Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP; e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1995) is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to serve culturally and linguistically diverse student learners. Although a large body of work describes its tenets and permutations, and its implications for students, less work has been done to outline the myriad barriers that teachers face when trying to implement CRP. This paper addresses

Cohen, S. R., Wishard Guerra, A., Molgaard, M., & Miguel, J. (2022). Social class and emotional well-being: Lessons from a daily diary study of families engaged in virtual elementary school during COVID-19. AERA Open, 8(1). (Original DOI: 10.1177/23328584221095854)

Although scholarship documenting the effects of racism on educational outcomes is extensive, less empirical research has been done on interventions designed to mitigate racism and racial bias in schools. Based on case studies of two elementary schools, we have found that educators participating in a yearlong racial justice program demonstrated a deeper understanding of their own racial biases, developed

A growing movement suggests that social and emotional learning (SEL) should be integrated into educational experiences in and outside schools. Afterschool programs can be particularly well suited for SEL, and afterschool educators can play an important role in skill development. We interviewed 23 experienced afterschool educators in community-based programs to understand how staff encourage SEL and

Internships are widely viewed as “door openers” to opportunity, yet students without ample financial, social, and institutional supports are often excluded from these experiences. This exclusion is especially problematic for Latinx students attending Hispanic-Serving Institutions, for whom an internship could be transformative. In this article, we elaborate upon Núñez’s (2014) multilevel model of intersectionality

This paper uses a validity argument approach to examine the validity evidence for measures of instructional alignment based on an instrument adapted from the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC). Using the instrument, Grade 4 math and Grade 5 English language arts teachers reported the level of emphasis they gave to subject-specific topics and cognitive demands in their instruction, which provided the

This is a longitudinal qualitative study of Latina college students who were members of a Latina mentoring program at a 4-year Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in Texas, where they made up the largest student population since 2013. Guided by Chicana feminist epistemology and intersectionality, we discuss educational experiences students had during high school as they considered their college path

As future physicians, first-year medical students are well positioned to work on the long-term creation of a more equitable healthcare system. But how prepared are first-year medical students to begin the work of dismantling structural racism in the US healthcare system? In this study, we analyzed a sample of 75 medical-student reflective responses to a book focused on the legacy of racism in medicine

The schooling disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to reverberate across the K-12 educational system more than a year after schools closed for in-person instruction. In this study, we examined the aftermath of these disruptions by modeling student achievement trends prior to and during the pandemic, with particular focus on growth in 2020-2021. The data included test scores from 4.9 million

This evaluation of faculty hiring examines how eight faculty search chairs at a border Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) discuss how they enact an HSI consciousness when making hiring decisions. Using a combined phenomenological case study approach, the author examines hiring through a conceptual framework that brings together organizational culture and Borderlands theory to understand how committee

The authors investigate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) risk factors, suitability of online instruction, politics, and institutions’ finances as rationales guiding instructional delivery decisions for fall 2020, after COVID-19’s emergence. Contributions include estimating multinomial logit regressions with mode of delivery as a categorical variable, integrating resource dependence and crisis response

We share school leaders’ perspectives on Zoom videos concerning the needs of immigrant and refugee families in Title I schools. In these videos, participants crafted and shared personal narratives about their leadership experiences during the COVID-19 era of education. Rooted in participatory design research methods, the process of designing these videos were both a research project and an intervention

Vega, B. E., Liera, R., & Boveda, M. (2022). Hispanic-serving institutions as racialized organizations: Elevating intersectional consciousness to reframe the “H” in HSIs. AERA Open. (Original DOI: 10.1177/23328584221095074)

Some states have enacted inclusive policies that reduce constraints and uncertainty for undocumented students, potentially changing their academic decisions and postsecondary goals. We explore shifts in continuing undocumented community college students’ course-taking before and after the California DREAM Act, which provided access to state financial aid. We use difference-in-differences comparisons

Family separation policies’ impacts on children’s education and well-being are critical issues of our time. This paper argues through ethnographic study that although im/migrant parents believed in the promise of a better life for their children as they migrated, COVID-19 and remote schooling contributed to a breakdown in structures of care once they were in the United States. Thus, the experience

