Tag Archives: Learning

Celebrating Extraordinary Educators from Africa’s Aspire Fellowship Programme

As we look back on 2025, we’d like to celebrate some of the extraordinary work in education we learned about this year. In this case, we’re highlighting  the work of the Aspire Leadership Fellows of the Africa Leadership Academy. The Aspire Fellowship Programme is a cohort-based program that brings together leaders from across Africa who have started or are leading innovative schools and educational organizations. The Fellows work with global education leaders to expand and sustain their organizations. For those interested in learning more about this work or making a donation, we’re providing the Aspire profiles and websites of several of the Fellows who shared their work with graduate students from Teachers College, Columbia University, in Thomas Hatch’s class on School Change this fall.

Soofia International School 

JAYANT VIJAYAKUMAR 
Soofia International School 
Butha, Buthe, Lesotho

Highlight: Running a lean Cambridge model at a community-funded school catering to children from diverse families in rural Lesotho- some facing significant socio-economic challenges and other instabilities

Year Founded: 1990

Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary, Primary, Secondary, AS & A Level

School Vision: To deliver affordable, globally benchmarked education with a strong emphasis on equity, innovation, and holistic development.

Jayant Vijayakumar is Chief Academic Advisor at Soofia International School in Lesotho, where he leads strategic planning, academic innovation, and AI integration. Under his leadership, Soofia—serving over 1,300 students—has embraced flipped learning, launched coding and robotics programs, and pioneered student-led engagement models. Jayant’s approach blends academic rigour with emotional intelligence, technology, and values-based education, ensuring access and excellence for learners from all backgrounds. He trains educators, drives curriculum reform, and builds partnerships that extend Soofia’s impact across Lesotho and beyond. Passionate about transforming outdated education systems, Jayant’s work is driven by a belief that inclusive, holistic education can empower the next generation of thinkers, leaders, and changemakers in Africa and the world. Donation/Support link

Planning for Tomorrow Youth Organization

Daniel Ameny & Kevin Dovinna Candia 
P4T – Planning for Tomorrow Youth Organization
Kyangwali Refugee Settlement, Uganda

Highlight: Refugee-founded and refugee-led education which started with 26 students in a boardroom, and has grown to serve more than 800 students

Year founded: 2007

Grade Focus: K-12

School vision: A healthy and self-reliant community with knowledge and skills.

Daniel, also known as Khalid, is a Congolese Refugee who has resided in Uganda for the past 26 years. Leveraging the DAFI scholarship, Khalid earned an MS in Environmental Health and a Bachelor of Statistics Degree. He leads this refugee-led youth initiative dedicated to empowering vulnerable refugees and Ugandans towards becoming healthy and self-reliant. P4T Schools delivers comprehensive educational services, including improved teaching methodologies, a school feeding program, engaging children in debate, games, and sports. The overarching goal of these schools is to evolve into centers of excellence, with a focus on nurturing Innovative Leaders and Changemakers.

Kevin is an Education Coordinator and Early Childhood Development project manager at P4T. She attained a BS in Education under MasterCard Foundation Scholarship. She did teaching practice at Mandela Secondary school, taught at the North Green School and had a one-year volunteer experience as a teaching assistant at Lancaster Mennonite School in Pennsylvania, USA. Kevin uses her positive attitude to encourage others to work hard and bring about a positive impact in their communities. She is very passionate about giving back “because in one way or the other it is what made her who she is, a transformative leader.” Donation/Support link

Inmates Educational Foundation (IEF) 

MAHFUZ ALABIDUN 
Inmates Educational Foundation
Nigeria (Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Kano, Abuja, and Ebonyi states)

Highlight: Running a school system in Nigerian correctional centers to provide access to formal and informal education as a form of reformation and reintegration for inmates.

Year Founded: 2018 

Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary, Primary, Secondary, National Open University 

School Vision: To provide educational opportunities to inmates, empowering them to reintegrate into society and become productive citizens..

Mahfuz Alabidun is the Founder and Executive Director of Inmates Educational Foundation, a nonprofit delivering education in Nigerian correctional centers. With over 500 learners across six states, IEF offers academic, vocational, and reintegration programs that support inmates’ transformation and reintegration into society. Under his leadership, the foundation has received national recognition, including the Governor of Lagos State Social Impact Award. A TEDx speaker and education reform advocate, he is passionate about building inclusive systems that restore dignity and create second chances. Through education, Mahfuz is rewriting the narrative of incarceration in Nigeria—one learner, one center, one future at a time. Cohort 5 Year Founded: 2018 Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary, Primary, Secondary, National Open University School Vision: To to provide educational opportunities to inmates, empowering them to reintegrate into society and become productive citizens. Donation/Support link

Humanitarian Services Action (HuSA)

SUMI HAMID 
Humanitarian Services Action (HuSA) 
Kikuube, Uganda

Highlight: Running a school model that not only educates but also heals and empowers children, especially those affected by conflict, displacement, and poverty; with focus on Protection and Integrated Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Services (MHPSS).

Year Founded: 2020 

Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary, Primary 

School Vision: To create a new generation of African leaders and change-makers who are self-reliant and capable of lifting others.

Sumi Hamid is a refugee leader and the Founder and Executive Director of Humanitarian Services Action Organisation (HuSA) in Kikuube, Uganda. A survivor of displacement himself, he grew up in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement and now leads community-based initiatives that provide education, mental health support, and protection services to refugee children and families. After overcoming years of interrupted education, Sumi pursued a career in social work and made the bold decision in 2023 to leave formal employment and fully commit to building HuSA. His organization now serves over 130 children with early education and supports women and youth with microgrants, GBV response, and psychosocial care. Rooted in lived experience, his work champions dignity, empowerment, and community-led change—offering vulnerable children and families the opportunity to learn, heal, and thrive. Cohort 5 Year Founded: 2020 Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary, Primary School Vision: To create a new generation of African leaders and change-makers who are self-reliant and capable of lifting others. Donation/Support link

Ajibu Community

TIMOTHY DAVID WAMBI
Ajibu Community
5Mayuge, Uganda

Highlight: They produce their own play-learning resources which are used to combine play-based learning interventions with life skills development, ensuring that children not only succeed academically but also explore their innate talents and build strong social-emotional and entrepreneurial skills to reach their full potential

Year Founded: 2021 

Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary, Primary, Vocational Training for mothers

School Vision: To create a model Play-Based Learning school in Eastern Uganda where education is focused on academic excellence and skills development so that there’s a clear path for every child to succeed in life.

Timothy David Wambi is the Founder of Ajibu Community Organisation (Ajco) in rural Mayuge, Uganda. Timothy leads grassroots education reform through a dual-impact model: supporting public primary schools and running a vibrant community learning center. Ajco currently educates 77 children aged 3–7 and empowers young women—many of them survivors of early marriage—to become trained educators. Timothy’s model integrates play-based, life-skills learning and develops low-cost teaching materials to improve literacy, numeracy, and STEM outcomes in under-resourced schools. Timothy works to ensure that no child is denied the right to quality education and that local solutions are part of lasting transformation in Uganda’s rural education landscape.  Donation/Support link

Itinga Charity Education Foundation

Acen Kevin 
Itinga Charity Education Foundation
Northern Uganda

Highlight: The only inclusive secondary school in Northern Uganda catering to students with diverse abilities such as the blind, low vision, cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, and physical challenged, studying alongside their abled peers.

Year Founded: 2024

Grade: Secondary 

School Vision: To empower students to thrive, regardless of ability, and promotes a culture of acceptance and inclusion

Acen Kevin (Daniela) is the Founder and Executive Director of the Itinga Charity Education Foundation (ICEF) and Director of St. Mary Goretti Secondary School Ngetta in Northern Uganda. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance, Kevin spearheads initiatives that deliver inclusive education to students with and without disabilities, including learners who are blind or physically challenged. Under her leadership, ICEF partnered to establish the region’s first inclusive secondary school, now serving 45 students from across Uganda. She drives accessibility through scholarships, assistive technologies, and inclusive teacher training. As Board Chair of the school’s academic committee, Kevin is dedicated to upholding quality and equity in education. In 2025, she was awarded the MTN Changemaker Grant for her groundbreaking work in assistive learning. Kevin is deeply passionate about creating a future where all learners— regardless of ability—have the opportunity to thrive. Donation/Support link

Isrina School

Grace Amuzie Ajegungle, 
Isrina School; Linktree
Lagos Nigeria

Highlight: Spearheading the “Recycles Pay” project at Isrina School which empowers parents to offset children’s fees by generating income from recyclable materials

Year founded: 2016

Grades served: K-6

School vision: A world where every child, regardless of their economic background has equal access to quality education

Grace is a fervent champion of inclusive education, dedicating herself to this cause since the age of 15. Fueled by her personal experiences, she remains resolute in her mission to guarantee equitable access to quality education for every child, irrespective of their background. Notably, she advocates for environmental sustainability and spearheads the innovative “Recycles Pay” project, empowering parents to offset their children’s fees through the use of recyclable materials. With her certification as a Microsoft Educator, Grace actively pursues the enhancement of learning experiences and seeks to broaden educational access, aiming to disrupt the cycle of poverty through the delivery of high-quality education. Donation/Support link

Tsion Academy 

ADEOLA TOLULOPE ABAYOMI 
Tsion Academy 
Ile-Ife, Osun state, Nigeria 

Highlight: Focused on providing free, quality education to out-of-school children in underserved communities using a personal and scalable funding model called the “Big Brother or Sister where each child is matched with a “Big Brother or Sister”—an individual donor who would commit to supporting the child’s education monthly or by term.

Year Founded: 2022

Grade: Nursery/Pre-Primary/Primary/Secondary 

School Vision: To restore dignity, build character, and equip each child with the tools they need to thrive academically, emotionally, and socially.

Adeola Tolulope Abayomi is the Founder and Executive Director of Tsion Academy, a free school for out-of-school children in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. A trained lawyer (LLB, BL) and the visionary force behind Evolufy Africa. Tsion Academy currently serves over 140 children aged 4 to 13, delivering quality, inclusive education to underserved communities. Through Evolufy Africa’s two branches—Tsion Academy and Maendeleo Africa— Adeola advances access, equity, and youth empowerment. She is passionate about building sustainable, replicable school models that drive genuine transformation. Her work bridges grassroots action and systemic change, offering hope and opportunity to the next generation of African leaders. Donation/Support link 

Smart Bilingual Academy 

Tchanlandjou Kpare
Smart Bilingual Academy 
Fatick, Senegal

Highlight: Creating equitable education access to students in second cities.

