Tag Archives: Learning

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

Posted on October 7, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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.

“We highlight how senior leaders, administrators, faculty, and staff leverage racialized expertise as hiring capital.”

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.

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

Posted on October 1, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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.

“I aim to counteract tendencies to erase dissenting voices or inconvenient histories.”

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.

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

Posted on September 24, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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 Year, NPR

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

“A wave of bills passed into law this year, and now 31 states either already limit or ban students from using their personal devices in school or plan to do so for the 2025-26 or 2026-27 school years.” – 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

“Families with older students are most likely to oppose the blanket edict; others say a one-size-fits-all approach needs to be changed.” -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

“K-12 schools are increasingly tapping new training resources to aid AI integration. For example, the National Academy for AI Instruction — a partnership of the American Federation of Teachers, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic — aims to use a framework co-developed with OECD and Code.org to equip educators, especially those in remote areas, with a mix of in-person and online modules to develop teacher fluency and literacy in AI.” – EdTech

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

“August and September DDoS attacks are twice as bad as June and July for the education industry, as hackers know that the busy back-to-school time means staff are distracted and adjusting to new routines. NetScout’s Threat Intelligence Report ranked educational support services as the third-most-attacked industry in the last half of 2024.” – 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

‘It’s quite honestly amazing that this hasn’t previously been in place in Florida.’ – 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

“The new state protections come as the federal government is pulling back its support for English learners.” – 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

“This school year marks Newark’s fifth year under local control. District leaders celebrated the opening of the district’s newest trade high school.” – 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

“Topics that loomed large at New York City’s teacher orientation included the state class size law, the school cellphone ban, and curriculum changes.” – Chalk Beat

What to Know About Vaccines in NY as Students go Back to School, Gothamist

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 School, PIX11

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

“The new statewide cellphone ban takes effect this school year, as educators continue to learn how and when to use AI.” – 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

“Schools in Washington state’s Evergreen district finally opened for the year Friday, after a strike by support staff delayed the start of school by nearly three weeks. About 1,400 paraprofessionals, bus drivers, security guards, maintenance workers and other members of Public School Employees of Washington SEIU Local 1948 had walked off the job over contract negotiations that had gone on for six months. District teachers refused to cross the picket line. Lauren Wagner reports.” – The 74

Wisconsin

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

“The inflation, tariffs and lagging school funding in Wisconsin are causing parents and educators to take more caution when back-to-school shopping this year” – The Wisconsin Independent

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

Posted on September 10, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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

“Hong Kong mother May Lam had planned to buy her 11-year-old son a new set of school uniforms and pay for his basketball training fees. However, the government’s decision to cut the HK$2,500 study grant she relied on has forced her to scale back on her son’s extracurricular classes just as he begins Primary Six.”

– South China Morning Post

Europe

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

“Reforms on how French and mathematics are taught as well as expanded sexual education, stricter rules for mobile phones and more” – The Connexion

“Textbooks for all students have been printed and for the first time in seven years, foreign languages textbooks will be handed out. Artificial intelligence is being introduced in schools and more educational assistants had been hired in elementary schools and, for the first time, in high schools.” – MIA

“Reports show that more than 600,000 children remain out of school and as of 2024, the poverty rate in Ukraine has risen to 37%, according to the World Bank.” – The Borgen Project

Returning to School: Ukrainian Children in Poverty, The Borgen Project

Middle East

“[T]he Ministry of Education has announced an ambitious package of upgrades to the nation’s education system. From the opening of nine new public schools to curriculum innovation, AI integration, and increased focus on national identity.” – Education Today

The Americas

“There are still more than 5,500 people displaced by wildfires, the Manitoba government says.” – CBC

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

“More than 200,000 students will file through the gates of primary and secondary schools across the country to begin a new academic year. But T&T’s education system is at a breaking point: parents are straining under rising costs, teachers face overcrowded classrooms and inadequate resources, and the system often works against, not for, those it is meant to serve.” –Trinidad Guardian

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

Posted on June 4, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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. 

