“OECD data shows that Austria is comparatively well-positioned in terms of teacher supply. The proportion of unfilled teaching positions in primary and secondary education is around one percent. Austria also has a lower teacher attrition rate of 5.8 percent, below the OECD average of 6.4 percent and the EU average of 6.9 percent. At the same time, the report shows that Austria needs to focus more on retaining young teachers“
“Colombian teachers teach 955 hours of class per year, while the OECD average is 770. In lower secondary school, the workload reaches 840 hours annually, compared to 710 hours...Colombian spending reached $3,526 per student in primary school and $3,594 in lower secondary school. In OECD countries, the figures were $12,893 and $14,291, respectively.“
“Women make up a clear majority of teachers at lower levels of education, but they remain underrepresented in education leadership positions in almost all OECD countries.” In Finland, women account for 97% of teachers in early childhood education and 53% in tertiary education.”
“Iceland devotes a larger share of its economy to public education than the OECD average. However, the system continues to face teacher shortages and uneven educational attainment.”
“Despite recent talk of teacher shortages, Ireland outperforms most countries in recruiting and retaining qualified staff. Only 0.3 per cent of teachers are not fully qualified, compared with 9.1 per cent across the OECD, and just 2.1 per cent left the profession in 2024/25, a third of the international rate.”
“In Israel, the share of 18- to 24-year-olds who are neither studying nor working rose from 17% in 2015 to 20% in 2025 … Across OECD countries with available data, the average fell from 16% to 13% over the same period.”
“‘lateral entrants’ [second career teachers] represent 8 percent of the teaching staff in primary and secondary education worldwide. That share is more than twice as high in countries such as the Netherlands (16,9 percent), Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand. That is a huge difference compared to Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, countries with a lateral entry rate of less than 1 percent.”
“The data showed that 71.1% of South Koreans ages 25 to 34 had completed higher education in 2025, the highest rate among OECD members and 23.6 percentage points above the OECD average of 47.5%…The employment rate for South Korean university graduates ages 25 to 64 was 80.1%, 5.9 percentage points below the OECD average of 86%.”
“Around 70% of women aged 25 to 34 who have not completed upper secondary education are outside the labour force, one of the highest rates among OECD and partner countries. By contrast, the inactivity rate among women in the same age group who have completed tertiary education is significantly lower, at around 10%.”
In October’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. Paul Garton and Dr. Larry Baranowski explore how universities extend their influence beyond their beyond physical boundariesand how improvement initiatives could contribute to community empowerment. Dr. Garton is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at East Tennessee State University, where he researches higher education and economic development. Dr. Baranowski also works at East Tennessee State University, where he researches science education, curriculum theory, and the alignment of K-12 science curricula with current scientific research.The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC):The 2027 AERA theme, “Transcending Borders and Boundaries in Education Research: Toward a Beloved Global Community,” calls on education researchers to examine and move beyond boundaries that can divide disciplines, institutions, communities, ways of knowing, and people. It asks us to build more relational, equitable, and ethically connected approaches to education research while remaining attentive to power and collective responsibility. How are you, or how do you plan to contribute to this vision?
Paul Garton and Larry Baranowski (PG & LB): We consider our work to be an application of geography theory to the study of higher education. When thinking about borders in geography, and the act of stretching beyond borders, we can consider three frameworks in ascending order of complexity. The first, and simplest, is as mutually agreed upon demarcations of sovereignty or property rights. This is the approach of lawyers and the courts. Second, rather than thinking of nation-states or property owners as neutral actors who just happen to have a defensible stake over a space, we can think of borders as political tools used to exert control over a territory and the people within (Sack, 1986). The third and most complex framework is borders as performative sites, used to legitimate the very concept of the nation-state (Jones, 2009) or, in the case of our writing, the university campus. If the point of the border is not legal but performative, then the legal demarcation line is less important than the line at which people believe the border to be (Jones, 2012). The nation-state, or university, can then influence movement and a sense of belonging in ways that go beyond lines on a map.
Think of a brick-and-mortar university you are familiar with. Do you know where the land that is owned by the university ends? In other words, do you know what makes up the campus? Now ask yourself, how do you know where the campus ends? For many readers, you will have a clear idea of the boundaries of campus, though that idea did not come from looking at a survey map. Your idea of the border is likely defined by performative markers like signage, the architectural style of the buildings, landscaping, or categories of amenities. These markers serve to establish a presence in the public imaginary of a space, sending messages about who is welcome and who is not.
Universities are competing for a shrinking pool of students while also trying to attract new faculty who are often participating in a global labor marketplace. Part of these recruitment efforts involves the perceived quality of the campus space within the legal boundary, but the perceived quality of neighborhoods near the campus also plays into decision-making, both from the prospective student/faculty perspective as well as the university trying to recruit them. We argue that, in these cases, universities often take steps to extend beyond their legal boundaries to shift the character of the neighborhood, sometimes with strategies that economically and culturally displace current residents. Universities adjust performative markers, occasionally in ways that co-opt a space into the public imaginary of the campus like new academic buildings or student housing with university branding, occasionally in ways that keep the neighborhood distinct from the campus imaginary but caters to students and new faculty, like with public-private partnerships to build mixed-use buildings or innovation districts. Our objective with this line of research is to consider the role of higher education in the spatial organization of towns and cities, moving beyond the first level framework of campus borders towards more complex and more critical theories.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars in the field of Educational Change might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
PG & LB: One of the key takeaways from our work is that educational institutions need to think more critically about the consequences of the changes they pursue, particularly when those changes extend beyond the physical boundaries of the institution (Garton & Baranowski, 2026). Universities see themselves as geographic anchors and important partners in community development. That role can create tremendous opportunities to contribute resources, expertise, and infrastructure to communities, but it also gives institutions significant power to shape those communities.
Our findings suggest that we cannot evaluate educational change solely by asking whether an initiative produces the outcomes an institution intended. We also need to ask: Who defined the problem? Who benefits from the initiative? Who pays the costs? And whose voices were included at the table when decisions were made? In our study, neighborhoods that were more vulnerable to gentrification were more likely to be targeted by university-led development initiatives. This raises important questions about how institutional perceptions of need, blight, and improvement can reflect broader racial and socioeconomic assumptions.
For practitioners, this means that community engagement should not just include consulting after major decisions have been made. Communities should have meaningful influence over the goals, design, implementation, and evaluation of initiatives that affect them. Institutions should also establish measures of success that extend beyond typical institutional metrics (enrollment, recruitment, property values, or economic growth) to include community stability, well-being, and equitable distribution of benefits.
For scholars, the broader lesson is that educational change should be studied as part of the larger social and political systems in which educational institutions operate. Schools and universities do not simply exist within their environments; they are powerful actors capable of reshaping them. Understanding this reciprocal relationship can help identify unintended consequences before they become permanent.