Year founded: 2022

Grades served: K-6

School vision: All children reach their full-potential and are agents of change in their schools, communities and the world.

With a remarkable 15-year background in supporting social innovations, Tchanlandjou has been instrumental in mapping key actors and organizations within ecosystems for collective systemic impact. Since joining Ashoka in 2013, he has held the pivotal role of Regional Director for the Sahel region, where his strategic vision and ability to inspire and mobilize diverse partners have yielded significant accomplishments. Notably, Tchanlandjou spearheaded the creation of the Education and Youth Clusters, pivotal initiatives that have greatly enhanced Ashoka’s impact in the Sahel. In 2016, he further demonstrated his entrepreneurial spirit by founding ‘SeddoInvest,’ a start-up focused on identifying and preparing a pipeline of young social ventures and attracting investments to accelerate their development. He founded SBA after seeing first-hand the profound disparity between the quality of education available to students in Dakar, and in rural and per-urban areas in Senegal. Donation/Support link

Justice-Oriented Educational Change Through Community-Led Solutions: A Conversation with Edwin Nii Bonney

In November’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview Edwin Nii Bonney emphasizes that educational research and practice must “look back” by acknowledging colonial legacies and marginalized histories while “looking forward” by centering Indigenous, vulnerable, and community voices. His work highlights deep listening, intergenerational collaboration, and community-designed solutions as essential to dismantling deficit narratives and creating equitable educational systems. 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? 

Dr. Edwin Nii Bonney

Edwin Nii Bonney (ENB): As someone who grew up in Ghana and went through K–12 and college there, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of my elders. That wisdom, often carried in proverbs and the principle of Sankofa, reminds us to look back and learn from the past so that we do not repeat its mistakes. In my scholarship, I wrestle with the reality that educational systems remain deeply embedded in coloniality. We are still grappling with the legacies of colonialism especially in the global South, and those legacies have not disappeared (Bonney, 2022). They persist in the languages we speak and use to instruct students, the books we read, our perceptions of ourselves, our standards of beauty, and even our justice systems (Bonney, 2023; Bonney et al., 2025a). Colonialism continues to shape much of who we are and how our societies function. It is essential that we acknowledge that the legacies of colonialism are still with us. It was not that long ago, and its effects continue to reverberate in our educational systems and beyond. 

Having lived and schooled in four different countries, I have come to realize that in every society there are marginalized and vulnerable groups. The dominant discourses in any context, whether social, cultural, or educational, are often so pervasive that marginalized voices, ideas, and ways of knowing are easily erased or silenced. Indigenous wisdom, local knowledge, and community customs are frequently pushed aside. This understanding shapes how I approach my scholarship. We must continually examine how educational leadership, policies, and practices have historically and presently marginalize the ways of being, speaking, and doing of those who are not part of dominant groups. Whether in the United States, Ghana, or elsewhere, there are always minoritized voices whose perspectives are excluded from how education is designed and enacted. Because of that, I believe it is vital to ask how we center the ways of speaking, knowing, and being of Indigenous, marginalized, and vulnerable communities in education. How do we ensure that their experiences and insights shape what we study, how we study it, and how we interpret what we learn?

In my own scholarship and service, I see my role as coming alongside communities and families, not as an expert above them but as a partner who recognizes them as experts of their own experiences. They understand the root causes of the challenges they face and often hold the wisdom to identify meaningful solutions. In Bonney et al. (2025a) in listening to students who had not been able to obtain passing grades in Math, many of them, after retaking the exam multiple times, I learned that they struggled to understand and make sense math concepts taught in English. They felt like failures until they went against the norm as experts of their own experiences to learn in their native languages. Learning in their own native language according to these students brought them success on the first try even though the system told them it was impossible. As we think about the future of education and research, we must keep asking: whose voices are missing from the table? Whose perspectives are absent from the design process? Which families are not engaged in our schools, and how do we empower them to participate fully? We must always ask who we are not serving well and how we can do better. When we look back at history, we see that we have not always served everyone equitably. Therefore, it must remain at the forefront of our work in education to ask, whose voices are we still not hearing?

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

ENB: Much of the work I do alongside educational leaders, students, and families begin with listening. It starts with listening deeply to the experiences of different groups and how they encounter systems of oppression. This kind of listening is to not to defend or to critique but to learn from their perspectives, their realities, and their ways of knowing and being. The next principle is building relationships across generations and forming coalitions among groups who are affected by similar problems of practice or systems of oppression. When these coalitions come together around community-informed problems and community-designed solutions, we are better able to address the issues that matter most to them. In Bonney et al. (2025b), I share about a community-based organization that brings together everyone in their village from as young as seven years to as old as 80 years. The organization gathers the elders to recount stories about the history of their community in their native language. The young people record and document the oral history and then create plays in their native language, where they dramatize the stories on digital media and on stage to be a resource for local schools because there were no resources to teach their native language other than English. This community led movement was in decreasing use of their native language. Communities understand their own challenges, and when they help design the solutions, those solutions are more authentic, effective, and sustainable (Costanza-Chock, 2020). Through these relationships and through genuine listening, we can begin to challenge deficit discourses and narratives that blame individuals instead of systems for the inequities we see in education. Deficit thinking overlooks structural causes and often misplaces responsibility. But lasting change requires us to shift our attention to the systems, policies, and practices that create and sustain inequity. 

Change in education will come only through broad coalitions that include not only researchers and educational leaders but also students, teachers, families, community members, elders and even naysayers. Their knowledge, lived experiences, and cultural wisdom are essential for reimagining a more just and equitable educational future. As we engage in this work, it is important to keep asking which solutions are working, for whom, and under what conditions (Hinnant-Crawford, 2025). Sometimes a solution may appear successful in one area but create unintended problems in another. When that happens, we must be ready to respond quickly to stop any harm. Change is not static; it is a continuous and reflective process. At the heart of this work is a simple but powerful truth: we must be intentional about involving those most affected by the problems we aim to address. We must center community expertise, engage families and students as co-creators of change, and together expose even small variations in outcomes for students as opportunities to learn. Finally, we must continue to seek out and listen to the voices and stories of those still impacted by systems of oppression or persistent inequities. Because meaningful change in education begins with listening, building relationships and broad coalitions that endure when we work together to challenge inequitable systems and co-create a more just future. These are the foundational blocks to a justice-oriented improvement approach to undo oppressive systems in education.

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

ENB: The nature of change is that it always comes with uncertainty. Sometimes that uncertainty can bring frustration on one hand or excitement on the other. We can never fully know what the future holds or what the field might look like. We cannot predict what new policies, reforms, or interventions will emerge, or what discourses will shape the field. What I do know is that we can always look back to learn. We can recognize that, as a society and as a field, there are things we’ve done well and others we have not. One of our core goals must be to serve all children well. That means preparing researchers, educational practitioners, students, and teachers so that we can meet the diverse needs of all types of learners. It also means continuing to prepare teachers for a field that is increasingly complex with diverse students who have diverse needs. It also means preparing educational leaders to create inclusive and collaborative environments that enable teachers and staff to do their best work to serve students equitably. 

So, although there is uncertainty about the future, one thing we can hold on to is that we know what we value and how to prepare for that future, whatever it looks like. More than what gives me hope is what energizes me. In Bonney et al., (2024) we created an edited volume, to center and hear from educational practitioners on the front lines and how they work with students, teachers, parents, and community to tackle problems of practice in their local schools and districts. In times of uncertainty, the best people to hear from are those on the front lines. Working alongside with these scholars, educational leaders, and practitioners, in the trenches trying to figure out how to serve all students well makes me expectant that things will change continuously for the better. They’re asking critical questions: How do we better support our teachers? How do we solve problems of practice? How do we address discipline issues or chronic absenteeism? How do we engage families more effectively? How do we reduce the overrepresentation of Black and Brown students in special education? How do we increase their representation in gifted and Advanced Placement courses? These are the kinds of questions that inspire hope for the future. Even though the future may be uncertain, we can still prepare for said future. Personally, I am not as concerned about where the field of educational change is heading but rather about preparing my students and practitioners for today’s challenges. I believe that the same justice-oriented and community-centered approach to solving today’s problems will help us address the problems of tomorrow.

Building Student Relationships Post-Pandemic in School and Beyond 

What’s involved in strengthening relationships among students? This week, Hannah Nguyen surveys some of the news and research that discuss the possibilities for creating a whole ecosystem of relationships to support students in schools. This post is one in a series exploring strategies and micro-innovations that educators are pursuing following the school closures of the pandemic. For more on the series, see “What can change in schools after the pandemic?”  For examples of micro-innovations in tutoring and access to college see: Tutoring takes off; Predictable challenges and possibilities for effective tutoring at scale; Still Worth It? Scanning the Post-COVID Challenges and Possibilities for Access to Colleges and Careers in the US (Part 1, Part 2). 

Strengthening student relationships can begin in schools, but ultimately it involves building a whole ecosystem of relationships that supports students and their connections with their peers, their teachers, and the members of their families and the wider communities.  Healthy relationships support students’ academic achievement, engagement in school, and social-emotional development. In particular, students’ friendships can provide emotional support that contributes to their learning, and strong connections to the members of their school community have a positive correlation to students’ level of engagement and motivation which also supports higher academic performance. In addition, students’ relationships play a crucial role in their sense of belonging – the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school environment. In turn, students with a strong sense of school belonging are more likely to report high levels of academic motivation, less likely to experience emotional distress, and less likely to be absent or drop out. A sense of school belonging has also been shown to reduce behavioral issues and promote mental health, while its absence is linked to loneliness, depression, and risk of suicide.

Despite the well-documented benefits of strong interpersonal connections in educational settings, many students today lack access to these supportive relationships. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded the challenges for developing positive relationships as the school closures and quarantines contributed to social isolation and increased loneliness, stress, and anxiety among students as well as adults. Showing just how widespread the impact has been, these disruptions to relationships extended far beyond school settings contributing to a 40% increase in babies lacking strong emotional bonds with their mothers just after the onset of the pandemic

Even with some awareness of the negative impact of the pandemic on students’ relationships, educators may underestimate the extent of the problem. Julia Freeland Fisher and Mahnaz Charania, who have written extensively about the power of peer relationships, note that over 85% of adults in K–12 schools report that they are building strong relationships with students, but only 45% of students reported experiencing such strong developmental relationships with their teachers. In addition, less than 40% of 10th graders say “‘most of the time they feel they belong at school’” while more than 60% of parents with 10th graders think they do.”

