The issue of unfinished learning and achievement gaps in schools has been a persistent concern in recent years, particularly among underrepresented and disadvantaged student populations. AVID Elementary is a promising solution for ensuring students have the necessary knowledge and skills to be college and career ready, as it is based on proven…

In this study, we explore teachers' professional space as an alternative to, and/or expansion of earlier conceptualizations of teacher autonomy. Professional space is here understood both as an objective space with e.g., physical, juridical, economic features, and as the teachers' subjective negotiation of this objective space, where teachers are…

This article details a classroom-based study designed to provide agency and voice to first and second grade emergent bilinguals as they processed the COVID-19 pandemic. Two California teachers created a narrative writing unit not only to teach specific writing skills, but also to challenge pervasive deficit assumptions that young children…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore how a student-centered curriculum engaged participants in critical analysis of the "female ideal" and to identify perceived barriers to physical activity. Method: Participants were nine fifth and sixth grade Hispanic/Latina or mixed race girls, and two researchers at an urban elementary…

As institutions strive to improve teaching and learning for all, educators must consider equitable instruction. This includes equitable distributions of authority and agency among students. The authors define distribution of authority as shared opportunities for decision-making in enacting mathematical tasks and agency as the power to carry out…

Identities are dynamic, constantly shifting processes of self-understanding mediated by local and institutional repertoires, behaviors, resources and enacted through one's positioning in practice. This definition considers identities as both ideas, as well as actions in terms of how the learner becomes a participant in activities. A tension in…

In this article, the author braids storytelling with oral life history interviews, Chicana Feminisms, and portraiture. The piece centers the portrait of Ms. Sotomayor, a veteran elementary teacher, who through her stories shares with us pedagogies of pain, trust, autonomy, and empowerment. These glimpses of her life journey as a Nepantlera offer…

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed methods study was to identify and describe the impact of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) within Kern County, Monterey County, San Luis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County in narrowing the achievement gap in underachieving populations identified as English Language Learners (ELL) and low socioeconomic…

Teacher preparation programs commonly use observational instruments to assess the progress and the exit performances of teacher candidates. However, while these instruments have been described and several have been studied for effectiveness, the field lacks a close examination of how they position participants: teacher candidates, K-12 pupils, and…

Policy around the legal status and social rights of the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants is unresolved, making it imperative that PK-12 schools and educators prepare for challenges to undocumented students' educational access. In 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared near an elementary school, which required…

To mitigate educational challenges, K-8 students enrolled in the Migrant Education Program (MEP) at Fuerte School District spend the majority of their after-school class time in a Saturday Academy program completing required curricular tasks associated with structured research-based programs to strengthen reading, writing, mathematics, and science…

In San Francisco, a partnership between a K-8 school and a non-profit writing program helps students who are achieving below grade level find their voices and blossom into confident thinkers and writers. 826 Valencia is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to eighteen with their creative and…

Empowering settings are important places for people to develop leadership skills in order to enact social change. Yet, due to socio-cultural constructions of childhood in the US, especially constructions around working class and working poor children of Color, they are often not seen as capable or competent change agents, or in need of being in…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

Now, more so than in the past, children have been deprived of the opportunity to learn and exercise effective interpersonal communication skills. Interpersonal communication skills, for elementary students, are important in the development of a student's ability to self-advocate. The purpose of this study is to identify techniques in which…