“Schools and universities do not simply exist within their environments; they are powerful actors capable of reshaping them.“
Fostering a better educational system requires us to expand our definition of improvement. Change is not necessarily progress simply because an institution grows or an initiative produces measurable outcomes. Educational change is most meaningful when it expands opportunity without shifting costs onto the communities with the least power to absorb them.
LtC: Where do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for its future?
PG & LB: To answer this question specific to the geographies of university campuses, we think there are a few somewhat countervailing trends. First, demand for online education and the concentration of enrollments within large, public universities are reducing the spatial footprint of some universities, while drastically increasing the footprint at others. News stories of universities closing sit alongside stories of universities that need more residence halls to accommodate student housing needs. Some campuses sit vacant while others grow every year. University roles in local development are highly context dependent, based on local history, municipal governance, and institutional factors like enrollment trends and finances.
Second, the role of universities as real estate developers is in a state of flux relative to the first 20 years of the 21st century. Real estate that serves an academic purpose, including things like residence halls and administrative support, is tax exempt, but if the building does not serve an academic purpose, like if it is leased to a private company, then the university pays property taxes. Non-academic buildings are generally part of a university’s endowment investments and meant to diversify holdings, along with the aforementioned goals of neighborhood change for purposes of recruitment. Real estate investments were profitable for universities while interest rates steadily dropped since the 1970s, but post-COVID, many holdings have become liabilities (Gillers, 2025), especially when paired with the taxes that are unique to the non-academic buildings. Simultaneously, several major universities experienced public relations disasters related to campus expansions or real estate holdings. Johns Hopkins faced steep opposition after displacing several hundred families for a development in Baltimore, Columbia opened a new campus in Manhattanville that still riles locals, and Harvard infuriated Boston after buying huge swathes of land in Allston using a shell company. With market volatility and struggles with public trust, university decisionmakers might not think real estate development is worth the effort in many situations.
Finally, while universities might be looking at real estate development, many are explicitly adopting identities as local or regional anchor institutions. We see this as a source of careful hope. We are critical of development work that is imposed upon communities and could result in displacement, but we celebrate work that builds wealth equitably, improves health outcomes, and increases educational attainment. In 2012, Rita Axelroth Hodges and Steve Dubb called for postsecondary institutions to adopt an “anchor mission,” to leverage their existing resources and functions purposefully for local and regional development. We see compelling evidence every day that universities are taking up the charge. The work we see for ourselves as educational researchers is to ensure such anchor initiatives are conducted in concert with communities and through a lens of empowerment, not imposition to meet the goals of the university.
References
Garton, P. M., & Baranowski, L. B. (2026). University Anchor Initiatives and Gentrification Vulnerability: Predictors of Neighborhoods Targeted by Place-Based Development Initiatives. AERA Open, 12. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584261459702
In September’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. Jose Eos Trinidad argues that understanding educational change requires a broader understanding of how learning, development, and transformation occur across broader spaces. Dr. Trinidad is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Berkely, where he researches the interaction between schools and “outside” research, philanthropic, and nonprofit organizations. The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
Jose Eos Trinidad (JET): In undergrad, I remember learning about the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who wrote Memory, History, Forgetting. One of the most profound lessons I learned from his book is the importance of narrative to our remembering and the equal importance of forgetting—of a happy forgetting in the same way that we talk about a happy memory.
Dr. Jose Eos Trinidad
I think of Paul Ricoeur now as we consider what to remember, what to forget, and what to unforget in order to construct new vision for educational research. So let me try to answer the question in this way of thinking.
First, what should we remember? I think one of the things we should remember is that education has always been a state of tension. It has involved a history of expansion and exclusion, a history of moving forward and moving back, a history of individuals fighting for causes and the resistance that emerges from such fights. In my own work, I talk about the many forces outside schools that influence education: researchers, philanthropic managers, social justice warriors, teachers’ unions, nonprofit staff, and community-based organizations. I think it is key that we remember how forces both within and outside schools work alongside one another (and at times, in tension with one another) to construct this vision.
Second, any act of remembering entails forgetting. There is this moment in the movie Inside Out when jelly bean-shaped workers decide which memories are no longer relevant, like old phone numbers, and they get thrown into the abyss of oblivion. Remember the fate of Bing Bong? In a way, we need to forget in order to have space for new memories. What, then, do we need to forget? One of the things I have found striking in academia is that we can get hung up on small differences, and we can be very critical of each other’s views—even ones that are almost identical to our own. This can bubble up resentment and antipathy toward one another. Perhaps this is a space where forgetting can happen: that we look forward toward a future where people work alongside one another rather than in conflict with one another. I’m not saying that we must sweep differences under the rug. Rather, we must think about how to productively and constructively be in tension with one another.
“I’m not saying that we must sweep differences under the rug. Rather, we must think about how to productively and constructively be in tension with one another.”
Third, what must we not forget? I think we should never forget the struggles of those at the peripheries and the hope that things can get better. As news of wars and disasters, as well as existential questions, pepper our daily existence, I think we should not forget the experiences of students and families in the thick of these situations. Growing up in the Philippines, I remember that floods, typhoons, and electric blackouts were common occurrences for me—disrupting not just education but also life itself. Elsewhere in the country, I know of friends whose schooling was routinely disrupted by violence and war— whether because of the “drug war” of the former administration or the conflicts in the southern and rural parts of the country. In the world today, these experiences are all too common. Yet I also think that, especially during these times, we should hold steadfast to the hope that things can get better, with us working collectively with one another.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
JET: My research has typically focused on actors and forces outside schools that affect what happens within schools. These research, philanthropic, nonprofit, and community-based organizations can have profound consequences not just for student outcomes but also for educational change. In many developed countries, research-practice partnerships and school reform organizations can provide added support to schools. In many developing countries, nongovernmental organizations can also be a source of much-needed resources and talent. But these organizations can also carry risks, as they may push their own agendas without consulting or even thinking about students, families, and their communities.
My work, particularly my new book Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education(Oxford University Press, 2025), aims to expand the aperture through which we think about our educational systems. It aims to show what strategies various actors use to influence education, which ones are most consequential, what organizational dynamics underlie particular decisions, and which populations benefit or suffer from these decisions. I think education leaders can take on some of these lessons by understanding the ecosystem of forces that influence what happens in schools.
Another area where I’ve been working is the use of organizational theories to understand schools and support school leaders. In my next book with MIT Press titled Thinking Organizationally: Seven Perspectives on How Organizations Work, I detail seven organizational perspectives that can help frame how we think about schools in particular, and organizations in general. I suggest the acronym SCRIPTS to help organize these perspectives: Structure, Culture, Relations, Institutions, Professions, Transformation, and Social Conflict. By providing practitioners and scholars with an easy mnemonic to remember all these perspectives, I hope they can figure out which aspects to focus on or change. For example, school leaders can interrogate whether their main problem is one dealing with the organization’s structures or routines, or one concerning its culture and identity. By understanding the symptoms and accurately diagnosing the problem, the solutions can become clearer.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
JET: I see the field of educational change moving toward a more expansive definition of “education.” I do not think we should limit our understanding of change to what happens inside PreK–12 systems or higher education institutions alone. Education is happening in many different spaces: in families, community organizations, social movements, nonprofit organizations, digital environments, religious institutions, workplaces, and civic networks. If we want to understand educational change seriously, then we need to document and theorize how learning, development, and transformation occur across these broader spaces. Change does not begin and end with schools, even if schools remain central institutions in people’s lives.