 Moreover, access to supportive relationships is not equitably distributed: factors like race, socioeconomic status, parental education, gender, and immigration status shape the extent and quality of students’ peer relationships and networks—and, consequently, the social capital available to them. For instance, LGBTQ+ students are shown to be over 10 percentage points less likely than their heterosexual and cisgender peers to feel close to others at school, while girls also report lower relational connectedness than boys by more than 10 percentage points. 

Students’ declining feeling of connectedness with consistent disparities for LGBTQ+ and female identifying students after the pandemic 2021-2023  (Peetz 2024)

Addressing challenges of disconnection like these can certainly begin in classrooms and schools, but the external relationships in which students and schools are embedded—including those with mentors, families, and the broader community—are essential sources for the development of a whole system of supportive relationships. It’s important to note that students spend only 13% of their time in school, leaving 87% of their lives dependent on the relationships and environments beyond the classroom. Studies have shown that parental support strongly predicted lower levels of work avoidance, indicating that families of students play a primary role in keeping students motivated and goal-oriented. Furthermore, community conditions play a critical role in shaping students’ academic success, often rivaling or even outweighing the influence of family support. Children in high-poverty neighborhoods may be exposed to antisocial peers, leading to diminished academic progress—even in otherwise nurturing households. Yet, supportive communities with strong social cohesion and access to resources or social capital can buffer against these disadvantages, boosting early academic outcomes even in high-poverty areas. Together, these findings emphasize that relational networks—across school, home, and the community—lays the foundation for physical, mental, and academic support.

From this perspective, students’ relationships and networks can be seen as embedded in  a broader, community-wide ecosystem rather than as a product of isolated institutions. When one part of that system falters, the entire structure can be weakened or even collapse. This underscores the importance of an interconnected educational ecosystem, where overlapping relationships between students, educators, families, and community members form a foundation for a supportive and effective learning environment. 

Interconnectedness of schools, family, and broader community are essential for building a strong foundation for educational ecosystems that support student learning and engagement 

What can be done to foster strong relationships in and beyond schools? 

Developing a stronger, more equitable educational ecosystem begins with intentionally nurturing the relationships that fuel student learning and wellbeing. Fortunately, schools do not have to wait for large-scale reform: educators and communities are already implementing micro-innovations—small but powerful and tangible shifts in practices, routines, and resources—that foster connection and support. These include efforts to make visible the connections among students and between students and teachers; to deepen family-student ties through more inclusive school-family communication; and to expand community-student connections through partnerships with local organizations.  

Connecting students and teachers

  • Relationship mapping enables teachers to document and visualize the relationships and social networks among their students. In 5 Steps for Building & Strengthening Students’ Networks, Fisher and Charania describe several relationship building strategies including relationship mapping tools. Many of those tools begin with the development of color-coded lists that teachers can use to indicate students with whom they have strong relationships as well as those who may be more socially isolated. Teachers can also engage their own students in developing maps of the peer relationship in their class, and the same social network mapping strategy can be used to document students’ relationships beyond the school with members of their families as well as with mentors and members of community organizations and health and service agencies. As Fisher and Charania  put it, “Not only does relationship mapping provide more detailed information regarding whom your students know and turn to—it can also surface relationships that you could enlist more deliberately to expand supports or opportunities at your institution.” 
  • The Relationship Check Tool assesses the quantity of relationships and the quality of those relationships as well. The tool is a free survey offered by the Search Institute and discussed as well by Fisher and Charania. The survey is designed to support self-reflection and conversation to help practitioners, educators, and families assess where their connections with young people are strong and where they could grow. This tool helps adults gain insight by asking them to reflect on the quality of their relationships with youth, not as a formal assessment, but as a prompt for intentional dialogue and improvement. It is designed to spark meaningful conversations among peers or between adults and young people about the support, care, or challenge present in those relationships. While not built as a diagnostic instrument, the tool can empower users to identify strengths and gaps in their relational practice, creating awareness that can translate into more purposeful relationship-building in classrooms, schools, or home settings.
  •  Peer Partner programs take many different forms, but they generally involve connecting two (or more) students who support each other in one or more activities. In some cases, peers may support each other in carrying out a physical activity, like running, or in getting to school or showing up for extra-curricular activities or clubs. By engaging in shared activities, students can develop relationships with peers they might not normally come in contact with. Some programs also focus specifically on connecting students to support their academic work. For example, at Acton Academy, Running Partners are peer accountability partners who help one another set daily goals, review progress, and provide encouragement throughout the school day. Students begin each morning by articulating their goals with their running partner, who then checks in to hold them accountable and offer feedback—whether by reviewing an essay, asking clarifying questions, or challenging them to aim higher. In younger grades, teachers adapt the practice by forming “housemate” groups of four, which broaden perspectives and make feedback developmentally appropriate. According to Acton educators, running partners not only help students “hold each other to a high standard of work” but also become an emotional support system, cheering one another on and offering encouragement when motivation dips. 
  • Brief, reflective writing exercises can support students’ sense of belonging. In these exercises, students read first-person accounts from older peers describing common challenges—such as homesickness, academic struggles, or difficulty connecting with professors—and then reflect in writing on their own feelings and strategies for navigating similar experiences. The goal is to normalize these challenges and reassure students that feeling out of place is a typical part of the school experience. According to the researchers who have studied these exercises, students who participated reported feeling less anxious about fitting in and experienced slight improvements in academic performance, earning fewer Ds and Fs than peers who did not engage in the intervention. 

Connecting students, schools, families, and communities

  • App-based platforms provide a relatively new way to connect parents and teachers. Apps like ClassDojo, Seesaw, Remind, and ParentPowered allow educators to share updates, videos, and messages with families in real time, giving parents a window into classroom activities they might otherwise miss. Teachers use these apps to reinforce learning at home, provide reminders, and communicate about student progress, while students can showcase work directly to their families. As Helen Westmoreland, director of family engagement at the National PTA, explains, these apps are “a starting place for good family engagement, not the ending place,” emphasizing that the tools work best when paired with thoughtful in-person connections. 
  • Two-way (virtual) town halls were designed to give students and parents the chance to voice concerns, ask questions, and offer suggestions alongside updates from administrators. During the pandemic, these town halls were adapted from the usual, largely ceremonial,  “parents’ nights”, at Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy (KAPPA) in New York City to both learn from parents and students  about their needs and to provide critical information about the schools’ response to the school closures. . These bi-monthly meetings became a critical means for understanding students’ social-emotional needs and academic challenges, allowing the school to make adjustments—such as changing start times to address students’ concerns about social distancing. Feedback from families also directly informed advisory lessons, social-emotional learning units, and academic goal-setting activities, ensuring programming responded to students’ needs. 
  • Newcomer Liaisons and Newcomer Coordinators provide support to recently arrived immigrant students and their families. Newcomer liaisons are individuals or teams who serve as  a dedicated point of contact who can work with immigrant families on issues like enrollment, programming, communication, and bilingual services. They can help students navigate school systems and access resources such as healthcare and clothing. By centralizing support, the liaisons aim to reduce the burden on teachers, improve students’ access to services, and foster a more equitable and responsive learning environment, particularly for newcomers in historically under-resourced schools.
  • Digital Directories have been created by organizations like Remake Learning to help students and schools connect with community members and organizations who can provide mentorship, apprenticeships and other learning opportunities. contact information for network members, programs, and organizations. At Remake Learning, the directory enables participants to see themselves as part of a larger network, access available resources, and browse calendars of events and engagement opportunities, strengthening connections across the ecosystem. 
  • Learning Festivals  are events designed to bring together schools and other people and organizations to showcase some of learning opportunities across particular communities. For example, Remake Learning Days, launched initially in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2015, have now expanded to 10 different regions in four countries. These festivals provide creative, immersive learning experiences across diverse settings—including libraries, tech centers, schools, museums, parks, and community centers—who focus on hands-on, and maker-based education. Beyond providing opportunities for students to find out about learning opportunities in their community, these festivals can also help to foster connections among schools and other organizations in their communities and strengthen the whole learning ecosystem. 

By starting with micro-innovations like these for even one aspect of relationship building—supporting connections among students, between students and teachers or among students, schools and the wider community—schools can lay the groundwork for a system where every student is seen, supported, and connected.

The De-Professionalized Teaching Profession: The Lead the Change Interview with Taylor Strickland

In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Taylor Strickland reflects on her research into teachers’ workplace conditions and the professional status of teaching. Strickland is a 4th-year doctoral student and research assistant in the Learning, Leadership, and Education Policy Program at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education Policy Analysis, Research, and Evaluation. Her research uses sociological and organizational theories to study teaching as a profession, the impacts of policy on teachers’ work, and how workplace conditions shape teacher attrition and equity in under-resourced schools. The LtC series is produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. This year, the Ed Change SIG recognized Strickland’s work with their Graduate Student Award.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?

Taylor Strickland: My scholarship approaches schools foremost as workplaces and teachers as professionals, a perspective too often overlooked in education research and policy. This perspective is especially urgent amid mounting attacks at federal and state levels on the financial foundations of public schooling and waning student enrollment (Goldstein, 2025; Mervosh & Goldstein, 2025a; Mervosh & Goldstein, 2025b). This financial and enrollment crisis is occurring while the number of graduates entering a teaching career, and on-the -job satisfaction of teaching, are at a 50 year all time low (Kraft & Lyon, 2024). Since the 1980s, researchers have warned that the workplace conditions of teachers are not suitable to attract and retain the highly qualified teachers that our system demands (Ingersoll, 2001; Johnson, 2006; Rosenholtz, 1989). Quite sadly, it seems their warnings have come to bear their bitter fruit, and we are starting to taste the consequences on a scale that can no longer be ignored (Kraft & Lyon, 2024). 

Source: UConn Website

Heeding this year’s AERA call to look “back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures,” I reflect on the history of teaching as a profession (Simon & Johnson, 2015; Sorensen & Ladd, 2020). From the conception of public schooling in the United States, the notion of “teaching as a profession” ran against the grain of traditional ideas. The gold standard examples for professions have long been considered law and medicine (Evetts, 2011), whose occupational values include lengthy training and careers and autonomy over their practice (Evetts, 2011; Lortie, 1975). Public schools, by contrast, were first conceived as a public good designed to educate white working class and European immigrant children to be moral, democratic citizens and workers (Goldstein, 2015). The white, mostly female teachers who were put in charge of this endeavor were notably temporary—not expected to pursue life-long professions—and trained quickly with an emphasis on classroom management essentials (Goldstein, 2015). Female teachers were contractually required to leave their teaching posts if marrying and/or becoming pregnant (Apple, 1985; Goldstein, 2015). Unlike professional autonomy recognized in the ‘gold standard’ professions, teachers—as Ingersoll and Collins (2018) describe—function more as middle-women/men, “which may seem similar to professional-like autonomy, but in reality are “highly constrained by larger school-wide [, district, state, and federal] decisions, over which teachers have little control or influence” (p. 168). In sum, the job of teaching from its conception has been decidedly de-professionalized and transient, or what Lortie (1975) describes as a semi-profession.