Conceptualizations of servingness must include an understanding of how racial ideologies shape Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). Three Latinx scholars offer testimonios on our experiences as students, faculty, and researchers at teaching and research-intensive HSIs. From our testimonios, we found that practices of Blanqueamiento (Whitening of a population) and Mestizaje (racial mixture) operate

School principals are facing greater challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic than they have ever faced, which has implications for whether they can conduct their work productively and remain in their jobs over the long term. This article draws on a unique, nationally representative, longitudinal panel of K–12 public school principals across the United States to examine principals’ self-reported resource

School rezoning, or redistricting, is the process by which school boards draw and redraw school attendance boundaries. These boundaries are key drivers of racial and economic school segregation but can also work to ameliorate it. Using a critical orientation to narrative policy analysis, this study examined the cultural politics of race and whiteness in an urban school district undergoing school rezoning

States provide substantial support for higher education through appropriations to public colleges and universities that can be used to maintain relatively low tuition levels and funds for financial aid. Higher education often receives disproportionate cuts during recessionary periods, and it faces potentially unprecedented reductions in coming years amid a pandemic that has left some states with revenue

In this article, we argue that healing from trauma in a racialized context requires an act of collective, critical resistance whereby educators and researchers reject a White-dominant colonial perspective of trauma on the grounds that it is pathologizing in several ways. We introduce a holistic trauma framework for understanding and responding to trauma within a racialized context. First, our framework

Researchers and policymakers use certification as a metric of teaching quality in subject areas as well as subfields of education. We examined the association between having a teacher with dual certification in elementary and special education and math and reading achievement for students with disabilities (SWDs). We also examined whether dual certification related to teachers’ efficacy and job satisfaction

The school discipline literature has expanded rapidly in recent decades, yet the conceptualization and measurement of school discipline patterns remains overlooked. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analytic framework to examine school discipline patterns that encompasses school-level metrics that capture the prevalence and disparity in exclusionary discipline and regression-based approaches

Little research in education has focused on school neighborhoods. We employ a novel systematic social observation tool—the internet-based School Neighborhood Assessment Protocol (iSNAP)—within Google Street View to quantify the physical characteristics of 291 preschool communities in nine U.S. cities. We find low to moderate correlations (r = −.03 to −.57) between iSNAP subscales and Census tract poverty

The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards encourage substantial shifts in teaching, but how to enact change is not specified. This mixed-methods exploratory study shows how different implementation supports were related to teachers’ use of standards-aligned instructional practices in the Chicago Public Schools. It provides comparative evidence that professional

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in the spring of 2020. We use two complementary difference-in-differences frameworks: one that leverages within-instructor-by-course variation on whether students started their spring 2020 courses in person or online and another that incorporates student fixed effects. We estimate the impact of this shift on the academic

The current pandemic closed schools worldwide, tasking teachers to engage learners remotely without time to prepare. This study focuses on a professional development webinar series for English language teachers worldwide. Access to geographically dispersed English language teachers created an opportunity to gain international perspectives on teachers’ challenges, perceptions, and needs related to transitioning

With the growing attention to the effective use of social network analysis in explaining student learning in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, the authors explore why college students share knowledge and how they achieve their learning in a laboratory class. In particular, the authors investigate how the social capital each student builds influences individual knowledge

The mental health impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on PK–12 youth is likely an urgent and enduring concern, yet research on this topic is still emerging. To synthesize current knowledge, the researchers conducted a systematic review of empirical studies exploring the mental health impacts of COVID-19. Five themes emerged across 104 included studies: (a) the pandemic proved

Research in sociology demonstrates the way social connections shape access to information about job opportunities. In education, we understand less about how social networks impact the job process for marginalized teachers and teachers in nontraditional labor markets. This study examines how teachers in New Orleans and Detroit, cities with high concentrations of charter schools, use their networks

Many researchers have considered recent and intergenerational immigrant children’s perspectives on immigration policies. Fewer have investigated nonimmigrant children’s views despite children’s sociopolitical identities forming long before they can vote. Drawing from data generated in spring 2017, the author illustrates how young children at an urban, midwestern school argued against the Republican