Relatedly, I hope we continue to decenter the most dominant sites and voices in the production of knowledge about educational change. Some of the most important lessons about adaptation, resilience, and transformation are emerging from communities that are too often treated as peripheral to the field: underrepresented minorities, developing countries, indigenous communities, migrants, and families living through conflict, displacement, or environmental instability. These communities are not simply sites of suffering or implementation; they are also sites of knowledge, invention, and strategy. We should learn from how these communities navigate uncertainty, sustain hope, and create meaningful forms of education under difficult conditions. In many ways, they may have much more to teach us about change than the systems we usually place at the center of our theories.
Where do I find hope? I find hope in the fact that, despite all the setbacks and crises that surround education, people continue to organize, imagine, and build. I find hope in teachers who continue to care deeply for students amid enormous constraints, in families and communities who create supports where formal systems fall short, and in young people who insist on more just and humane futures. I also find hope in the possibility that the field itself can become more historically grounded, more globally attentive, and more open to voices that it has too often overlooked. If we can broaden our understanding of where educational change happens, who drives it, and what counts as knowledge about it, then I think the field has much to contribute—not only to improving schools, but to imagining better futures more broadly.
“Plunged,” “plummeted,” and cratered are among the terms that media sources, particularly in Europe and the America’s, used to describe the results of the latest reading, math and science scores from OECD’s 2025 PISA tests. The negative headlines reflect the fact that the average performance of OECD countries was the lowest recorded to date in science, reading, and mathematics. At the same time, the depressing headlines mask some more positive findings. In particular, Türkiye and Thailand’s students improved in all three subjects; England and the UK jumped into the top ten for the rankings in all three subjects by maintaining its performance in reading and math and improving in science; and many of the usual high performers like China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea maintained their high scores, though with some small decreases here and there. Slight decreases in Singapore in particular were sufficient for China’s four participating regions — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang — to take the top spot in math and science. Notably, although the decline in test scores was the steepest ever in OECD countries, the average score decline in reading and math in non-OECD countries was almost half as much as in OECD countries, and non-OECD countries average science scores remained about the same as 2022.
Headlines around the world also highlighted concerns that the drops in scores might be related to the emergence of AI and increases in screen time, cellphone use and other “digital distractions.”As always, assigning blame (or occasionally credit) for changes in average performance is not easy, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of any quick conclusions about the factors that may be affecting the changes in scores this time around. At first glance, some correlations seem to support the concerns. For instance, the UK’s strong performance goes along with survey results showing only 19% of UK students in the UK reported that their peers are often distracted by digital devices during science lessons in 2025, compared to the OECD average of 28%. Furthermore, 80% of UK students attend schools where cellphones are banned compared to the OECD average of 49%. However, even the results within the UK are not consistent, with the performance of students in England largely driving the UK’s improvements. In contrast, students performance declined substantially in reading and math in Wales and Scotland even without substantial differences in screen time or cellphone use from their peers in England.
In addition Iceland reported the largest decline in performance in reading and science and nearly the largest in math over the last 10 years; yet, for the most part, Iceland has lower than average reports of “digital distraction” and the OECD report finds that in Iceland digital distraction is not associated with significant differences in student performance. Iceland also serves as an important reminder that the PISA tests are only one way to measure the effectiveness of education systems. Despite low PISA scores, Iceland ranks near the top on many other measures of happiness, health and quality of life. That includes taking the top spot on the Human Development Index, a statistical composite of average income per person, life expectancy, and education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system). (For more on Iceland’s education system and the efforts to support immigrant students in particular see Developing national support for immigrants and multilingual learners in Iceland(Part 1 & Part 2) and an upcoming post will discuss why, as a former Education Minister said, it’s still good to be a child in Iceland.)
“Even as they fall further behind in reading and math, the world’s students are turning to artificial intelligence for help with schoolwork. PISA results released this week show average performance in core subjects at the lowest levels ever recorded, with U.S. reading scores plummeting just since 2022. Meanwhile, students across dozens of countries are increasingly using chatbots to research, write and solve problems at school. ‘I see that problem on a micro level and think, ‘My God,’ one researcher said”
All mean-performance estimates are statistically significantly different from the PISA 2025 estimates, except for science in PISA 2022. Source: OECD (2026), PISA 2025 Results (Volume I)
Minister of Education Joseph Nsengimana speaks at the launch of the PISA assessment results at the Kigali Convention Centre on Tuesday, Sep 8, 2026, The News Times Rwanda
“Three percent of Rwandan students who took part in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reached the baseline proficiency level across reading, mathematics and science, according to results released in Kigali on Tuesday, September 8.The results show that 12.7 per cent of students reached the baseline level in science, compared with 7.7 per cent in mathematics and 3.9 per cent in reading.”
“PISA tests are not the problem; they are the mirror. Instead of arguing with the mirror, it is time to deal with what it reflects,” Israel’s National Parents Association said
“Seventeen percent of participating Palestinian students reached Level 2 or above in mathematics, compared with an OECD average of 65%; the corresponding shares were 22% in reading, compared with 69%, and 24% in science, compared with 74%.”
“In Armenia, the assessment was carried out in March-May 2025, in which about 7,000 learners from 295 schools participated. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan, during the presentation of the main results of the PISA-2025 international research, said that Armenia’s participation in the research has for many years been one of the important goals of the state policy in the field of education.”
“‘We can certainly say that we have improved,’ two Philippine education scholars wrote. ‘What we cannot reasonably say is that we are already doing well.’ They noted that 21% of Filipino students reached baseline Level 2 proficiency in mathematics, compared with 31% in reading and 32% in science.”
“Thailand was among eight countries and economies to record statistically significant increases across all three core areas compared with 2022.” Thai students’ science score rose 23 points to 432, while mathematics and reading each rose 13 points, to 407 and 392 respectively.
Mean scores adjusted for socio-economic status are predicted science scores obtained from separate regressions of science performance on the frequency of each type of AI use, after accounting for students’ socio-economic status. Source: OECD (2026), PISA 2025 Results (Volume I)
“The Ministry of Education and Training said this was the first time Vietnamese students had switched from paper-based to computer-based testing. As the two formats differ significantly, the score gap is not sufficient to conclude that education quality has improved or declined, it said.”
“In Armenia, the assessment was carried out in March-May 2025, in which about 7,000 learners from 295 schools participated. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan, during the presentation of the main results of the PISA-2025 international research, said that Armenia’s participation in the research has for many years been one of the important goals of the state policy in the field of education.”
