School leaders undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping educational experiences and creating student opportunities (Grissom et al., 2021; Leithwood et al., 2004). Similarly, racialized identities also play an equally crucial role in shaping educational experiences as racialized identities shape worldviews, experiences, and practices (Nasir,…

Many approaches have been taken to study gender (in)equities in mathematics education, including studies of students' achievement on standardized tests, participation in postgraduate degrees and careers, participation in the classroom, and students and teachers' mathematics identities. In this dissertation, I used Baxter (2003b)'s Feminist…

This study utilized critical leadership praxis (CLP) (Pak & Ravitch, 2021) framework in an intrinsic case study of Institutional Effectiveness/Institutional Research (I.E./I.R.) leaders within the California State University (CSU) system to explore how data-informed decision-making processes incorporate the understanding of varying…

Adaptive systems in education need to ensure population validity to meet the needs of all students for an equitable outcome. Recent research highlights how these systems encode societal biases leading to discriminatory behaviors towards specific student subpopulations. However, the focus has mostly been on investigating bias in predictive…

Advocates for inclusive diversity with equity, access and accountability (IDEAA) are often torn between individual-level change and institutional-level change processes. Similarly, antiracist scholarship spans individual-level and institutional-level efforts towards antiracism. In discipline-based education research (DBER) in microbiology…

Decades of scholarly work continue to document the marginalization of children from nondominant backgrounds in mathematics classrooms. Learning to equitably teach children from linguistically, ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse backgrounds remains a priority. This dissertation approaches this broader problem in society by understanding…

This dissertation investigates the design and implementation of educational change efforts focused on supporting middle-school language-minoritized students in science learning. These chapters take as their units of analyses the shared activity of a research-practice partnership, the co-design of a discourse-based intervention and its outcomes for…

The three articles in this dissertation explore in-service educator learning through participatory approaches, with an aim toward equity in education. Combining sociocultural theories of learning as increasing participation within social and cultural practices (Gutierrez, & Rogoff, 2003), and the political commitments of participatory action…

The identification and implementation of evidence-based practices by special education and general education teachers continues to be an issue in the field of education (Cook & Cook, 2011; Cook, Tankersley, Cook, & Landrum, 2008). Since the mandates of providing students with disabilities access to the general education curricula (IDEA,…

Response to Intervention (RTI) has been one of the most significant developments in the history of educational reform, requiring a renewed focus on evidence-based instruction and data-driven decisions. However, the current use of RTI as a means of identifying students with SLD is highly variable across states, bringing to focus several issues that…

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,…