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.” 

“[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.”

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. 

In this arrangement, students can get a free public-school education… 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. 

A map of the country AI-generated content may be incorrect.

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.

A building with trees in front of it AI-generated content may be incorrect.


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.

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Challenges and opportunities for learning and development in Vietnam: Can Vietnam transform the conventional model of schooling (Part 3)?

Posted on May 28, 2025 by | Leave a comment

How can education in Vietnam continue to improve despite questions about the quality of teaching, concerns about the coherence of the education system, and other issues? The third post in this 4-part series from Thomas Hatch explores some of the challenges as well as the opportunities that educators in Vietnam face as they try to shift the whole system to focus on competencies. For the other posts in this series on Vietnam, see part 1 on educational improvement at scale beyond PISA and part 2 on some of the key elements that have contributed to those improvements. 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).

Illustrating the complexity and contextual nature of educational change, some of the factors identified as critical in the evolution of other “higher performing” education systems do not apply in Vietnam. Somehow, the Vietnamese education system has improved substantially even though improving the qualifications of teachers and the quality and consistency of teacher preparation have been concerns for some time. At the same time, even as the PISA tests in 2012 were showing the world how much the Vietnamese education system had improved, the government was already developing initiatives to embrace new competency-based goals and student-centered instruction. To that end, among other changes, new competency-based textbooks began to roll-out in Vietnam during the pandemic, even as many other high-performing education systems struggle to make that major systemic shift. Given developments in the Vietnamese education system over the past 30 years, what are the challenges and possibilities for creating a competency-based education system moving forward? 

A group of books with cartoon characters AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Covers of some grade 4 textbooks of Vietnam Education Publishing House (Photo: Vietnam Education Publishing House)

Improvement despite concerns about the teaching force, coherence, and corruption

The improvements in the Vietnamese education system in the 1990’s and 2000’s were made despite a series of persistent concerns about the quality of the teaching force that remain today. These issues include a low cut-off for entrance into teacher education and failure to attract good students into teaching along with substantial numbers of underqualified teachers. Furthermore, despite feeling valued, teachers in Vietnam are not well paid, with wages that are not competitive with those in other sectors. In fact, at the same time that the “Growing Smarter” report from the World Bank highlighted the importance of a highly qualified, well-paid teaching force, it also acknowledged that teachers are paid substantially less in Vietnam than they are in other “high-performing” education systems like Singapore.  Teachers are also paid less in Vietnam than they are in other Asian countries like Thailand, which perform much worse on international tests. 

Explanations of high education system performance also often highlight the importance of coherence and alignment among goals, strategies, and incentives across all aspects of the education system. In the case of Vietnam, the historical traditions and top-down structure of the bureaucracy fosters a culture of compliance that, for better and worse, can maintain a rigid focus on textbook-based learning and exam performance. At the same time, Vietnam has decentralized control over financing of education in particular, leading one analyst to suggest that Vietnam’s 63 provinces are almost like 63 different education systems, with weak links between financing, information-processing, and accountability. Lê Anh Vinh, Director of the Vietnam National Institute of Educational Sciences, and colleagues also named the fragmentation and poor connections among key aspects of Vietnam’s education system as a critical enduring problem. 

“Vietnam’s 63 provinces are almost like 63 different education systems, with weak links between financing, information-processing, and accountability.”

Corruption across sectors in Vietnam also remains a concern. Although measures of corruption show some improvements over the past ten years, Transparency International reports that as of 2023, Vietnam ranks 83rd out of 180 countries in corruption, slightly below the average, and 64% of those surveyed in Vietnam think corruption is a big problem. Transparency International also reported that in Vietnam there has also been “an explosion of competition for admission to ‘desired schools.’…As a result, corruption in enrollment for desired schools – particularly primary and junior secondary schools – has become rampant in Vietnam, threatening the affordability and accessibility of public education.” The textbook industry, central to the efforts to shift to the new focus on competence, has also been embroiled in a major scandal. 