“We have growth compared not only to 2022, but also in the region, where Albania has the highest results. Specifically in mathematics and science, Albania has the highest level in the Western Balkans region. These indicators reflect the progress that Albania has made in a field such as education and it is not simply historical pride, but especially ambition and intention to move forward. It is not important which country we have surpassed, but to understand how PISA helps us increase the performance of our teachers and how students increase their skills,”
“Socioeconomic status accounted for 7% of the variation in science performance in North Macedonia, compared with 12% on average across OECD countries.”
French Education Minister Édouard Geffray called France’s ranking“concerning, but sadly, it comes as no surprise…[H]e suggested giving schools greater autonomy ‘to strengthen support for struggling students, diversify the curriculum and open up more opportunities for all students’”.
“Icelandic 15-year-olds are performing below both the OECD average and their Nordic peers in reading, mathematics and science, according to the newly released PISA 2025 results. Only 56% of Icelandic pupils reached basic proficiency in reading, down from 78% in 2015. Only 50% of boys reached the basic reading threshold, compared with 62% of girls”
“The deterioration since the previous assessment in 2022 is substantial: Spain lost 23 points in reading, 16 in mathematics and eight in science. Looking further back to 2015, the cumulative decline amounts to 45 points in reading, 30 in mathematics and 16 in science.”
“Catalonia’s PISA 2025 results cannot be compared with other territories or previous cycles because the sample was not representative of the 15-year-old student population. The reported exemption rate reached 23.2%, compared with the OECD guideline of 5%.”
Simple average of science, reading and mathematics scores. Source: OECD, PISA 2025. OECD averages are 482 in science, 461 in reading and 463 in mathematics.
This data shows scores on Computational Problem Solving *Countries shown in gray did not participate in PISA 2025 and have no data available. Source: OECD PISA 2025 Results
Questions about funding, supplies, safety, numerous policy changes, and the growing backlash leading to bans on AI and cellphones are among the many local and national issues in the news as students go back to school in the US. Last week, Part 1 of IEN’s annual back-to-school scan highlighted the stark differences in the headlines in developed and developing countries (Safety and shortages or banning technology? Going back to school in a divided world in 2026 (Part 1).
“Federal policy turbulence and enrollment declines have magnified the precarity of the state and local funds school districts depend on for the lion’s share of their budgets. Educators think a backlash to technology use in classrooms that’s intensified over the past year will continue to grow. And struggles to boost students’ achievement in reading and math persist, with the “math wars” restarting and schools working to implement still-new laws reforming literacy instruction.”
“Families are entering an education landscape that has changed dramatically. Parents have more power and more options than they did even five years ago. States are expanding education savings accounts, scholarships and other ways for families to direct their children’s education. New federal scholarship opportunities are approaching. At the same time, educators and entrepreneurs are creating microschools, hybrid schools, classical academies, outdoor programs and learning models that did not fit neatly into yesterday’s system.”
“A basic school supply bundle now costs around $173.45 — up 7.7% from last year. That, plus the soaring cost of popular school lunch items, like berries and juice boxes, means families are looking at a $4,000 annual price tag for meals and supplies. The 74’s video team breaks down the data sourced from 50,000 retailers, originally reported by The 19th.”
“Funding Portability and Provider Expansion: Letting public education dollars follow students across settings, making it easier for new kinds of schools to open, and expanding choice options for students and families. Credentialing and Postsecondary Pathway Flexibility: Redefining what counts as learning and widening the routes students can take through school. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance and System Modernization: Setting the rules for how schools use AI and student data.”
“District officials say asbestos remediation should be complete by the end of 2026. Philadelphia schools have had asbestos problems for years, and in 2025 they led to federal criminal charges.”
“Welcome back, families! There have been some changes to the pick-up and drop-off procedures, so make sure you familiarize yourselves before the first day. Remember, when in doubt, simply CIRCLE THE BLOCK. DROP-OFF This year, we will be dropping off by grade. Please drop off only at your student’s grade level’s time. If you have multiple children, please simply CIRCLE THE BLOCK until their designated drop-off time. This ensures a smooth process for all…”
Going back to school looks very different for students in developing countries and those in developed countries in Europe, Canada and elsewhere. Although the issues in Europe focus on limits on screens, cellphones, and AI, concerns about repairing facilities, dealing with shortages, and recovering from disasters dominate the headlines in the Caribbean and some parts of Africa. This year’s scan of the back-to-schoolheadlines around the world also highlights the dangers students face in countries under attack like Ukraine and those experiencing disease outbreaks like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Schools in several parts of the world are adjusting to new curricula and policies, but the UAE stands out with initiatives to expand project-based learning.Next week, Part 2 of the back-to-school scan will focus on the national and local headlines in the US.
“Millions of students returned to school across the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, but the new term began amid an Ebola outbreak affecting six provinces, a teachers’ strike call and continuing conflict in the east. In AFC/M23-controlled territories, the movement organised the return to classrooms even as Kinshasa continued to pay primary and secondary school teachers.”
“Barely days into the third term, secondary school administrators are already sounding the alarm over unpaid government capitation, a gap they say could throw learning programmes into disarray.“
A student experiences VR equipment during a new semester activity; students attend the opening ceremony for the new semester; and students walk toward a campus of Dengshikou Primary School in Beijing in Beijing, People’s Daily Online via Xinhua/Ren Chao
“Balanced class assignment and fairness are emphasized in the first lesson of the new semester…In April of this year, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the “Notice on Launching the Special Action for Sunshine Enrollment in Primary and Secondary Schools (2026).” The notice clearly stipulates that compulsory education schools should maintain balanced class assignments, strictly prohibiting the establishment or disguised establishment of key classes, experimental classes, or fast/slow classes. It promotes balanced allocation of teachers and random student class assignments, requiring schools to disclose their class assignment plans, processes, and results to parents.”
“The start of the term also brings changes to everyday school life. Education providers in pre-primary and comprehensive education now have a legal duty to promote physical activity alongside teaching. The measure follows restrictions on mobile devices introduced at the start of the previous school year.”
“The French government will press ahead with a ban on mobile phone use in high schools as classes reconvene in September. But opinion varies on the likelihood of its success, with some citing freedom of speech concerns and others around speed of implementation.”
“When students return to their classrooms after the summer, they are faced with a new everyday life. Starting in the fall semester, a national and mandatory mobile phone ban will apply in primary school, preschool classes and after-school care. It’s no longer enough to put your phone face down in your bag and promise not to sneakily check Tiktok during math class, but now it’s a ban. Many schools have previously banned cell phones, but now it will be mandatory and not optional in schools.”
In the fourth part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Daisy Salazar-Garza discusses her firsthand experience of the inequities in the public education system and the impact this has on students, families, and communities. Salazar-Garza is a Ph.D. student in the School of Educational Studies’ Urban Leadership Program at Claremont University. German is a recipient of the Student Travel Award from the Educational Change Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AREA). The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues who lead the Ed Change SIG. 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?