When a job, such as teaching, is not treated as a profession (Evetts, 2011), where lengthy training, degrees, and resultant expertise do not translate to autonomy of practice and respect, it is societally de-professionalized and de-valued (Ingersoll & Collins, 2018), which has great implications for the workplace environments of its employees (Ingersoll & Collins, 2018; Milner, 2013). Susan Moore Johnson and colleagues (2012) developed a measurement framework for nine key elements of the workplace conditions of teachers. Notably, six of the nine elements are related to autonomy of practice, influence in school decision making, and trust/respect of teacher expertise. Unsurprisingly, researchers found that when workplace conditions improve from the lowest quartile, teachers’ transfer intentions drop sharply (Johnson et al., 2012). These findings are quite meaningful given national trends showing that teachers—who have historically had limited professional autonomy and influence—experienced further declines in decision-making power across all key school governance categories between 1993 and 2012 (Ingersoll & Collins, 2018), with more recent research suggesting a continuing downward trend (Kraft & Lyon, 2024). It is then no wonder that the prestige of teaching, interest in the profession, and teachers’ job satisfaction are at a 50-year low (Kraft & Lyon, 2024), given the continued erosion of teachers’ professional status and workplace conditions.

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

TS: In seeking to envision a better future for the professional status and workplace conditions of teachers, I interrogate how reform is implemented in schools and how it impacts the work and professional status of teachers. My qualifying paper and upcoming dissertation focus on the novel concept of “time cultures”—the normative patterns in how time is perceived, valued, and utilized within school teams. The research examines the influence of time cultures on teacher engagement in school improvement. In an era of growing teacher work intensification marked by increasing workload, time pressure, and task complexity for teachers (Creagh et al., 2023), understanding time as a cultural construct helps to reveal how teachers experience and respond to these pressures. Increased task complexity, time pressure, and policy churn—commonplace for the 21st century teacher—are often associated with burnout (Lawrence et al., 2019), declining workplace satisfaction (Creagh et al., 2023), and teacher shortages (Diliberti & Schwartz, 2023; Harbatkin et al., 2025; Martin et al., 2012; Redding & Nguyen, 2023). Notably, work intensification and its impacts on teacher satisfaction and retention are felt most severely by teachers in schools with larger populations of historically educationally underserved students, including English learners, low-income, lower academic achievement, and racially marginalized students – including Black, Hispanic, and Native American students (Creagh et al., 2023; Goldhaber et al., 2023; Simon & Johnson, 2015). At the same time that the demands on teachers have become increasingly complex and intense, the profession has become simultaneously de-skilled and de-professionalized. An era of accountability and neoliberalism—characterized by a constant cycle of reform initiatives and top-down control over teachers’ work (Creagh et al., 2023; Hargreaves, 1992; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009)—has contributed to the de-professionalization of teaching, declining workplace satisfaction, and teacher shortages.

My work seeks to gain teachers’ firsthand experiences with constant reform cycles and their impact on their professional standing and work. I do this using a previously unused framework in the education literature—the sociology of work time (SWT) (Perlow, 1999). The SWT recognizes time cultures as multi-dimensional and aids in building a more complete picture of teachers’ construction of time cultures through the analysis of the reciprocal exchange between the temporal context (i.e., characteristic ordering, duration, and tempo of practice), the social context, and work-interaction patterns of teachers. This framework honors the expertise of teachers by seeking to understand how their leadership and policy reform experiences intersect with the cultural-time norms of their teams in their unique contexts. 

For instance, my qualifying paper shows how the time culture of a math team, tasked with imposed reforms, shaped its attitudes and willingness to implement policy. These findings further indicate that reduced influence in school decision-making may lead teacher teams to reinterpret policy directives to be in alignment with their time culture, thereby reducing the implementation fidelity. The lesson that I hope to share with my work is that education leaders at all levels need to involve teachers—the people who are actually tasked with implementing improvement initiatives – with policy design and implementation. And to better involve teachers, leaders need to understand how teachers use and value their time, so that initiated reforms are seen as useful and sustainable. This would not only better align policy to local realities but would also go a long way in repairing the professional status of teachers.

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

TS: Looking back at the history of the teaching “profession,” we see that fundamentally the teaching role was not designed to be an occupation with professional status. The lack of professional status values and practices within the teaching field has eroded the workplace conditions of teachers to the point that teacher shortages are at an unsustainable high and interest in this career pathway is at an all-time low (Kraft & Lyon, 2024; Nguyen et al., 2024). Given this dour assessment of the teaching field, where do I find hope and what can be done to look forward to and imagine a better future?

Quite honestly, I fear the direction in which the teaching field is heading—and has been heading for some time now. To find hope, I must imagine a future where there is a fundamental cultural shift in how our society, government, states, districts, and school leaders respect the professional status of teachers. For this type of transformational cultural change to occur we will need education researchers and leaders at every level—from academia to individual schools—to work together to dismantle the deep-seated structures that have driven down the prestige, appeal, and professional standing of teaching to historic lows. State departments of education should advocate for, and districts should move towards, “revers[ing] the trend of top-down control over teachers’ practices and develop meaningful career ladders” (Kraft & Lyon, 2024, p. 1227). They should also prioritize increasing teacher pay and lowering the cost of degrees in education. Big ships turn slowly—but time is of the essence. We need to attract, train, and retain the best quality educators for our children. Without meaningful changes to how we value and support teaching, we risk a future where too few choose to enter or remain in the classroom.

References

Apple, M. (1985). Teaching and “women’s work”: A comparative historical and ideological analysis. Teachers College Record, 86(3), 455–473.

Creagh, S., Thompson, G., Mockler, N., Stacey, M., & Hogan, A. (2023). Workload, work intensification and time poverty for teachers and school leaders: A systematic research synthesis. Educational Review, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2023.2196607

Goldhaber, D., Falken, G., & Theobald, R. (2023). What do teacher job postings tell us about school hiring needs and equity? (CALDER Working Paper No. 282-0323). CALDER Center.

Goldstein, D. (2025, August 5). Public Schools Try to Sell Themselves as More Students Use Vouchers. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/us/public-school-enrollment-decline-vouchers.html

Goldstein, D. (2015). The teacher wars: A history of America’s most embattled profession. Vintage.

Harbatkin, E., Nguyen, T. D., Strunk, K. O., Burns, J., & Moran, A. J. (2025). Should I Stay or Should I Go (Later)? Teacher Intentions and Turnover in Low-Performing Schools and Districts Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Education Finance and Policy, 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00447

Hargreaves, A. (1992). Time and teachers’ work: An analysis of the intensification thesis. Teachers College Record, 94(1), 87–108.

Hargreaves, A., & Shirley, D. (2009). The persistence of presentism. Teachers College Record, 111(11), 2505–2534. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146810911101108

Ingersoll, R. M. (2001). Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages: An Organizational Analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 38(3), 499–534. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312038003499

Johnson, S. M., Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2012). How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement. Teachers College Record, 114(10), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811211401004

Kraft, M. A., & Lyon, M. A. (2024). The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction Over the Last Half Century. American Educational Research Journal, 61(6), 1192–1236. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312241276856

Lawrence, D. F., Loi, N. M., & Gudex, B. W. (2019). Understanding the relationship between work intensification and burnout in secondary teachers. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 25(2), 189–199.https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1544551

Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Martin, N. K., Sass, D. A., & Schmitt, T. A. (2012). Teacher efficacy in student engagement, instructional management, student stressors, and burnout: A theoretical model using in-class variables to predict teachers’ intent-to-leave. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(4), 546–559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2011.12.003

Mervosh, S., & Goldstein, D. (2025a, April 17). A Legal Battle Over Trump’s Threats to Public School Funding Has Begun. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/us/dei-public-schools-trump-administration-lawsuit.html

Mervosh, S., & Goldstein, D. (2025b, July 3). Congress Passes a National School Voucher Program. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/federal-voucher-program-congress-private-school-tuition.html

Mehta, J. (2025, March 21). How the Education Department cuts could hurt low-income and rural schools. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/nx-s1-5330917/trump-schools-education-department-cuts-low-income

Milner, H. R. (2013). Policy Reforms and De-Professionalization of Teaching. National Education Policy Center. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED544286

Nguyen, T. D., Lam, C. B., & Bruno, P. (2024). What Do We Know About the Extent of Teacher Shortages Nationwide? A Systematic Examination of Reports of U.S. Teacher Shortages. AERA Open, 10, 23328584241276512. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584241276512

Perlow, L. A. (1999). The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(1), 57–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667031

Redding, C., & Nguyen, T. (2023). Teacher working conditions and dissatisfaction before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. EdWorkingPaper: 23-830. Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/04xa-zz07

Rosenholtz, S. J. (1989). Teacher’s workplace: The social organization of schools. Longman.

Simon, N. S., & Johnson, S. M. (2015). Teacher Turnover in High-Poverty Schools: What We Know and Can Do. Teachers College Record, 117(3).

Sorensen, L. C., & Ladd, H. F. (2020). The Hidden Costs of Teacher Turnover. AERA Open, 6(1), 2332858420905812. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420905812

Collaboration, Professional Networks & Grassroots Change: The Lead the Change Interview with Kemi Oyewole

In the second part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Kemi A. Oyewole discusses her experiences researching institutional and organizational conditions that shape K-12 education policy. Oyewole is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on collaborative methods and civic education that can promote social justice. The LtC series is produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association. This year, the Ed Change SIG recognized Oyewole’s work with their Graduate Student Award. 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?

Kemi Oyewole: The current moment of political, anti-intellectual aggression towards the public sector has led many of us to see bleak immediate futures for education. Further, a flurry of executive orders from the Trump administration has been so overwhelming that it has distracted many of its opponents to the point of inaction. In the first 100 days of his second term (January 20, 2025 to April 29, 2025), the president issued directives that sought to limit educational, health, and sports opportunities for trans youth (EO 14168, 14187, 14201); prohibit policies that address racial disparities in school discipline (EO 14280); halt K-12 and higher education institutions’ diversity initiatives (EO 14173, 14190); and close the Department of Education (EO 14242). In the words of Toni Morrison (1975), “It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” Beyond racism, other systems of oppression similarly seek to disrupt the advancement of marginalized people. However, powerful histories of resistance remind us that there are viable ways to move forward in the face of authoritarian pressure. 