Building blocks for a shift to competency-based learning? 

In a system long dominated by rote learning and teacher-directed instruction,  the implementation of a new curriculum and textbooks in Vietnam that began during the pandemic is not nearly as abrupt as many might expect. There has been a history of interest in and encouragement for the application of knowledge – not just the acquisition of knowledge – and to more active, student-centered pedagogies as far back as the 1980’s. As part of the Do Moi renovation efforts, Vietnam introduced a new set of textbooks and related policies that sought to support “a more practical and learner-centered education which was seen at the time as necessary for post-war social and economic recovery. Those initiatives recognized knowledge acquisition as important, but also advocated for the engagement of students in real-world activities, application of knowledge, and the holistic development of students.  

Shortly after the turn of the 21st Century, another reform plan put in place a different set of state-sanctioned textbooks that were to be based on newly developed curriculum frameworks (which Vietnam had never had before). This effort sought to balance knowledge acquisition and application by establishing educational aims in knowledge, skills and attitudes. Skills included those identified as relevant for students’ present and future lives such as conducting experiments, raising questions, and seeking information. In turn, teachers were encouraged to adapt their teaching to students’ needs and to use more active learning methods. 

By 2010, some policymakers from the Ministry of Education had also taken an interest in adopting the Escuela Nueva model of education, which had been developed and scaled up in Colombia. That model sought to promote students’ development through active engagement in learning using materials like self-paced learning guides and formative assessments. Piloting began in a few selected school districts, but, by 2016 tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students in Vietnam were using the model. Those experiences exposed the teachers and students involved to some of the key pedagogical ideas and practices reflected in the most recent curricular materials.

At the same time that the Escuela Nueva initiative was underway, the Vietnamese government was also developing the comprehensive plans to shift the whole system to a focus on competencies. Critical aims of these reforms included altering “the outdated teaching and learning methods – which were formerly structured around the transmission of knowledge and memorization of facts – with technology-based education to equip students with hands on skills necessary for the twenty-first century.” Along with the adoption of the competency-based curriculum in 2018 (with implementation begun in first grade in 2020), the government implemented a “one curriculum – multiple textbooks” policy freeing schools from the requirement to use the single set of state-sanctioned textbooks. This new policy was designed to give schools greater choice in selecting materials relevant for their students and their local context and more flexibility in determining the content to be taught by reducing compulsory subjects and adding optional and integrated subject and theme activities.

A group of people sitting at a table with books AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Teachers in Vietnam studying new learning materials (Photo: Vietnam Education Publishing House)

In the most recent reforms, the Vietnamese government also made substantial changes in assessment and testing in order to take the focus off academic performance in conventional subjects and reduce the pressure on students. In primary classrooms, along with eliminating homework, the reforms replaced the grade-based evaluation system with oral and written feedback. At the high school level, the reforms created a single standardized exam to replace a long-criticized sequence of a six-subject exit exam followed about a month later by an SAT-like placement exam for college. 

Summing up the shift to expand the focus of the system beyond academics, at the end of 2024, the Minister of Education and Training, Nguyen Kim Son, stated that the goals of the systemic education reform efforts include developing “well-rounded individuals who know how to live happily and create happiness for themselves and others.” He went on to say: “When students engage in self-directed exploration, problem-solving, and discovery, they develop enthusiasm and are motivated to delve deeper. This progression – from knowing to understanding, from analyzing to applying and synthesizing – enhances their excitement and happiness as they master each level.”

“[T]he goals of the systemic education reform efforts include developing “well-rounded individuals who know how to live happily and create happiness for themselves and others.”

Signs of a shift in (some) instruction? 