Daisy Salazar-Garza: The 2026 AERA theme, “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research,” calls us to draw upon our diverse knowledge and lived experiences to engage in meaningful “futuring” for education. For me, as a Chicana educator, scholar, and first-generation doctoral student, this theme feels deeply personal. It is a call that echoes the lessons my family instilled in me from an early age.
My family, especially my father, taught me about life’s harsh realities and the beauty of resilience through the power of storytelling. Around family meals, during long drives, or in quiet moments on the porch, I listened to stories of our history—stories of struggle, perseverance, and hope. These narratives shaped my understanding of who I am and filled me with a deep sense of pride. They taught me to honor the strength passed down from my ancestors and to recognize that storytelling is not only an act of remembrance but also a tool for transformation.
This foundation shapes how I approach educational research. To truly “unforget” our histories, we must center the voices and stories that have been pushed to the margins. Leveraging our collective knowledge requires valuing the lived experiences of those most impacted by educational inequities. By empowering communities with a vested interest in the future of education, we can imagine possibilities rooted in justice, equity, and collective empowerment.
As I continue to heed the 2026 AERA theme, I draw upon this legacy of storytelling and historical remembrance to inform my work. Understanding the social, economic, political, and racial contexts that have shaped communities is essential to serving them authentically—honoring both their strengths and the systemic injustice they have endured. Through remembering and honoring these histories, we can envision and build educational spaces that celebrate our roots and uplift our voices. In doing so, we can cultivate a just and hopeful future that directly confronts the inequities we must transform.
Source: Bank Street Graduate School of Education website
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
DSG: Recently, I had the privilege of working with Dr. Osworth to co-author “Outward Portrayals of Equity: An Examination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Los Angeles County School Districts.” In 2024, we collected data from 80 public school districts to assess the current state of DEI commitments in Los Angeles County districts.
From this work, several lessons emerge for practitioners and scholars in the field of Educational Change. First, our findings highlight the need to look beyond surface-level portrayals of equity and focus on how DEI policies are enacted in districts and schools. Value statements made toward DEI without creating infrastructure through policy to support the work does not address the racialized nature of the structures within school districts (Salazar-Garza & Osworth, 2026). Second, schools as organizational systems often reproduce existing inequities. Recognizing these structural patterns is the first step toward redesigning them. Ultimately, transformative change needs to occur at the systemic level to disrupt and dismantle entrenched systems of inequality (Salazar-Garza & Osworth, 2026). Finally, pairing enforcement mechanisms, such as culturally responsive teaching, with policy can contribute to conscious efforts to alter internal patterns of organizational inequity (Salazar-Garza & Osworth, 2026).
“Value statements made toward DEI without creating infrastructure through policy to support the work do not address the racialized nature of the structures within school districts.”
Together, these insights emphasize that fostering educational change requires both reflective practice and systemic change. Equity efforts translate into improved student experiences and outcomes when we can redesign structures enacting patterns of inequity.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
DSG: As a scholar-practitioner, I believe the field of educational change is heading toward a deeper partnership with people who are the most affected by our current educational realities. By centering the voices of teachers, students, families, and communities, we can inspire real progress. Change comes when research and practice work go hand in hand to bridge the gap between theory and lived experience.
Given the current polycrisis world we’re navigating, where social, economic, and environmental challenges continually intersect, I find hope in collaboration within the field of education (Virella, 2025). Dr. Virella’s Crisis as Catalyst: Equity-Oriented School Leadership During Difficult Times reminds me that even in moments of uncertainty, there is great potential for transformation. As a school principal who was interviewed and whose narrative is present in this research alongside numerous other school leaders, it is a reminder that practitioners are engaging in powerful practices that are meeting the needs of our present moment. It is also a call to action that we can study practices from the field, derive key lessons, and create frameworks that empower and sustain more educators across the field.
What gives me hope is seeing more educators and researchers approach their work not just as inquiry, but as partnership with students, families, communities. When our research centers humanity and lived experience, educational change can lead us toward a more just and human-centered system for all students.
References
Salazar-Garza,D. and Osworth, D. (2026) Outward portrayals of equity: an examination of diversity, equity, and inclusion in Los Angeles County school districts. Leadership in Education Racial Equity and the Organization: An Educational Change Call to Action. Frontiers in Education. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1642675
Virella, P. M. (2025). Crisis as catalyst: Equity-oriented school leadership during difficult times. Harvard Education Press.
What does it take to create more sustainable school facilities? In the third part to this series, Carter Hyde and Hannah Nguyen discuss some of the new developments in facilities and facilities management that schools across the country have implemented to conserve energy, cut costs, and support students’ learning and wellbeing. The first post explored the negative impact that climate change and related disruptions have on students, and the second post focused on how schools are making busing and other aspects of school transportation more sustainable.
Environmental changes are contributing to disasters, crises, and day-to-day conditions that disrupt schooling, increase costs, and undermine students’ health and learning. Combatting these problems is profoundly complex, often requiring difficult trade-offs. Efforts to improve student health and learning environments may conflict with long-term sustainability goals and cost-effectiveness. These tradeoffs force school administrators to weigh the benefits of expensive structural upgrades against smaller, more affordable interventions. Despite the challenges, schools in the US and around the world are taking innovative steps that range from major infrastructure upgrades to homegrown, creative adjustments made by teachers in their classrooms.
A student from John McDonogh Senior High School’s first graduating class since Hurricane Katrina walks past a damaged wall on the way to commencement June 8, 2007, in New Orleans, LA, K12 Dive
Major Infrastructure Upgrades and Renewable Energy
After salaries, energy represents a critical area for both reducing costs and addressing sustainability. In the US, energy bills make up the second highest cost for school districts, amounting to roughly 8 billion dollars per year. To address these significant expenses, many institutions are moving beyond reactive budgeting and toward strategic roadmaps that help schools set sustainability goals that are aligned with national sustainability targets. Schools can use these roadmaps to help reduce the schools’ energy and water consumption, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.
In the US, energy bills make up the second highest cost for school districts, amounting to roughly 8 billion dollars per year.
In addition to strategic budgeting, some schools are turning to high-impact technology to reduce energy costs and to promote sustainable practices. For instance, some schools are now putting in place geothermal wells because they offer a particularly sustainable way to heat and cool schools without burning fossil fuels. At the same time, some schools are turning to solar energy so that they can develop their own sources of energy. Though a costly up-front investment, solar panels can help reduce the electrification gap by providing a sustainable way to power schools that reduces costs over time and contributes to better air quality.
Countries with large with large school electrification gaps tend to have high potential for solar power generation, UNESCO via Gem Statlink
Improving HVAC Systems and the Building “Envelope”
Beyond energy sources, improvements to the school’s physical “envelope”—the walls, windows, and climate systems—can support student performance. Upgrading old HVAC systems, in particular, provides a way to cool classrooms and create better learning conditions at the some time. As one review of survey data from New York State schools showed, improving HVAC systems contributed to a 2% increase in attendance and a 3% increase in math scores over multiple years. Among other benefits, HVAC improvements can produce better air flow, which reduces the spread of disease and helps students focus. Improving air filtration through the use of air purifiers and portable air cleaners, can also help improve cognition and mitigate illness-related absences.