Source: University of Pennsylvania Website

There are many examples of resistance across the globe, especially in the Global South where people have contended with colonialism and its vestiges. I draw upon my identity as a Black American to highlight ways the resistance of enslaved Black people speaks to their futuring. While disproportionate attention is paid to violent revolts, enslaved people resisted by many means. These include marronage (i.e., escape from slavery to form independent communities), emancipation certified by legal documents, military service, work refusal, and sabotage (Helg, 2019). Despite the brutality they experienced, these enslaved people dreamed of freedom and used many means to pursue it. Their many strategies suggest that there is immense room for futuring—there are innumerable paths to a more just educational system. We are called to dream expansively and make space for others to do so as well.

While there is value in pausing to make time for futuring (i.e., imagining or dreaming; Kelley, 2002; Oyewole et al., 2023), we must not stop there. A commitment to educational change suggests we must do the hard, often frustrating, work of bringing emancipatory futures to pass. Within my research, my futuring benefits from engaging educators. For example, teaching students through the COVID-19 pandemic offered teachers a different sense of the futures enabled by educational technology (and its limitations). Thus, I seek to incorporate practitioner insights through collaborative, participatory research methods (The Collaborative Education Research Collective, 2023). However, engaging in-service educators in research requires flexible research agendas, timelines, and design. These collaborative methods require a departure from the status quo, a worthwhile shift because valuing educators as co-inquirers allows my futuring to be informed by current educational conditions. Ideally, these methods also offer participants a humanizing, reflective, professional development experience.

ebonyjanice (2023) argues that Black women’s contribution to movement work includes dreaming, resting, playing, seeking bliss, and pursuing wholeness. She celebrates the hard-fought dreaming of enslaved Black people while offering a new vision:

“‘Dreaming’ is a form of radical resistance because it calls us to a conscious stillness, which manifests itself as ease in the body. Ease, in a Black body, is revolutionary because Black people have not, historically, as a result of chattel slavery, had access to ease in our bodies. Dreaming, however, subverts a global anti-Black unease that actively works to commodify Black bodies. Plainly, dreaming is radical resistance because the fantastic hegemonic imagination (Townes, 2006) cannot function with Black bodies at rest.” (p. 8)

I embody her sentiment by allowing my futuring for education to come from a place of rest rather than frenzy. And to imagine educational systems that create conditions of peace and healing for Black girls—trusting that their wellness will benefit all learners (Guinier & Torres, 2002).

My vision of educational research is informed by the multifaceted resistance of enslaved Black Americans, my current practice of collaborative research, and Black women’s relentless pursuit of rest.

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

KO: My research emphasizes the value of collective action for stimulating educational change. Despite its promise, collaborative efforts can falter when there is a lack of consensus around their scope and goals. Further, attention is needed to ensure the routines embedded in collaborative endeavors do not perpetuate educational injustice (Diamond & Gomez, 2023; Hinnant-Crawford et al., 2023). My recent research examines these dynamics in professional learning networks (PLNs).

My dissertation project centered on a school district PLN of school-based instructional coaches. The network of 45 coaches met once a month in person (though meetings shifted online during the Covid-19 pandemic shift to distance learning). My social network analysis showed that coaches share advice on instructional strategies, data use practices, or workplace challenges with about five colleagues in the network. My interview and survey data suggests that coaches valued the space because it gave them an opportunity to connect with role-alike peers. These relationships were especially meaningful to participants because these coaches were normally the only person at their school in the liminal space of not being a classroom teacher, but also not being an administrator. These findings stress the value of routines that facilitate educators connecting with each other beyond their local communities of practice. A cross-school PLN can build participants’ pedagogical knowledge, strengthen their professional identity, and expand their professional network (Oddone et al., 2019). These benefits suggest that beyond-school collaboration is both a tool for developing educator skills and affirming their professional status. The warmth and enthusiasm I felt when observing this PLN made me appreciate the need to invest in rejuvenating spaces for educators.

Though PLNs have immense potential, much of their value stems from purposeful participation and strategic facilitation. It is powerful to create professional spaces that adaptably meet educator needs. However, PLNs have to find a balance between organic interpersonal engagement and directed professional exchange. For example, my longitudinal social network analysis found that coaches shared advice with peers who worked at similar schools, had similar self-efficacy appraisals, or joined the network at similar times. While these relationships provided coaches information that was applicable to their local context, it could come at the expense of being exposed to ideas from different environments. I also found that experienced coaches were less likely to share advice with others in the PLN.

Observation and interview data suggest that it is because after many years, these coaches were not getting as much value from the network. Their experiences point to the need for differentiation in coach professional development. Each finding highlights the challenges and opportunities of intentionally curating PLNs.

My emphasis on collaboration presents many promising research directions. First, I am excited about the ways that studying collaboration and PLNs avails itself to social network analysis (Rodway, 2018). Not only can this network analysis be done for research purposes, it can also be an active process that promotes educators reflecting on their own relationships and environments (Kothari et al., 2014). Second, there are opportunities to better identify the routines that support the resource sharing aims of in-person, or otherwise synchronous (e.g., a Zoom meeting), PLNs. Focusing research on these settings acknowledges that these meetings have different demands and opportunities than social media PLNs. Third, I highlight the need for more research on instructional coaching. While instructional coaching has exploded in prominence, it is heterogeneously enacted (Coburn & Woulfin, 2012; Kane & Rosenquist, 2019). Better understanding coach practices offers us a valuable perspective on educational change.

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

KO: As the United States government decreases the resources it devotes to public education, educational change will rely on more local actions. In the face of authoritarian surveillance and punishment, I expect that changes to promote just educational systems will become more covert. Though the loose coupling between dictated educational policy and enacted educational practice can prove challenging for progressive top-down reforms (Anderson & Colyvas, 2021), it can be an advantage when regressive policies are imposed. So, I expect that just educational change will not be codified, but spread in ways akin to grassroots activist and labor movements.

Another factor that will influence educational change is the United States’ projected 8% decline in K-12 enrollment from 2019 to 2030 (Irwin et al., 2024). These structural changes in the student population and fewer federal dollars devoted to education suggest that educational change efforts may have to be more focused in their scope and demands. Of course, there is also a need to strike a balance between what one feels is cynical, optimistic, or realistic. I am personally working to strike that balance—dreaming while being practical enough not to be dismayed whenever I see the news.

My hope is that researchers of educational change will support burgeoning grassroots efforts by conducting their scholarship in concert with students, teachers, families, community organizations, and others close to educational practice. Such research involves more participatory approaches, including design research that supports partners creating solutions to problems of practice while considering contemporary constraints. Collaborative approaches require research designs that are adaptable to rapidly changing conditions. Such flexibility is a departure from traditional research methods, but suggests implications beyond those that can be drawn from tightly controlled conditions.

I am incredibly grateful to be in community with researchers and practitioners passionate about educational change, even in a climate that is so hostile to improving schools for all children. While I can get discouraged that my locus of control is small, “small is good, small is all” (brown, 2017, p. 37).

References

Anderson, E. R., & Colyvas, J. A. (2021). What sticks and why? A MoRe institutional framework for education research. Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 123(7), 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146812112300705

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

Coburn, C. E., & Woulfin, S. L. (2012). Reading coaches and the relationship between policy and practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 47(1), 5–30. https://doi.org/10.1002/RRQ.008

Diamond, J. B., & Gomez, L. M. (2023). Disrupting white supremacy and anti-Black racism in educational organizations. Educational Researcher, 0013189X2311610. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231161054

ebonyjanice. (2023). All the Black girls are activists: A fourth wave womanist pursuit of dreams as radical resistance. Row House.

Guinier, L., & Torres, G. (2002). The miner’s canary: Enlisting race, resisting power, transforming democracy. Harvard University Press.

Helg, A. (2019). Slave no more: Self-liberation before abolitionism in the AMericas. University of North Carolina Press.

Hinnant-Crawford, B., Lett, E. L., & Cromartie, S. (2023). IMPROVECRIT: Using critical race theory to guide continuous improvement. In E. R. Anderson & S. D. Hayes (Eds.), Continuous improvement: A leadership process for school improvement (pp. 105–124). Information Age Publishing.

Irwin, V., Bailey, T. M., Panditharatna, R., & Sadeghi, A. (2024). Projections of education statistics to 2030 (NCES 2024-034). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2024034

Kane, B. D., & Rosenquist, B. (2019). Relationships between instructional coaches’ time use and district- and school-level policies and expectations. American Educational Research Journal, 56(5), 1718–1768. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831219826580

Kelley, R. D. G. (2002). Freedom dreams: The black radical imagination. Beacon Press.

Kothari, A., Hamel, N., MacDonald, J.-A., Meyer, M., Cohen, B., & Bonnenfant, D. (2014). Exploring community collaborations: Social network analysis as a reflective tool for public health. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 27(2), 123–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-012-9271-7

Morrison, T. (1975, May 30). Black Studies Center public dialogue. https://soundcloud.com/portland-state-library/portland-state-black-studies-1

Oddone, K., Hughes, H., & Lupton, M. (2019). Teachers as connected professionals. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(3). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i4.4082

Oyewole, K. A., Karn, S. K., Classen, J., & Yurkofsky, M. M. (2023). Equitable research-practice partnerships: A multilevel reimagining. The Assembly: A Journal for Public Scholarship on Education, 5(1), 40–59.

Rodway, J. (2018). Getting beneath the surface: Examining the social side of professional learning networks. In C. Brown & C. L. Poortman (Eds.), Networks for learning: Effective collaboration for teacher, school and system improvement (pp. 171–193). Routledge.

The Collaborative Education Research Collective. (2023). Towards a field for collaborative education research: Developing a framework for the complexity of necessary learning. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Townes, E. M. (2006). Womanist ethics and the cultural production of evil. Palgrave Macmillan.

Racialized Expertise as Change Capital: The Lead the Change Interview with Román Liera

In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Román Liera designs his research program to study racial equity and organizational change in higher education. Liera is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership at Montclair State University. His current research projects focus on understanding how racism operates in doctoral student socialization, the academic job market, faculty hiring, reappointment, tenure and promotion, presidential hiring, and racial equity professional development. The LtC series is produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. This year, the Ed Change SIG recognized Liera’s work with one of two Emerging Scholar Awards. 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?

Source: Montclair State University

Román Liera: I appreciate the theme and the question because the current anti-DEI attacks are not new and have provided an opportunity to reflect on what has been done in the past and a gut check that what is being done has not been enough to advance racial equity and justice. In studying racial equity and organizational change, I have had several opportunities to collaborate and partner with administrators, faculty, and staff taking action to create more equitable hiring practices. I have also been collaborating with other scholars who have been creative and innovative in theorizing racial equity and organizational change.

