This brief presents Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a transformative exploratory tool for critical and curious educators. YPAR has been defined as a collaborative method of youth, with the support of caring adults, participating in research to explore social issues that impact them, with the end goal of taking action to improve the…

This action research study, informed by qualitative critical bricolage methods explored immigrant-origin adult learners' lived experiences around education. It examined a California community college's practices and campus climate that hinder adult immigrant learners' equitable access to and success in postsecondary education. In an attempt to…

Educators are often unaware of assets Mexican Indigenous children possess that originate from their cultural practices. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities and Indigenous Heritage Saberes, our studies focus on three unique Indigenous learning communities that provide opportunities of empowerment for these students. We examine the experiences of…

This study explored the ways in which our classroom community (students and teacher) engaged with humanizing pedagogy in a seventh grade science classroom, toward the full development of our classroom community, and the dismantling of inequitable practices and unjust policies that we recognized in our science classroom, school and/or community…

This study examines the experiences of a number of participants from urban community colleges with high percentages of students from underrepresented populations in Central California. The participants were involved in action research with the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California. The purpose of the study is to…

This study examines the influence of action research on California community college practitioners' attitudes, beliefs, and behavior using the Center for Urban Education's (CUE) Equity Scorecard tools and process. This developmental evaluation study began March 2011 and concluded April 2012. The pseudonym of the field site studied is Las Flores…

This article explores the process and impact of women organizing for educational justice in Northern California by documenting the efforts of a committed group of mothers who sought to address the disproportionate underachievement of Latino and African American students within their city's high school. Using a combined methodology of ethnography…

Recent research suggests a major crisis exists affecting urban children's educational opportunities. This study focuses on the use of research-based strategies to determine whether, and to what extent, transformative leadership influences the development of quality education that overcomes educational inequity in the lives of students who attend…

How can it be that 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, our institutions of higher education have still not found ways of reducing the higher education gaps for racial and ethnic groups? That is the question that informs and animates the Equity Scorecard model of organizational change. It shifts institutions' focus from what…

California Community Colleges face unique challenges and opportunities in serving the state's largest new majority students who are also the state's most at-risk students. These students are the primary driver of the new economy, however they arrive at college with significant educational and economic disadvantages (Woodlief, Thomas, & Orozco,…

The eight schools profiled in this document are serving different populations, but all of them are closing the achievement gap between low-income, minority, and special needs students and their peers. By trying out innovative new strategies, these schools are blazing a trail for others to follow. They are dispelling the myth that some students can…