Background: Systems thinking is a holistic approach that puts the study of wholes before that of parts. It does not try to break systems down into parts in order to understand them; instead, it focuses attention on how the parts act together in networks of interactions. Purpose: This study explored the development of holistic school leadership--an…

Background/Context: This study examines the implementation of an academic and social-emotional learning innovation called Personalization for Academic and Social-Emotional Learning, or PASL. The innovation was designed, tested, and implemented using a continuous continuous-improvement model. The model emphasized a top-and-bottom process in which…

Background/Context: Partnering across districts, schools, and other community organizations has become ubiquitous as a policy for promoting change. Despite growing attention to and scholarship on district-community partnerships, there is little examination of the organizational mechanisms involved in sustaining them. Purpose/Objectives: This study…

Background/Context: The current educational market nestled in neoliberal and market-based reform efforts has shifted the nature of public education. Community-based educational spaces are also shaped within this context. As such, given the political and educational climate youth workers are situated in, their role as advocates, cultural workers,…

Background: Despite increasing popularity and mounting evidence for teacher collaboration as a lever for school improvement, reported changes in teaching associated with collaboration are often subtle and incremental, rarely involving substantial shifts in instructional practice called for by advocates of deeper learning and next-generation…

Background/Context: The multiple worlds model is defined as the ability of students to connect, manage, and negotiate to cross the borders of their two worlds to successfully transition through different everyday worlds of school, family, and peers. Prior research has linked multiple worlds such as school, teacher, family, and peers to the…

Background/Context: Education scholars have examined how state policy and informal practice can widen or reproduce racial and gender inequalities in graduate education. Just one empirical study, which focused on psychology programs, has identified organizational practice that supports recruitment and retention of graduate students of color. Focus…

Background: In the last few decades, a focus on school accountability at the state and federal levels has created expectations for teachers to attend to data in increasingly structured ways. Although professional learning is often cited as an important facilitator of effective data use, research that focuses on the intersection of professional…

Background/Context: This article describes Black educators in predominantly White suburban schools who have used advocacy through the lens of culturally relevant pedagogy and serve as Educational Cultural Negotiators to help the students of color in these spaces academically and socially. This article highlights the advocacy needed to address the…

Background/Context: Mayoral control of large city school districts has become the newest form of school district reorganization. Researchers have documented how real and perceived crises have propelled mayors in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington DC, amongst others, to redefine the role of board governance by situating the operations of districts…

Background/Context: High school educational environments find Black males experience systemic racial microaggressions in the form of discipline policies, academic tracking and hegemonic curriculum (Allen, Scott, & Lewis, 2013). Black males in high school are more likely than their White male peers to have high school truancies and be viewed as…

Background: Currently, there is great enthusiasm surrounding place-based initiatives for school reform, such as the Harlem Children's Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and other initiatives that attend to the multiple contexts that influence child development. However, past efforts to bridge schools, families, and communities have been undermined by…

Background/Context: Teacher education faculty face increasing pressure to simultaneously strengthen and reform teacher education programs while maintaining research productivity. The demands placed on teacher education programs to increase relevancy by strengthening clinical components of teacher preparation has once again reached the fore. The…

Background: Over the past 30 years, the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST), one of the largest social movements in Latin America, has developed a series of pedagogical practices for public schools that support the movement's struggle for agrarian reform in the Brazilian countryside. The MST's educational initiatives can be viewed in terms…

Background: Much discussion and debate has surrounded the role that low-income minority parents can play in their children's education. Research focusing on parents' roles has stressed parents' sense of self-efficacy, cultural background, socio-economic factors, and the context of school to explain not only what motivates parents to…