In working with leaders and practitioners who are taking actions towards change, I have learned from and with change agents who are nearing retirement or beginning their higher education careers. Listening to those who have been in higher education for decades and referring to similar instances regarding attacks on DEI in the past (e.g., the Civil Rights era) has helped me affirm that my work not only matters but also makes a difference in the face of attacks on race-focused change efforts. At the same time, working with those newer to the field has helped me slow down to acknowledge that what we have been doing has not been enough to create equitable and inclusive educational organizations.

In addition to collaborating with change agents from diverse identities and career trajectories, I am theorizing and studying how we can continue to disrupt deeply rooted forms of racism in educational organizations. An area that I have been investigating is the racial inequities in the professoriate (e.g., underrepresentation of faculty of color), particularly in recruiting, hiring, and tenure and promotion practices. For example, along with Drs. Heather McCambly and Aireale Rodgers, we designed a study on faculty cluster hiring at six research one universities. A goal was to understand how administrators, faculty, and staff leaders framed and implemented cluster hiring initiatives to disrupt how whiteness informed faculty recruitment and hiring routines, practices, decisions, and evaluations. We recently published a manuscript in the Journal of Higher Education titled “Analyzing the Purposes and Mechanisms of Faculty Cluster Hiring Initiatives to Promote Racial Equity.” In the paper, which is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we highlight how senior leaders, administrators, faculty, and staff leverage racialized expertise—expertise focused on addressing racial inequities and injustices—as hiring capital.

Our participants emphasized that faculty cluster hiring initiatives aimed to broaden the expertise of faculty across departments and the university, enabling them to address critical societal issues related to equity and justice. In doing so, they were also being intentional not to trigger racist stereotypes among administrators and faculty that the cluster hiring was code for hiring underqualified faculty of color. On the contrary, the faculty cluster hiring initiatives raised the criteria because the evaluation criteria included what departments typically sought and what the cluster was focused on. Moreover, these change agents also leveraged cluster hiring lines to challenge practices that perpetuate racial inequities, such as requiring academic departments to assess their retention practices to access a cluster faculty line. Our participants reflected AERA’s theme because they relied on the past of their organizations to make decisions about creating more equitable and inclusive campuses for People of Color.

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

RL: As we learned through the faculty cluster hiring study mentioned above, initiatives to promote racial equity must go beyond reallocating resources. That is, having systemic and deep-level change requires more than monetary support and changes to hiring criteria. Although we found that change agents were strategic and responsive to the racialized history of their campuses, they used their political capital to situate faculty cluster hiring as an initiative that promoted the status of their university’s intellectual enterprise. For example, to legitimize the cluster initiatives, they aligned them with university-level missions to address and, in many instances, lead the advancement of equity and justice. However, in many cases, they left intact how whiteness operated in departments that did not have the infrastructure and people to promote racial equity. That is, faculty with expertise in racial equity and justice, who often were faculty of color, were brought into departments that expected them to take on the load of racial equity issues in their departments, which went beyond their scholarly contributions to the field. I echo what we recommend in the paper: I sympathize with the precarity (e.g., having to work in organizations that hamper agency, especially agency to address racial equity issues) higher education faces, but also remind leaders that race-focused initiatives like faculty cluster hiring hold promise for promoting racial equity, and it is legally defensible because it is about transforming structures and cultures and not about hiring based on racial identities. As extensive research has convincingly found (Gonzales et al., 2025; Liera & Hernandez, 2021; White-Lewis, 2020), racial biases and ideologies are deeply embedded in recruitment, hiring, promotion, and tenure practices that, when left undisrupted, whiteness will continue to be the baseline for what and who we deem valuable in the academy. More so than ever, today is not the time to be neutral if we genuinely care about creating more equitable and just futures.

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

RL: I will draw on the AERA 2026 theme and AERA President Winn’s comments to describe the program theme. One of the questions she asked educators was to “take a long path approach by thinking and feeling beyond our individual life spans… to the impact we will have on future generations of students, educators, and education researchers” (Wallach, 2022, p. 10 as cited by Winn, 2025 paragraph 3). Admittedly, when I initially sat with this question, I had a hard time imagining the future outside my lifespan. However, I made sense of it by taking a step back and reflecting on my research approach, as well as my relationships with educational practitioners, leaders, and researchers, which helped me frame my response to the question. 

Educational change requires us to be comfortable with imagining the future beyond our lifespans. For example, in 2022, Dr. Steve Desir and I theorized about the equity-minded organization. Not long after we published our paper (Liera & Desir, 2023), Dr. Kevin McClure interviewed us about our collective work on organizational change and racial equity, as well as the equity-minded organization, for his now-published book, “The Caring University: Reimagining the Higher Education Workforce after the Great Resignation.” He asked us if there was a university or college that we would consider to be an equity-minded organization. We said no, but we have several examples of educational organizations that reflect aspects of an equity-minded organization, and we wanted to provide a framework for the possibilities of a more just and equitable future. As Dr. McClure did, based on extensive literature, original data collection, and expert interviews, Steve and I were able to theorize about a future possibility by leaning into our experiential, theoretical, and methodological differences to imagine what we want future generations to experience. 

In short, I am hopeful for the future of educational change because educators are leaning into community to imagine more equitable and just organizations for future generations (see Dr. Patricia Virella’s book Crisis as Catalyst as an example of hope and equity for the future).

References

Gonzales, L. D., Bhangal, N., Stokes, C., & Rosales, J. (2025). Faculty hiring: Exercising professional jurisdiction over epistemic matters. Journal of Higher Education, 96(1), 28–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2024.2301915.

Liera, R., & Desir, S. (2023). Taking equity-mindedness to the next level: The equity-minded organization. Frontiers in Education, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1199174. 

Liera, R., & Hernandez, T. E. (2021). Color-evasive racism in the final stage of faculty searches: Examining search committee hiring practices that jeopardize racial equity policy. The Review of Higher Education, 45(2), 181–209. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2021.0020.

McCambly, H. N., Liera, R., Rodgers, A. J., & Park, B. M. (2025). Analyzing the purposes and mechanisms of faculty cluster hiring initiatives to promote racial equity. The Journal of Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2025.2546765.

McClure, K. R. (2025). The caring university: Reimagining the higher education workplace after the great resignation. John Hopkins Press. 

Virella, P. M. (2025). Crisis as catalyst: Equity-oriented school leadership during difficult times. Harvard Ed Press. White-Lewis, D. (2020). The facade of fit in faculty search processes. Journal of Higher Education, 91(6), 833–857. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2020.1775058.

Unforgetting History, Change, and Equity: The Lead the Change Interview with Stephen MacGregor

In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Stephen MacGregor draws from his experience researching knowledge mobilization as a mechanism for educational change, with an emphasis
on leadership practices within increasingly complex education systems. MacGregor is an Assistant Professor and Director of Experiential Learning at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education. His research focuses on three interrelated strands of inquiry: (1) mapping relational networks between universities and K–12 schools, (2) exploring positive leadership in nurturing professional capital and community, and (3) co-producing knowledge to bridge education theory and practice. The LtC series is produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. This year, the Ed Change SIG recognized MacGregor’s work with one of two Emerging Scholar Awards.
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?

Source: University of Calgary Website

Stephen MacGregor: I see the call to “unforget” as an imperative to intentionally surface the institutional, policy, and community narratives that have shaped current possibilities for teaching, learning, and leadership. Much of my research and leadership has been motivated by this orientation, particularly in projects that examine how educational systems respond to and often resist new ideas, and how practitioners navigate the attendant dynamics.

One step I am taking is to more deliberately position historical analysis alongside contemporary policy and practice studies in my research (e.g., MacGregor & Friesen, 2025; MacGregor et al., 2022, 2024). In my recent and ongoing research into multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) and social-emotional learning implementation in Alberta schools, for example, my colleagues and I examine the present-day enactment of new initiatives as well as trace how prior reform cycles, funding shifts, and governance structures have left their imprint on current efforts. The historical grounding deepens our understanding of why certain approaches gain traction, why others fade, and what legacies of inequity persist beneath what can often be surface-level change.

Equally, my scholarship on knowledge mobilization in educational leadership has highlighted how selective memory (i.e., what is remembered, forgotten, or deemed irrelevant) shapes the evidence that informs decision-making. Through collaborative work with system leaders to design processes that make research use more transparent and inclusive, I aim to counteract tendencies to erase dissenting voices or inconvenient histories (e.g., experiences with failure and what can be learned from them). This has included creating tools and frameworks that explicitly prompt leaders to consider historical precedents and the perspectives of communities that have long envisioned and pursued their own futures for education, often outside formal institutional channels.

In my role as Director of Experiential Learning at the Werklund School of Education (University of Calgary), I am working to integrate a longer-term, historically grounded perspective into the design of learning experiences for undergraduate and graduate students. This means helping future and current practitioners see educational challenges as part of longer trajectories shaped by policy and shifting social priorities. To that end, I am building local and international partnerships that connect our students with varied educational histories and contexts (e.g., multiple international teaching placements through the Teaching Across Borders program). This work also involves embedding reflective and archival practices into experiential learning. I ask participants in our initiatives to document their experiences in ways that attend to historical influences (e.g., speaking with practitioners about prior reform efforts, exploring changes in governance or community engagement over time). My aim is for these experiences to leave participants better prepared to design and lead educational opportunities that are responsive to both the past they inherit and the future they help shape.

Looking ahead, I plan to expand my research on how system leaders and policymakers draw on history, explicitly or implicitly, when justifying decisions and setting priorities. I am especially interested in how prevailing narratives within leadership discourse and policy texts shape which forms of evidence are privileged and which innovations are recognized. Moreover, I aim to support leadership practices and research use that are historically informed and attentive to marginalized perspectives.

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

SM: A consistent lesson from my research is that fostering better school systems for all students requires a shift from viewing change as a series of isolated initiatives to understanding it as an
iterative, relational process. Educational change is seldom straightforward; it unfolds amid fluctuating policy landscapes, evolving priorities, and the complexities of daily practice. When leaders and practitioners treat each initiative as if it exists in a vacuum and without regard for prior efforts, contextual constraints, or the cumulative impact on educators and learners, they risk repeating past missteps and missing opportunities to build on existing strengths.

