This paper explores how school community collaboration is given meaning by municipally employed coordinators whose task is to organise collaboration between schools and other actors in urban areas in Sweden. Inspired by Carol Bacchi's theorisation of the constitutive aspect of discerning problems, it examines how coordinators give meaning to the…

Despite rich and growing school choice and school marketing literatures, little is known about if and how principals of zoned public elementary schools engage in marketing. We address this gap by drawing on in-depth interviews with principals of nine schools--in different neighborhoods--in the Baltimore school district. We find that principals…

School leaders juggle the often-inconsistent goals of maintaining support of middle- and upper-income families for public education and, at the same time, implementing policies to strengthen equity for low-income students. Author Iris C. Rotberg describes how these tradeoffs play out in different communities, the role of concentrated poverty and…

Growing emphasis on elementary STEM education has pushed elementary teachers to face curriculum changes that focus on standards with which they are largely unfamiliar (Smith, 2020; Trygstad et al., 2013). As a result, elementary students are not always exposed to STEM subjects or integration and miss out on opportunities to access and enjoy the…

Civic science (CS) is an approach to science learning and action in which youth determine issues of concern in their communities and use science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) knowledge and methods to address them. In this article, we focus on CS as it is applied to environmental concerns and enacted by children and youth in urban…

This paper is premised on the understanding that racism is deeply and widely entrenched in our culture and the ethical claim that we operate within complex networks of habituated practices. Within this framework, we ask how do we disrupt these calcified, complex, and racist ways of being? Specifically, we explore how teachers are habituated into…

We present analyses from focus group interviews with a geographically diverse set of experienced, urban teachers who point to "systemic inequity" as a major contributing factor to the problems they face in their schools and communities. To begin, we overview the literature relating to our development of this project, after which we…

The movie "Try Harder!" features a group of students at Lowell High School in San Francisco, California, as they navigate their elite public institution and apply to top-tier universities. A critical analysis of this film allows us to understand new trends and emerging discourses in urban cities, showing the way racialized groups are pit…

School discipline is a significant educational policy and equity issue in K-12 education in the United States due to well-documented racial inequality in students' disciplinary outcomes and the deleterious effects of exclusionary discipline on academic and adult outcomes. The roles and approaches of school leaders in the production of racial…

Discourses of social justice are becoming increasingly prevalent in educational spaces, with rising numbers of teachers and teacher education programs expressing their aims to teach towards social justice. Yet, recent scholarship has documented the contested meanings of social justice in contemporary educational contexts. This qualitative case…

Investment in preschool education is increasingly seen as a policy priority in middle and high-income countries due to the early benefits it provides children in their educational journeys. This article discusses the impact of recent increased investment in preschool education in China which has served as a correction to relative historical…

This study examines differences in educational experiences and outcomes for high school (HS) students who participated in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program and earned full diplomas compared to those who participated in the IB Diploma Program but did not earn the diploma. ACT scores, after-HS placement, and HS graduation rates of…

Persistent educational inequity for immigrant and refugee students and their families calls for instructional practices centering on access, quality, and social justice. Drawing on two qualitative case studies, this article examines how three U.S. urban school teachers attended to the systemic inequalities and unique challenges confronting…

Ohio's Columbus City Schools developed a new urban grow-your-own principal pipeline. This pipeline emphasizes the cultivation of equity-centered principals who can address educational and social disparities in transformative and sustainable ways. Drawing from research and professional literature and from district and stakeholder engagements,…

Developing critical consciousness, the awareness and action against marginalizing and oppressive forces, is a way for future teachers to identify and actively work against the inequities reproduced through traditional schooling. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine how Latinx high school students enrolled in Pathways2Teaching, a…