive Leadership, Faith, and School Reform: A Conversation with Miriam D. Ezzani

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