At the same time, air conditioning alone is not always a sustainable solution, as these systems can expel hot air outdoors and contribute to global warming. As architect Francis Kere explains, “energy-intensive air conditioning, which expels hot air outdoors, contribute to global warming, which then fuels demand for more air conditioning.” Instead, Kere recommends using passive cooling techniques, such as overhanging roofs to improve air circulation and generate cross-ventilation.
A student leaves the secondary school building built by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kere, in Kere’s home village of Gando, Burkina Faso, The Japan Times via Reuters
Schools can also make improvements in the outdoor environment to address sustainability. For instance, planting trees on asphalt playgrounds can reduce temperatures through shading, and painting roofs white, adding vegetation of false ceilings, and creating more green spaces can reduce the “heat island” effect.
Balancing Lighting and Temperature
Lighting represents another area where schools need to consider potentially conflicting benefits. In a 2020 review of 130 studies, lighting was found to be one of the environmental factors that had the biggest impact on students’ learning and wellbeing. Maximizing the amount of natural light in classrooms, in particular, has been shown to have a number of benefits including reducing eye strain, boosting mood, and improving cognition. Although artificial lighting may lead to lower motivation and eye strain, research reviews highlight that students in classrooms with more natural light showed higher productivity, engagement, and attention level. Despite these benefits, some classrooms may still suffer from poor lighting or rely too heavily on artificial sources. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, in an effort to reduce energy consumption and costs, many schools have implemented LED lighting in classrooms.
Maximizing the amount of natural light in classrooms, in particular, has been shown to have a number of benefits, including reducing eye strain, boosting mood, and improving cognition.
In addition to finding a balance that maximizes the benefits of natural lighting with the costs, schools have to take into account the fact that both too much direct sunlight and too little light can negatively impact student engagement and impair test scores. Furthermore, schools have to take into account mitigating factors, including structural limitations that prevent some classrooms from relying on daylight, as well as the increases in classroom temperature and energy costs that come with larger windows. One way to deal with these challenges is to use temperature-treated or double-paned glass to provide light while keeping the heat out. The use of window shades may also be useful in eliminating glare.
Teachers’ Role in Sustainability
Whether or not schools have the resources for major structural changes or sustainability upgrades, teachers play a key role in striking the right balance between lighting and temperature and supporting both sustainability and an optimal learning environment. For instance, teachers have demonstrated a host of creative ways to combat heat and to improve the environment including using fans, creating window art to reduce glare, and turning off heat-generating electronics. In some cases, the simplest solutions may be the best solutions, as teachers in schools located in temperate regions with good air quality can open windows to allow for natural air flow.
Improving Facilities in “Old” Buildings
Along with so many natural disasters and rising temperatures, many communities face a long-standing demand to improve aging or inadequate school buildings. One of the most recent assessments of school infrastructure in the US shows that it would cost almost 200 billion dollars to bring all K-12 school buildings into good overall condition and the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the condition of America’s 100,000 public school buildings an overall grade of D+. Estimates suggest it would take as much as 85 billion dollars a year to make the needed improvements. On top of that, the costs of deferred maintenance continue to compound with every one million dollars worth of needed improvements deferred in one year leading to $1.08 – 1.12 million in costs the following year.
In the US, the burden and responsibility for addressing this problem falls on individual school districts and communities, but many lack the resources to pay for the significant upfront costs of building new facilities. Some districts have tried to mitigate these costs – and the sustainability problems that new construction often produces – by repurposing older buildings. For instance, struggling malls have opened the doors to charter schools as tenants to use the empty spaces. One charter school in South Carolina opened up in a former JC Penny Store. In Massachusetts, instead of building a new high school, one district opted to co-locate a school in the community’s senior center. center down the road.
Liberty STEAM Charter School in Sumter, S.C., is one of many schools that have opened up in malls across the nation, The New York Times
For more information regarding infrastructure and sustainability, see:
In the third part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Celina German discusses her experiences researching the intersection of community-based youth leadership, after-school club affinity programming, and student activism history. German is a Ph.D. student in the Learning, Literacies, and Technologies program at Arizona State University. German is a recipient of the Student Travel Award from the Educational Change Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AREA). The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues who lead the Ed Change SIG. 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?
Celina German: While working on my 2026 AERA submission, the notion of Sankofa (also visible in the conference logo) kept guiding me through the process. The Akan symbolism of a bird looking back and the word, literally translated as “go back and get,” made me think about what one returns to as part of the process of going forward. As a former high school English teacher and co-advisor of the Black Student Union, my heart also remembers all the great work that is part of the Summer Sankofa program at Arizona State University. My educational background informs the academics I want to participate in.
Source: Arizona State University website
I carry into this work my identity as my family’s first and only birthright citizen. As I navigated the U.S. education system (PK12) as a Romanian-American, gender-question young woman, I saw the unhealthy relationship between whiteness, patriarchal logics, and academic achievement. To engage in coalition work, I deeply reflected (and continue to reflect) on what my positionality and actions say about liberation. My identity hung in the balance of being the only American in a family of naturalized and permanent residents, while at school, I was learning in real time my racialized identity and how others interpreted it. Growing up in southcentral Indiana around very few Romanians, I learned very quickly the gradation of whiteness and how multicultural spaces, like my swim team, filled with mostly first-generation American kids like me, were more accepting of me than most of my educational leaders. However, I thrived in leadership roles despite what adults expected of me.
I bring this worldview to the interviews, research partnerships, and organizing efforts to 1) acknowledge how fraught multicultural coalitions’ history has been in America, and it is with the mindset to 2) recognize that futuring for education is rooted in trust and empathy. We don’t dream with abandon with those whom we are unsure of, and I try to speak with that honesty and humility in the liberation work I engage in. It is not always well-received, and I am constantly learning how to leverage the privilege I have to ensure that those I care about are heard. However, the first step I take is recognizing that all communities have tremendous privilege.
For those reasons, the critical race feminism and transnational frameworks I operate within were part of a journey of learning about my love for critical and real U.S. history (read: Black, Indigenous, Immigrant history). Still, I would not have gotten there alone without the multitude of college professors who engaged me with what I later learned was at the core of Black studies and Ethnic studies curricula. Therefore, the research I do, which I see as a labor of love, explores the history of antiracist educational activism. To better understand the problems we face today, I look back through high school yearbooks, archives, and oral histories to understand what the youth of the past did, attempted, and did not do to transform school structures.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
CG: Part of my intellectual commitments towards educational change is writing alongside folks whose genius deserves to be heard and recognized, whether in the academic canon or in community outlets. The good fight is happening in the Black Student Unions (BSU), where advisors are engaging in fugitive mentorship and young people are demanding more of their school sites through an art-based YPAR inquiry (German, Smith, Berard, & Wilkerson, 2026; German, Nguyen, Joyner, & Johnson, 2026). To foster better educational systems, listening to practitioners and students for their insights into school system leadership is crucial.