From my MTSS research, another lesson is that systems must attend to implementation drivers (Fixsen et al., 2015) as the key organizational and human supports that make new practices possible in schools and thus that enable change efforts to take root and grow. These include competency drivers such as targeted professional learning and coaching; organization drivers such as supportive policies, data systems, and resource alignment; and leadership drivers that guide decision making in response to challenges. Where these drivers are deliberately cultivated in concert, educators are better positioned to adapt initiatives for their own contexts and ensure they serve the needs of their students.

Another lesson relates to the role of failure in system improvement. Too often, unsuccessful reforms are quietly set aside without deliberate reflection, resulting in the same pitfalls being encountered repeatedly. My research points to the value of structured learning from failure, which means creating processes that allow for analysis of what went wrong or failed to produce the intended outcomes, identifying underlying mechanisms, and generating insights for future action (MacGregor & Friesen, 2025). This reframing of failure as a legitimate and even necessary part of improvement strengthens adaptive capacity. It also shifts organizational culture toward openness, candour, and a willingness to iterate rather than abandon promising work prematurely.

Finally, across my work in schools, international partnerships, and higher education settings, I have seen that strong, trust-based relationships are essential for the two previous lessons to function at their best. Competency, organization, and leadership drivers all depend on the mutual respect and shared ownership that develop when schools and broader systems engage as genuine partners. Moreover, relationships provide the foundation for honest conversations that allow people to name challenges directly and work together on responses that matter.

For practitioners, these lessons might spark reflection on ways to anchor new initiatives in an understanding of local context and history, strengthen the drivers that support implementation, build habits of learning from setbacks, and invest in relationships as a foundation for change. For scholars, they might prompt thinking about how to design research that examines the drivers of educational change in action and supports their development, which could offer knowledge that is attentive to the realities and contexts where change is being pursued.

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

SM: I see the field of educational change continuing to wrestle with complexity while becoming more deliberate in how it integrates various forms of knowledge and expertise. There is a growing recognition that meaningful change depends on aligning policy, practice, and community engagement in ways that are contextually grounded and historically informed. I am hopeful for continued attention to strengthening the foundational conditions (e.g., coherent governance structures, stable funding streams, and collaborative professional learning) that allow promising approaches to take root and adapt over time.

I also anticipate deeper commitments to equity-informed leadership, with systems increasingly
recognizing that meaningful change cannot happen without addressing the structural inequities that shape educational experiences. Among many approaches, this could involve more substantive power sharing with communities, particularly those whose knowledge has historically been overlooked or marginalized. It could also involve embedding processes for shared decision-making and transparency into the everyday work of schools and systems.

What gives me hope is the growing body of scholarship and practice that treats relationships as the core infrastructure of educational change. I see this in system leaders who intentionally create spaces for dialogue that can bridge ideological divides, in educators who invite students and families into co-design processes, in cross-sector partnerships that build locally relevant solutions, and in research-practice networks that enable long-term collaboration across institutions and jurisdictions (e.g., Hubers, 2020; Rechsteiner et al., 2024; van den Boom Muilenburg et al., 2022). I am also encouraged by how scholars and practitioners are integrating multiple ways of knowing and thus valuing both rigorous research and the lived experience of educators, students, and communities. I am hopeful that we are moving beyond asking “what works?” by appending that question with “for whom, under what conditions, and with what consequences?”(Boaz et al., 2019).

References

Boaz, A., Davies, H., Fraser, A., & Nutley, S. (Eds.). (2019). What works now? Evidence-in- formed policy and practice. Policy Press.

Fixsen, D., Blase, K., Naoom, S., & Duda, M. (2015). Implementation drivers: Assessing best practices. National Implementation Science Network.

Hubers, M. D. (2020). Paving the way for sustainable educational change: Reconceptualizing what it means to make educational changes that last. Teaching and Teacher Education, 93.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103083.

Rechsteiner, B., Kyndt, E., Compagnoni, M., Wullschleger, A., & Maag Merki, K. (2024). Bridging gaps: A systematic literature review of brokerage in educational change. Journal of Educational Change, 25(2), 305–339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-023-09493-7.

van den Boom-Muilenburg, S. N., Poortman, C. L., Daly, A. J., Schildkamp, K., de Vries, S., Rodway, J., & van Veen, K. (2022). Key actors leading knowledge brokerage for sustainable school improvement with PLCs: Who brokers what? Teaching and Teacher Education, 110.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103577.

MacGregor, S., & Friesen, S. (2025). Reframing failure: Lessons from educational leaders
facilitating multi-tiered systems of support. Journal of Professional Capital and Community. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPCC-09-2024-0168.

MacGregor, S., Friesen, S., Turner, J., Domene, J. F., McMorris, C., Allan, S., Mesner, B., &
Sumara, D. (2024). The side effects of universal school-based mental health supports: An integrative review. Review of Research in Education, 48, 28–57.

Supplies, Cellphones, and Fear: Scanning the Local Back-To-School Headlines in the US for 25-26 (Part 3)

The third part of IEN’s annual scan of the back-to-school headlines highlights some of the issues that states and cities in the US are facing as students have returned to school. The first part of the scan shared stories from outside the US, and the second part gathered stories about some of the many policy changes, demands, and cuts that schools in the US are having to respond to this year.

For back-to school headlines from Fall 24: Politics, Policies, and Polarization: Scanning the 2024-25 Back-To-School Headlines in the US (Part 1); Supplies, Shortages, and Other Disruptions? Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines for 2024-25 (Part 2); Banning Cell Phones Around the World? Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines for 2024-25 (Part 3); Fall 23: Crises and Concerns: Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3). Fall 22: Hope and trepidation: Scanning the back-to-school headlines in 2022 (Part 1)(Part 2) (Part 3); Fall 21: Going back to school has never been quite like this (Part 1)(Part 2)(Part 3); Fall 20: What does it look like to go back to school? It’s different all around the world…; Fall 19: Headlines around the world: Back to school 2019 edition.

          The many funding cuts, executive orders, and other demands from Washington dominated the local school headlines in the US this year, including fears that students might be deported and ICE agents may target schools. But a few of the usual concerns were covered as well, including concerns about the economy, the costs of supplies, and growing concerns about cellphones, AI, and other technologies.


Fears & Deportations

Immigrant Families Fear Trump’s Deportations as Children Return to School, ABC News

For Mixed Status Families, Deportation Fears Cast Shadow Over New Academic YearNPR

An 8-year-old second grade student, born in the U.S. to an undocumented family, stands holding a sign in her graduation cap and gown after her school ceremony outside the Federal Building, source NPR

‘So Many Threats to Kids’: ICE Fear Grips Los Angeles at Start of New School Year, The74

What Mass. Schools are Saying About Immigration Enforcement as Students Return, NBC Boston 

Federal Surge has Taken a Toll on Children of Immigrants in Washington, PBS


Costs & Supplies

Survey: Inflation Less Impactful this Year; Still, Nearly 1 in 3 Back-to-School Shoppers are Making Changes to Save, Bankrate

Back-to-School Prices are a Mixed Bag this Year, NBC News

Parents Say Back-to-School Feels Pricier than Ever, with Many Spending $500+ on Supplies and Activities, Yahoo News

Teachers are Spending More and More on School Supplies. Here’s Why, Indiana Capitol Chronicle

3,000 Teachers Beg for Donations for Basic Classroom Supplies — Despite NYC’s Record-Breaking per-Pupil Spending, New York Post

“There’s no other profession where you’re expected to provide literally the basics that you need to do your job on your own” Source: New York Post

School Lunches Are Costing Families More Than Ever: Here’s Why, Daily Voice


Cellphones, AI & EdTech

Most Students Now Face Cellphone Limits at School. What Happens Next? Education Week

More Students Head Back to Class Without One Crucial Thing: Their Phones, NPR

Students Turn Back to Books as More School Districts Implement Phone Bans, Newsweek

6 Ways Administrators are Handling Cellphone Bans in the New School Year, K-12 Dive

From ‘Bring It On’ to ‘This Policy Is Crazy,’ NYC Parents React to Cellphone Ban, The74

‘The New Encyclopedia’: How Some Kids Will Use AI at School this Year, CNN

ChatGPT Usage Skyrockets as Kids Return to School, Newsweek

Back to School: AI in the Classroom, the Negative Side, WNEP

Major Partnerships are Expanding K-12 AI Literacy, EdTech

Back-to-School Season Brings Spike in Cyberattacks, EdTech

Driver Shortage: Dozens of School Bus Route Cancellations Hit Mat-Su Students, KTUU

Source: KTUU

Arkansas

Arkansas School District Responses to Ten Commandments Law Mixed, Arkansas Advocate

California

California Schools Brace for Fallout from U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Religious Rights, EdSource

California Bill Requires Schools to Alert Families of Immigration Agents on Campuses, The Guardian

Colorado

Denver Schools Chief: Trump Administration is Weaponizing Title IX and Pushing ‘Anti-Trans Agenda’, Chalkbeat

Illinois

Chicago Public Schools Prepare for National Guard Threat, Chicago Tribune

About 200 Students with Disabilities Still Need a Classroom in Chicago, Chalk Beat

Florida

In the Name of Parental Rights, New Law Requires Sign-Off for Corporal Punishment in Florida Schools, Florida Phoenix

Florida Schools Will Test Armed Drones this Fall to Thwart Shooters , K-12 Dive

Massachusetts

What Massachusetts Parents Should Know this Back-to-School Season, Boston Globe

Boston Mayor Wu Expects Deportation Fears to Affect Boston School Attendance, WBUR

Michigan

Michigan Schools will have New Requirements for Teaching English Learners this School Year, Chalk Beat

Minnesota

 Minnesota Schools Adjust Breakfast Menus to Abide by New Federal Sugar Restrictions, Minnesota Star Tribune

Nebraska

Nebraska Students Adapt to Cellphone Ban in Schools, KETV

New Jersey

Newark Students Head Back to School. What’s New this School Year? Chalk Beat

New York

Adirondack Educators Contend with Dwindling Resources as Enrollment Dips, Times Union

New Year, New Rules in New York City: First Day of School Starts with Joy, Jitters, and a Cellphone Ban

Thousands of New Teachers to Start as NYC Pushes Historically Large Hiring Spree to Shrink Classes, Chalk Beat

What to Know About Vaccines in NY as Students go Back to SchoolGothamist

New N.Y.C. Food Standards Could Spell Doom for Chicken Nuggets, New York Times

Free Haircuts for NYC Kids Ahead of First Day of SchoolPIX11

Ohio

Ohio Students Face New Cellphone Ban as School Year Begins, WBNS

Oregon

Families, Staff Return to School Across Oregon, Some Under Fear of ICE Arrests, OPB

“Woodburn School Board urging board members to pass the original ‘Safe and Welcoming Schools’ resolution. The resolution reaffirms protections for students, regardless of immigration status.” Source: OPB

What to Know About Cellphones and Artificial Intelligence as Oregon Students Return to School, OPB

Pennsylvania

As Classes Begin, Pennsylvania School Districts Feel Pinch of Budget Impasse, York Dispatch

Two Susquehanna Township (PA) Schools Cancel Classes Due to Lack of Bus Drivers, WGAL

South Carolina

‘Why Don’t I See my Friends Anymore?’ Parents Fear Deportations are Coming to SC Schools, The Post and Courier

Tennessee

Gun safety classes required, starting in kindergarten, in Tennessee this year, Washington Post

Texas

‘A No-Win Situation’: How Houston School Districts are Responding to the Ten Commandments Classroom Law, Houston Chronicle

Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Upends Life at Austin Elementary School, Austin American-Statesman

Washington D.C.

