Increasingly fraught disputes over education have elevated local school boards as key sites of inquiry. In this critical ethnography, we examine how ostensibly neutral school board rules, routines, and relations play out in practice. We asked, How do (queer) youth of color proponents, white opponents, and white allies of an anti-oppressive…

Purpose: This paper conceptualizes a just leadership learning ecology through an analysis of one nontraditional site of leadership preparation: the Highlander Research and Education Center (originally founded as the Highlander Folk School). Methodology: Drawing on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and institutional theory (IT), we examine…

This study investigates the intersections of policy, affect, and the lives of migrant youth. We approach the Trump Administration's contingent reversal of a "zero tolerance" family separation policy as an illustrative case for understanding how affect mediates policy-making processes. Combining Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) and affect…

This study examines the ethics and politics of knowledge across 15 distinctive community-engaged research projects. We focus our analysis on interviews with community partners and consider their perceptions of research, academic research partners, motivations for partnering, and the benefits and challenges of community-engaged research. We…

This study examined how 20 faculty and staff members used a one-time funding initiative to (re)conceptualize and design student success interventions. We found that they selectively adopted traditional notions of student success but also elevated themes of social justice, civic engagement, and overall student well-being as valuable dimensions of…

"Just Innovation" problematizes taken-for-granted assumptions about innovation in education as "just" about new devices like laptops, computers, or smart-phones. It also aims to open conceptual space for considering what is "just," or fair in twenty-first century contexts by investigating the cultural politics of…

This practitioner research study examines one critical race media literacy (CRML) activity that invited students to digitally redact deficit framings of youth from minoritized and historically marginalized backgrounds. I illustrate how Latinx and Asian students used the project to re-articulate deficit narratives of themselves, their friends, and…

In this comparative ethnographic case study, Ethan Chang examines the politics of digital education reform. Drawing on new institutional theory and boundary work, he investigates how two digital technology nonprofit organizations in California drew boundaries to define themselves and ensure their survival in a competitive organizational field. He…

The purpose of this study is to address undertheorized notions of equity within technology leadership research and to offer alternative possibilities for equitable technology leadership practice. Drawing on advocacy and equity-oriented leadership studies, I investigate the leadership practices of one technology-based and people of color-led…