States and broad-access colleges are rapidly scaling corequisite coursework—a model where students concurrently enroll in college-level and developmental coursework—in response to dismal completion rates in traditional “developmental” sequences. At community colleges, evidence suggests that corequisite reforms can dramatically improve students’ completion of required college-level courses, but colleges

The racial/ethnic disparities and average declines in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) motivation during adolescence are worrisome. Although STEM motivational beliefs are theorized to function in conjunction with one another, the unique patterns and how they change over time for different racial/ethnic groups remain understudied. Using data from the High School Longitudinal

Computational thinking (CT) is a set of cognitive skills that every child should acquire. K–12 classrooms are expected to provide students opportunities (tasks) to think computationally. We introduce a CT competency assessment for middle school students. The assessment design process started by establishing a cognitive model of CT domain mastery, in which three broad skill types were identified to

Students, instructors, and policy makers are in need of research-based recommendations for supporting students’ motivation to pursue STEM fields. The present study addressed this need by examining relations between perceived motivational supports, year-long trajectories of expectancy for success and three task values, and grades among students (N = 1,021) in a large, gateway engineering course. Results

Colleges and universities have increasingly worried in recent decades about college students’ well-being, with the COVID-19 pandemic aggravating these concerns. Our study examines changes to undergraduate emotional sentiments and psychological well-being from before to after the onset of the pandemic. In addition, we explore whether certain risk factors (i.e., prior mental health impairments, trait

Kohli, R., & Pizarro, M. (2022). The layered toll of racism in teacher education on teacher educators of color. AERA Open, 8, 1-12. (Original DOI: 10.1177/23328584221078538)

The two studies presented here examine the effects of teachers’ enhanced sense of meaning at work (SOM) on their burnout and engagement. In the first study, 41 teachers in two Arab schools were randomly assigned to a meaning-induction group—in which they were prompted daily to acknowledge meaningful incidents at work for 2 weeks or to a control group. Qualitative analyses focused on teachers’ daily

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are important at most colleges and universities. One purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which motivational climate was associated with SETs. Another purpose was to determine whether course ease was associated with SETs. Participants included 2,949 undergraduate students from 30 courses at a large public university. Using hierarchical linear modeling

Policymaking is not linear or neutral, nor is it ever made or enacted in isolation, especially not during a crisis. Framed by theories on the contextual, interactive nature of policy enactment, this year-long, ethnographic study examined how an urban elementary school and nonprofit organization worked to address challenges made visible by the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyses explored how negotiations among

To systematically explore the structural racism that teacher educators of Color endure, this article uses a critical race theory lens to analyze the findings from qualitative questionnaires with 141 Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American teacher educators who work in diverse universities across the United States. We learned that many of the participants in our study were hired to teach race

While educators’ uses of social media for purposes such as professional learning and networking are now well-established, our understanding of how educational institutions use social media—including to engage key stakeholders during periods of crisis—is limited. In this study, we used a public data mining research approach to examine how K–12 school districts in the United States used Twitter as a

Studies consistently show associations between school absences and academic achievement. However, questions remain about whether this link depends on the reason for children’s absence. Using a sample of the Scottish Longitudinal Study (n = 4,419), we investigated whether the association between school absenteeism and achievement in high-stakes exams at the end of compulsory and postcompulsory schooling

This study utilizes life history methodology to understand how White teachers develop racial awareness while also exploring how the education profession acts as an inflection point for racialized understandings of the world. Furthermore, as the educators in this study grew in their racial awareness, there was a rise in conflicting and ambivalent feelings as they attempted to teach in ways that aligned

Despite calls for evidence-based decision making, the field has a limited understanding of how educational leaders actually engage research. This study draws on a nationally representative sample of 368 district and school leaders who named pieces of research that were useful to their work. Educational leaders found frameworks and practical guidance in the form of books to be most useful. They report

COVID-19 has presented unprecedented challenges to schools, leaving principals to lead rapid organizational change with limited guidance or support. Drawing on interviews from a larger, national study of principals at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyzed the experiences of 20 principals in four large, urban school districts—Boston, Denver, New York, and San Diego. We found that principals