As has been the case almost everywhere, the large-scale efforts to transform conventional instruction in Vietnam have encountered considerable resistance and numerous challenges. A review of Escuela Nueva’s expansion to Vietnam by the World Bank, (one of the funders of the project) concluded that the program had a “positive” impact on children’s cognitive and non-cognitive achievement. However, other evaluations suggest that the effects were modest at best. For example, a more recent evaluation acknowledged some short-term positive outcomes, particularly for ethnic minority students, but, over the long-term, those effects appear to have faded away. Furthermore, observers reported that some teachers and students ended up mechanically following the steps in the learning guides – much as they had rigidly followed the textbooks the guides were supposed to replace. In addition, skeptical teachers continued to use traditional methods alongside the new approach, and some parents, concerned that their children were not learning, complained their children came home with “empty minds.” Critics and the press picked up on issues like these, leading to an explosion of negative coverage in the local and national press, with many schools stopping the project as a result. 

At the same time, even in the early piloting phase of the implementation of the Escuela Nueva model, there were some provinces where there were reports of “transformative impact.” An evaluation of from the Department of Education in a northern province with a large ethnic minority population was particularly enthusiastic: 

“Students who were dependent on teachers are now more independent, bold, confident, and excited to learn, and their learning results are better. Thanks to slower-paced learning, teachers have more time to pay attention to weak students, helping to reduce the percentage of weak students. For ethnic minority students, [the program] offered chances to participate in many activities and communicate (listen and speak) with friends in Vietnamese, and their Vietnamese learning results are more advanced. In particular, the new School Model has fundamentally changed the pedagogical activities of the school in the direction of self-discipline, self-management, democratization, and formation of necessary competencies and qualities of Vietnamese citizens.”

Another review of the comprehensive reforms noted similar challenges but also evidence of progress, stating: “When launched in 2014, the process has been challenged due to concerns about the feasibility by public opinion, schools, and teachers. However, after two years of implementation, there have been obvious changes in primary education. The guiding principles of learning and teaching at primary schools now are what the students learned and what they could do, rather than their grades.”  

“[C]conventional instruction continues to dominate but… ‘there may be more competency-focused learning than is often reported in research on Vietnamese education.’”

Most recently, researchers have been analyzing videos of classroom practice in a small set of high schools across 10 provinces. Their preliminary analysis uncovered numerous instances in which teachers were using strategies like questioning, feedback and modeling to support students’ learning of skills like creative thinking and problem solving. They also found that teachers in high-performing classrooms provided more opportunities to discover new concepts and connect them to prior knowledge and experiences. They conclude that conventional instruction continues to dominate but add: “there may be more competency-focused learning than is often reported in research on Vietnamese education, and perhaps more than many policymakers know, given their ardent critiques of the education system that, they think, is tailored to memorization and testing.” 

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

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

Posted on April 24, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Amanda Datnow
Dr Bryant Jensen
Dr Sarah Woulfin

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Aireale J. Rodgers
Dr Heather McCambly
Dr Román Liera

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nathan Rickey
Dr Danielle LaPointe-McEwan
Dr Carol Campbell
Martin Henry
Dr Christopher DeLuca

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

Posted on April 16, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Left to Right: Dr Trang Le, Alexandra Honeck, Hannah Choi
From Left to Right: Sarah Fogelman, Hehua Xu, and Dr Madora Soutter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Christopher Sanderson

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

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

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

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

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

Dr María del Carmen Salazar
Nadia Saldaña-Spiegle
Ashlea Skiles

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

Posted on April 7, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ayelet Becher, PhD
Izhak Berkovich, PhD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicholas Bell, PhD
Elizabeth Slusarz, PhD student
Sojung Park, PhD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda Datnow, PhD
Enikö Zala-Mezö, PhD

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

Posted on March 26, 2025 by | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betty Alford, PhD, California State Polytechnic University
Liane Hypolite, PhD, California State Polytechnic University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soon-young Oh, PhD candidate, Michigan State University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Campbell, EdD, University of Hong Kong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rong Zhang, PhD candidate, University of Alabama

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