In particular, young people in cultural affinity groups, such as BSU, M.E.Ch.A., or AAPISU, are extremely gifted in their critical consciousness of their leadership identities and in their understanding of the inner workings of school power dynamics. Expanding the definition of educational leaders to include student leaders of color, especially women of color, is the focus of my research. If young people are not part of that school-improvement feedback loop or act only as consultants, we are not engaging the school community that the administration aims to serve. Enacting changes because one is listening to young people in these elected roles is my vision of transformative school leadership.
“If young people are not part of that school-improvement feedback loop or act only as consultants, we are not engaging the school community that the administration aims to serve.”
Part of how I listen is understanding how young people are mentored in out-of-school or after-school programming. I aim to explore how adults co-conspire with youth to bring about educational change. Therefore, I had the opportunity to examine systemic designs for the equity director role through job descriptions. Dr. Ishmael Miller and I researched how institutional logics shape the role of equity directors. Miller’s work reflected on the lived realities of Equity Directors, either through reflexive accounts or historical inquiry (Miller, 2026a); (Miller, 2026b). His work is inspiring me as I explore leadership historically through a review of high school yearbooks illustrating BSU activism. Learning more about non-traditional educational leaders has broadened my perspective on organizational change in community partnerships and out-of-school-time youth organizations.
Lastly, I explore the limits of qualitative methods, such as interviewing, to see where dialogue about educational change can occur across differing, layered identities. Dr. Franklin-Phipps and I are using art to speculate Black educational futures (German and Franklin-Phipps, 2026). Our art inquiry is not to resolve or reach consensus, but to embrace the change needed to keep framing hope when we see sites of Black suffering (Dumas & Ross, 2016). Expanding my methods has inspired me to push the limits of positionality and reflexivity while doing coalition work in the academy.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
CG: I find hope for educational change in young people’s responses to adult-led decisions. Whether a student responds in rage or profound patience, that hope compels me to muster the courage I have as an adult co-conspirator to reconcile what can be mended. I see how educational change is still addressing adultism and rewiring frameworks, so youth voice is not seen as performative. The roles of youth in elected leadership, such as school boards, serve as a weathervane of progress in some districts. I think seeing young people presenting at AERA is expanding the horizons of YPAR research.
I also derive hope from all the community youth work organizers who have been in this work longer than I have. Their creativity in structures that run counter to the leadership development of young people makes me refuse to see the tunnel vision with which academia portrays it. Seeing how strong, mutually beneficial research-practice partnerships engage communities of practice is a step in the right direction for the educational change scholarship.
References
Dumas, M. J., & Ross, K. M. (2016). “Be real black for me” imagining BlackCrit in education. Urban Education, 51(4), 415–442.
German, C., & Franklin-Phipps, A. (2026). Speculating Black Educational Futures: Wit(h)nessing Interviews Through Politics of Knowing. Special Issue. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology (under review).
German, C., Smith, S. L., Berard, L., & Wilkerson, R. (2026). Fugitive Mentorship and Cultivating Expansive Futures: A Collaborative Autoethnography by Black Student Union Advisors. Current Issues in Education, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol27iss1.2384
German, C., Nguyen, L., Joyner, J., Samuel, C., Johnson, A. (2026). Creatively Investing in Today’s Changemakers: Setting a YPAR Precedent for Empowered Student Leadership in Our Black Student Union. Journal of Participatory Research Methods. (under review)
Miller, I. A. (2026b). Historicizing the Equity Director Position: Black Community Advocacy by an Intergroup Relations Specialist. Journal of School Leadership, 36(1), 21–45.
Reed, E., German, C., Geraghty, P., Brown, K., & Carmichael, J. (2025). Editorial Introduction: Reflecting on Our Shared Educational Futures: A Global Need to Belong for Transformative Learning. Current Issues in Education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2475.
In the first part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. Paul Campbell discusses his experiences researching educational change, leadership, and policy. Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Leadership at The University of Hong Kong and President-Elect of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI). His research focuses on how diverse approaches to knowledge production and research engagement shape reform, and offer new ways for understanding what it means to lead, be a leader, and exercise leadership. Dr. Campbell is a recipient of the Emerging Scholar Award. The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedotaand their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
Paul Campbell: The 2026 AERA theme invites us to remember the histories that have shaped our field while imagining futures that are more inclusive, equitable, and transformative. My scholarship begins with the belief that we cannot imagine new futures without first acknowledging the epistemic closures of the past. Educational leadership and change have long been dominated by Anglo-American traditions, privileging certain ways of knowing while marginalising others. To move forward, we must confront this history directly and commit to advancing epistemic diversity.
In my recent paper with Sefika Mertkan (Campbell & Mertkan, 2025), we argue that while geographical diversification of scholarship is a foundational step, it is insufficient on its own. What is more critical is epistemic diversity; the recognition and mobilisation of multiple epistemological traditions. This requires interrogating who produces knowledge, what epistemologies are applied, how knowledge is circulated and cited, and whose voices are solicited. As we wrote, “advancing epistemic diversity is more critical than geographical diversification in liberating the educational leadership knowledge base from the Anglo-American hegemony.” Remembering this history of epistemic dominance is essential if we are to imagine futures where pluriversal perspectives thrive. Only then can new possibilities emerge for how we understand the nature and purpose of leading educational change, and only then can more just realities for learners and communities thrive.
“Advancing epistemic diversity is more critical than geographical diversification in liberating the educational leadership knowledge base from the Anglo-American hegemony.”
My work also examines how supranational discourses shape our understanding of leaders, leading, and leadership in policy, research, and practice. In ‘Leadership for Learning: A Policy Analysis of the GEM Report 2024’ (Campbell & Sum, 2026), Nicola Sum and I show how global accountability frameworks often fail to take local realities into account. By applying a leadership-for-learning lens, we highlight pathways to reimagine futures where global frameworks are translated into contextually responsive practices. This reflects a desire to bridge histories of epistemic dominance with futures of inclusive, situated knowledge.
Taken together, this body of work reflects both optimism and frustration. Optimism, because there are genuine opportunities to rethink how educational change is understood and enacted. Frustration, because leaders are often positioned within policy-saturated environments that constrain their agency, and because knowledge production practices too often reproduce dominant paradigms rather than center the voices of educators and leaders themselves. The increasingly complex realities facing school leaders, shaped by global norms and demands, local contexts, and broader socio-political realities, require us to rethink not only what leadership and change are, but also how we study and support them.