Gunzenhauser, C., Enke, S., Johann, V. E., Karbach, J., & Saalbach, H. (2021). Parent and teacher support of elementary students’ remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. AERA Open. (Original DOI: 10.1177/23328584211065710)

Many states and school districts are implementing reforms to reduce reliance on exclusionary discipline such as out-of-school suspension and expulsion. This article uses survey and administrative data to study the implementation of a state-level policy limiting elementary school out-of-school suspension and expulsions. While the results are limited in sample size and generalizability, we find that

It is known that Florida school employees known as Migrant Advocates facilitate or broker MSF health care access for migrant and seasonal farmworker (MSF) families, but it is not known how states without a Migrant Education Program might also broker MSF health care access. To address this, present study examines the role of school employees in brokering health care access to immigrant Mexican and Indigenous

Whereas developing meaningful connections with students has long been documented as critical for promoting classroom engagement, teachers’ differing motives for building relationships with students remain underexplored. This study examined teachers’ social achievement goals from a multidimensional perspective in relation to teachers’ self-efficacy, teacher–student relationships, and perceived classroom

Minority students are suspended at a disproportionately higher rate compared with others. To reduce racial suspension gaps, four California school districts banned schools from suspending students for willful defiance, a category consisting of relatively minor disruptive offenses. I evaluate the impact of these policies on high school student discipline outcomes using a difference-in-differences strategy

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency (CBM-R) is used as an indicator of reading proficiency, and to measure at risk students’ response to reading interventions to help ensure effective instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare model-based words read correctly per minute (WCPM) scores (computerized oral reading evaluation [CORE]) with Traditional CBM-R WCPM scores to determine

In spring 2020, many U.S. colleges and universities rapidly shifted to online instruction and implemented social distancing policies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students experienced unprecedented disruption of their interpersonal academic and social networks due to the loss of physical proximity. We used egocentric network analysis and latent profile analysis with survey data from April 2020

This qualitative analysis examines school social workers’ equity work for immigrant students, including their perceptions of immigration enforcement and school climates that support or hinder immigrant student experiences. We conceptually expand understandings of nested contexts of reception and racialized organizations across macro, meso, micro levels, and how they affect immigrant students’ educational

Drawing on Bachrach and Baratz’s first and second faces of interest group power, we explore the relationship between teachers’ union power and reopening decisions during the fall 2020 semester in 250 large districts around the United States. We leverage a self-collected panel data set of reopening decisions coupled with measures of teachers’ union first face power (drawn from social media postings

We use administrative data from three states to document the relationships between geographic mobility and student outcomes during K–12 schooling. We focus specifically on nonstructural mobility events—which we define as school changes that do not occur as the result of normal transitions between schools—and on longitudinal measures that capture these events cumulatively for students. We show that

Performance-based funding (PBF) policies with research incentives have grown in popularity over the years despite little understanding regarding whether they actually work. This study leverages a novel national data set to examine the impact of PBF research incentives on the research expenditures and total state appropriations among public 4-year institutions, with a particular focus on minority-serving

Aguilar SJ, Rosenberg JM, Greenhalgh SP, Fütterer T, Lishinski A, Fischer C. A different experience in a different moment? Teachers’ social media use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. AERA Open, 7, 1–17. doi:10.1177/23328584211063898

The massive racial inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests in response to the killings of unarmed Black people forced a reckoning among many educators about racial injustice in the educational system. In March 2020, we launched a massive open online course designed to support teachers in adopting antiracist equity mind-sets and practices. We used a mixed-methods approach

Exposure to teachers and teaching-related activities is vital for young children’s learning. When COVID-19 closed schools, teachers responded with a mix of live- and prerecorded lessons and one-on-one communication with students, which necessitated shifts in planning time. The current study identifies pre-COVID predictors of time teachers devoted to each of these teaching-related activities to illuminate

This study uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 2010–2011 to better understand the rates of grade retention during elementary school and the factors associated with this grade retention. Using matched student–teacher and student–principal data, I examine the student-, teacher-, and school-level factors associated with a student’s probability of being retained. I then apply within-student