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…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to outline the evidence-based development of a learning approach to school renewal that employs information from key members of a school community (teachers, parents, students) to promote school-based discussions about school renewal. Setting: The study took place in an independent system of Catholic…

Background/Context: Full-service community schools provide comprehensive and coordinated resources and supports to meet the complex needs of children and families in low-income communities. Given their intentional focus on expanded networks of school, family, and community stakeholders, full-service community schools are particularly useful…

Background/Context: Early childhood education joined the standards movement in 2002 with the Good Start, Grow Smart initiative (Brown, 2007), with advocates arguing that standards were a tool for creating more continuity and coherence in PreK systems (Bowman, 2006; Kagan 2012). Critics posed concerns about a perceived poor fit between…

Background: Focusing on ways a common endeavor brings people together, Gee offered the concept of affinity spaces, which suggests that open participation without exclusion or membership is possible. This theory contrasts with Lave and Wenger's communities of practice, which called attention to situated, hierarchical participatory practices.…

Background/Context: Most research on "elite" schools has focused on the private sector. However, as a result of economic residential segregation, a number of public school districts exist which may plausibly be construed as socioeconomically elite. Districts of this sort remain relatively understudied. In particular, few researchers have…

Background/Context: Despite calls for equity in education, the dominant mode of schooling reproduces hierarchies, positioning some students as bright, gifted, or fast learners and others as lazy, in need of remediation, or slow. A number of studies have shown that teachers' professional communities and networks can address this problem and enhance…

Background/Context: Despite calls for equity in education, the dominant mode of schooling reproduces hierarchies, positioning some students as bright, gifted, or fast learners and others as lazy, in need of remediation, or slow. A number of studies have shown that teachers' professional communities and networks can address this problem and enhance…

This article presents case studies of two novice teachers and their mentors who, without formal knowledge of self-regulation theory, established a classroom environment that promoted self-regulated learning. This case was drawn from a larger descriptive study of novice teachers learning to integrate a student-centered visual literacy instructional…

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: Previous research has focused on the importance of a social justice leadership approach to improve schools that serve marginalized students, but less attention has been focused on potential dilemmas associated with social justice leadership and the ways in which principals prioritize when dilemmas or challenges arise.…

Background/Context: Most educators have had little if any preparation in racial literacy, the understanding of social identity related to race and the ability to recognize and negotiate racism. In fact, they may view race as irrelevant. Yet teachers and school leaders hold deep-seated racial ideologies that shape their day-to-day practice and have…

Background: English language learners (ELLs) with special needs remain an underresearched student population. Although providing services to these students proves to be a daunting task, bilingual schools are uniquely poised to meet the educational needs of ELLs with special needs. Yet, research has not explored service provision practices in…

Background: Increasingly, teachers and other educators are expected to leverage data in making educational decisions. Effective data use is difficult, if not impossible, without computer data systems. Nonetheless, these systems may be underused or even rejected by teachers. One potential explanation for such troubles may relate to how teachers…