‘Leave Our Kids Alone’: DC School Year Starts Amid Armed National Guard Patrols, NBC 4 Washington

Parents Mobilize to Protect School Commutes Amid Trump Deployment in DC, Bloomberg

“Members of the National Guard patrol near the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC” Source: Bloomberg

Schools Reopen in D.C. With Parents on Edge Over Trump’s Armed Patrols, Education Week

Washington

Washington State District Finally Opens School After Support Staff Strike, The 74

Wisconsin

As Costs Rise, Wisconsin Teachers and Families Pay the Price on Back-to-School Supplies, The Wisconsin Independent

Economics, AI, Cellphones and More: Scanning the International Back-To-School Headlines for 25-26 (Part 1)

AI concerns, cellphone policies, economic worries, and questions about new schedules, new curricula and other changes fill up the back-to-school headlines this year. IEN’s annual scan of the sources of education news and research around the world begins with a look at the Northern Hemisphere headlines from outside the US. Next week, we’ll review the national and local headlines in the US along with some of the biggest changes in federal policy and funding that schools are dealing with this year. 

For back-to school headlines from Fall 23; Crises and Concerns: Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3). Fall 22: Hope and trepidation: Scanning the back-to-school headlines in 2022 (Part 1), (Part 2) , (Part 3); Fall 21: Going back to school has never been quite like this (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3); Fall 20: What does it look like to go back to school? It’s different all around the world…; Fall 19: Headlines around the world: Back to school 2019 edition.

Africa


Asia & the Pacific

As the new semester approaches, study supplies are experiencing strong sales. Photo: VCG

Europe

Teacher collects pupils’ mobile phones at a school in Espoo. Photo: Vesa Moilanen / Lehtikuva

Middle East


The Americas

Abri, 9, Ecuador, by Chris DeBode for The Guardian

Next steps and critical challenges in the development of the Vietnamese education system: Can Vietnam transform the conventional model of schooling (Part 4)? 

What might it take to develop a competency-based education system? The final post in this 4-part series from Thomas Hatch describes some of the key issues that will have to be addressed to sustain and deepen Vietnam’s efforts to transform the Vietnamese education system. For other posts in this series on Vietnam see Part 1: Can Vietnam transform the conventional model of schooling? Educational improvement at scale, Part 2: Building the capacity for high quality education at scale: Can Vietnam transform the conventional model of schooling, and Part 3: Challenges and opportunities for learning and development in Vietnam: Can Vietnam transform the conventional model of schooling. Earlier posts related to Vietnam include: Achieving Education for All for 100 Million People: A Conversation about the Evolution of the Vietnamese School System with Phương Minh Lương and Lân Đỗ Đức (Part 1); Looking toward the future and the implementation of a new competency-based curriculum in Vietnam: A Conversation about the Evolution of the Vietnamese School System with Phương Lương Minh and Lân Đỗ Đức (Part 2); The Evolution of an Alternative Educational Approach in Vietnam: The Olympia School Story Part 1 and Part 2; and Engagement, Wellbeing, and Innovation in the Wake of the School Closures in Vietnam:  A Conversation with Chi Hieu Nguyen (Part 1 and Part 2).

Viewed retrospectively, Vietnam’s recent effort to shift the aims of education and the process of teaching and learning can be seen as part of a long-term, multi-decade, “renovation” effort rather than a recent initiative to transform education in one fell swoop. From this perspective, Vietnam has made substantial improvements in educational access and quality over a period of 30 years while taking incremental steps towards more flexible, student-centered approaches to teaching and learning. 

Although Finland and Singapore began the journey to systemic educational improvement earlier, they followed a similar trajectory, creating comprehensive education systems with centrally developed curricula or curriculum frameworks, focused on national education goals, aligned with those on international tests like PISA. Singapore continues to top the international educational rankings, but it is also trying to contend with wide-spread concerns about the effects that the competitive, high-pressure, academically focused system has on students’ development, mental health, and wellbeing. Finland, on the other hand, has slipped somewhat in rankings like PISA (though it continues to score at relatively high levels) raising concerns that the autonomy of teachers widely cited as a key ingredient in Finland’s educational success, may also be contributing to growing inequity and an inability to move the whole system to support interdisciplinary learning. 

Reflecting on what I’ve learned about the development of all three of these systems leaves me with a number of questions: 

  • Will Vietnam follow the trajectories of Singapore and Finland or will it chart its own course? 
  • What are the chances that Vietnam will be able to expand enrollment to secondary schools, to continue to increase quality overall, and to continue to expand and deepen the use of more powerful pedagogies?
  • Will Vietnam’s education system develop in ways that are equitable, benefiting ethnic minorities as well as elites, while reducing the pressures on students and continuing to move in more student-centered directions?  

Answering these questions depends in turn on how Vietnam deals with some critical challenges: 

Can Vietnam maintain the commitment and support for K-12 education and expand support for other aspects of the education system?  

The Vietnamese government has already launched major initiatives to support the development of early childhood education. These initiatives aim particularly at creating more equitable access for early childhood education in remote, rural areas for ethnic minority groups. In February of 2025, the government also began gathering feedback on a National Assembly proposal focuses on “modernising the preschool curriculum using a competency-based approach, fostering holistic child development in physical health, emotional well-being, intelligence, language skills and aesthetics. It also aims to lay a solid foundation for personality development, ensuring children are well-prepared for first grade while instilling core Vietnamese values.” 

At the same time, Vietnam’s higher education system remains under-developed, with the enrollment rate under 30%, one of the lowest among East Asian countries. Increasing expenditures on both early childhood education and higher education could result in a shift in the attention and funding that has been so crucial to the development of K-12 education over the past 30 years. 

Can Vietnam continue to develop the education system despite long-standing constraints? 

Although there have been efforts to improve teacher education and the quality of the teaching in Vietnam, there are continuing concerns about shortages of teachers and further declines in the quality of the education force. Ironically, the development of other sectors of the economy means that teachers can now find higher paying jobs in other occupations. At the same time, as one of my colleagues described it, many of those who do become teachers have to work multiple jobs often having to hustle side jobs at nights and on weekends just to cover basic expenses for their families. The increasing urbanization and movement of more and more people from rural areas to cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to find jobs also mean that many urban schools will continue to be overcrowded, with large class sizes. In turn, that urban overcrowding will continue to make it difficult for teachers to adopt many student-centered pedagogies; that urbanization can also make it harder and harder to find educators to staff rural schools. 

Can Vietnam promote increased autonomy and flexibility and maintain a focus on equity at the same time?

Over time, Vietnam has tried to increase autonomy and provide more flexibility for schools and education leaders as part of their improvement efforts. In particular, initiatives to increase school-level decision-making include providing some schools with the flexibility to charge higher fees to make up for reductions in public funding. For example, about 20 of the schools in major cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have been developing investment models in which parents can pay for their child’s full tuition for all 12 grades when they start school in first grade. In return, the school makes the commitment to pay the parents back when their child graduates. In this arrangement, students can get a free public-school education (though they lose their investment if the child leaves the school), and the school gets funds it can use to make improvements in facilities and the quality of education which can help the school to raise more revenue. 

The hope seems to be that the increased autonomy will drive improvements and might encourage schools to innovate and offer more student-centered instruction. At the same time, these developments also create issues of equity as top-performing schools may be able to charge more and may be able to pay higher salaries to attract effective teachers. In addition, the increased competition for placement in top schools can also intensify the pressure on students and teachers to focus on performing well on conventional tests and exams. That pressure can already be seen in early childhood education, where, as one of my colleagues told me, there is considerable competition to get into some of the top preschools and primary schools. In order to help their children prepare for the application and admission process, which often includes tests, some parents are sending their children to both preschool and “transition programs” that cover the content and skills needed to meet the entrance requirements. 

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Can Vietnam continue to develop the education system in the face of resistance to changes in conventional instruction?  

Even with the efforts to encourage a shift to competencies, the pressures to maintain the conventional instruction remain. Many teachers, students, and parents are reluctant to embrace the changes. That resistance is already showing up as parents and teachers respond to the new textbook policy. Some parents, for example, have complained that having too many textbook options is both too costly for them and too confusing for students. As one of my colleagues explained, textbooks have long been passed down among siblings but that cost-effective practice will have to stop if teachers are choosing different textbooks. That flexibility may also erode the shared experiences and shared understanding of the instructional process that families gain from a common text. 

Allowing teachers to choose their textbooks was also supposed to be part of the move to provide them with greater flexibility in how best to help students achieve the new competencies. However, choosing the textbook and designing activities is a significant amount of work, and many schools and teachers may prefer to use more conventional textbooks and even those that use new textbooks may continue to move through them in a rigid, lock-step way. Complicating matters further, the textbook industry – and the corruption in it – has to be a part of this change as well. 

Schools in Vietnam have changed and improved, but can schooling be transformed?

Political commitment and funding, shared values, hard work by students, educators and parents, with textbook-based teaching that has provided alignment between what’s taught and what’s measured are all critical contributors to the development of the Vietnamese education system. These factors work in concert with the efforts to make an improved education system a key part of the effort create and sustain a strong nation, with a modern economy, that can defend itself in the face of threats from outsiders. Now the question is whether the textbook-based teaching and shared belief in conventional education will serve as a foundation for — or a barrier to — the development of more student-centered pedagogies and a competency-based system.

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On my visit, I talked with educators and visited schools, including private schools, like the Olympia School, that have found ways to prepare Vietnamese students for the Vietnamese national exams and still make room for more student-centered, interdisciplinary learning activities. Of course, the presence of some innovative practices in some places may not have a substantial impact on the rest of the system. But if some steps toward competency-based instruction continue to be taken, and the number of policymakers, educators, parents, and students who have positive experiences with new forms of teaching and learning continues to grow, the forces of generational change may begin to put pressure on the status quo.