Heeding the call of the 2026 AERA theme, therefore, means committing to a dual task: remembering the exclusions and closures of the past, while actively constructing futures that are plural, inclusive, and transformative. My scholarship seeks to contribute to this by interrogating the structures that sustain epistemic hegemony, amplifying diverse voices and thinking, and reimagining leadership and the leadership of educational change as a relational, educative, and contextually grounded practice. In doing so, I hope to support a field of educational change that is globally relevant and locally meaningful; one that ultimately serves the needs of students, educators, and communities in more just, equitable, and necessarily diverse ways.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
PC: “I’m working on the margins in order to shake the core” was how one principal, in my study of principals’ life histories in relation to education reform, described the theme of their professional life and work. This articulation captures the complex realities of how leaders, their leadership, and change are positioned within systems, and the consequences this has for the enactment and possibilities of educational change. From this and related work, several lessons emerge for both scholars and practitioners.
Collaboration must be understood as socially and culturally situated. In ‘Leading Collaborative Educational Change: A Critical Policy Analysis of Leadership and Governance in Hong Kong Schools’ (Campbell & Kam, 2026), I show how hierarchical traditions, accountability demands, and conflict avoidance complicate the intentions and enactment of collaboration. Principals navigate tensions between policy ideals and lived realities, revealing that meaningful collaboration requires relational trust, cultural sensitivity, and reflexive leadership. This highlights the participatory dynamics of collaboration: who is involved, how power is exercised, and how goals are negotiated. Collaboration cannot, therefore, be reduced to structural arrangements or compliance mechanisms; it must be cultivated through participatory processes that respect cultural norms and empower diverse voices.
Agency is central to reimagining leadership in complex systems. In ‘“I’m Working on the Margins in Order to Shake the Core”: Educational Leadership, Agency, and the Reimagining of the Principalship’ (Campbell & Kam, 2026), principals describe how they enact agency through temporal, experiential, and relational dynamics. The agency framework articulated in this work, temporal (drawing on reform histories and aspirations), experiential (learning through practice and mentorship), and relational (building trust and mobilising communities) dynamics, offers a lens for understanding how leaders navigate, reinforce, or resist systemic constraints. For scholars, this challenges dominant conceptions of leaders’ positioning within and against system structures and constraints, and for leaders and educators in sites of practice, it underscores the need to support leaders in exercising agency within, with, and against systemic structures.
Organisational and socio-cultural dynamics must also be foregrounded. Accountability regimes, governance arrangements, and resource allocation shape the possibilities for collaboration and agency. At the same time, socio-cultural dynamics, comprised of hierarchical traditions, community expectations, and cultural dispositions toward conflict avoidance, mediate how leadership is enacted. Leaders must constantly negotiate these forces, balancing compliance with innovation and authority with relational trust. For educators, this means recognising that leadership is enacted within layered organisational and cultural contexts. For scholars, it calls for analyses that move beyond abstract models to examine how leadership is lived and contested in specific contexts.
Innovation in processes of change must also be conceptualised as situated and contested. In ‘Conceptualizing Innovation in Education: Implications for School Leadership and Change’ (Campbell et al., 2026), our editorial team and authors identified five themes requiring consideration for the leadership of innovation: innovation as relational, leadership as enabler or constraint, tensions between policy and practice, supportive cultures, and equity. Innovation is not a neutral construct; it reflects power relations and dominant epistemologies. For policymakers and professionals in sites of practice, this means developing organisational cultures of trust and inclusion. For scholars, it requires interrogating whose knowledge is valued and how innovation intersects with equity and justice.
Together, these insights highlight that educational change is shaped by participatory dynamics, organisational structures, socio-cultural contexts, and the agency of leaders. To reach better systems for all students, we must support leaders as active agents of change who navigate this dynamic complexity and are appropriately prepared and supported to do so.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
PC: Despite persistent challenges, and what seems like a relentless intensification of complexity in education systems, I find hope in several directions.
First, epistemic diversity. Scholars are increasingly interrogating citational practices, editorial structures, and epistemic injustices, creating space for alternative epistemologies to shape the theoretical core of our fields. This movement holds promise for dismantling universalist narratives and cultivating pluriversal perspectives. It also signals a shift toward valuing multiple ways of knowing and being, and toward scholarship that is globally open but locally meaningful.
Second, leadership is reframed as educative, relational, and political. By moving beyond managerial and compliance-driven framings, we can reimagine school leaders as agents of justice, democratic ideals, and community empowerment. My work with school leaders in Hong Kong demonstrates that even within high-accountability systems, leaders exercise agency to sustain trust, adapt practices, and preserve professional identity. These acts of agency, often enacted “on the margins,” provide seeds of transformation that can “shake the core” of entrenched structures. They remind us that leadership is so much more than positional authority; it is a practice of agency, enacted through relationships and values.
Third, innovation as relational and inclusive. As our editorial in School Leadership & Management (Campbell, MacGregor & Sum, 2026) argued, innovation must be understood as a situated process of change rather than a discrete product. It is inherently political, reflecting epistemologies, power relations, and assumptions about whose knowledge counts. Equity and inclusion cannot be treated as add-ons; they must be central to how innovation is defined, led, and legitimised. When innovation is framed this way, it becomes a vehicle for addressing systemic inequities and fostering cultures of collaboration. This is where I see the field heading: toward a more nuanced, contextually grounded, and justice-oriented understanding of educational change.
Fourth, collective capacity. Ultimately, my hope lies in the collective capacity of scholars, policymakers, and professionals in sites of practice to remember histories of exclusion, interrogate present structures of dominance, and imagine futures of inclusivity and equity. The provocations we posed in the editorial mentioned earlier, innovation as process, leadership as dilemma space, and innovation as political, are invitations to debate, but also to act. They call for research and practice that is conceptually plural, empirically grounded, and ethically serious.
By centering agency, collaboration, and epistemic diversity, educational change can become truly transformative. The future of the field depends on our willingness to embrace complexity, to resist reductive framings, and to cultivate leadership and change that are relational, inclusive, and equity-oriented. In this, I find hope: that even amid constraints, leaders and scholars can work on the margins to shake the core and, in doing so, reimagine futures that are more just and humane.
References
Campbell, P. & Kam, Y. C. (2026). Leading Collaborative Educational Change: A Critical Policy Analysis of Leadership and Governance in Hong Kong Schools, Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2026.2636612
Campbell, P., Macgregor, S. & Sum, N. (2026). Editorial: Conceptualizing Innovation in Education: Implications for School Leadership and Change, School Leadership and Management, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2026.2631919
Campbell, P. & Sum, N. (2026). Leadership for Learning: A Policy Analysis of the Global Education Monitoring Report 2024 and Its Local Implications for School Leadership, Management in Education, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/08920206261430580
Campbell, P. & Kam, Y. C. (2026). “I’m Working on the Margins in Order to Shake the Core”: Educational Leadership, Agency, and the Reimagining of the Principalship, Journal of Educational Administration, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1108%2FJEA-06-2025-0246
Campbell, P. & Mertkan, S. (2025). Geographical Diversification of Educational Leadership Research: Gaps in Our Understanding, Management in Education, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/08920206251407030
