The purpose of this study was to make legible nursing students' efforts and aspirations as well as the industries that shape nursing education. Utilizing constructivist grounded theory, I interviewed 33 pre-licensure nursing students and recent graduates residing in California. Findings indicate that nursing students are engaged in active…

We use an autoethnographic case study of a Latinx high school student from a rural, agricultural community in California to highlight how AI is learned outside classrooms and how her personal background influenced her social-justice-oriented applications of AI technologies. Applying the concept of learning pathways from the learning sciences, we…

The current context of standards-based reform has positioned regional service centers (RSCs), intermediary governmental agencies that support state policy implementation in local districts, as a critical source of professional development (PD). In this article, we ask how a governing body that districts often interact with during challenging…

The current context of standards-based reform has positioned regional service centers (RSCs), intermediary governmental agencies that support state policy implementation in local districts, as a critical source of professional development (PD). In this article, we ask how a governing body that districts often interact with during challenging…

This study of implementing California Assembly Bill 1460, or mandatory Ethnic Studies (ES) in the California State University System (CSU), investigates the leadership decisions made within a set of self-governing campuses with varied institutional resources and responsibilities. This research uses an Oral History methodology, which situates…

The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) examines how college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards are implemented, whether they improve student learning, and what instructional tools measure and support their implementation. Established in July 2015 and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S.…

This ongoing ethnographic study examines how a counter-space, La Libertad, introduces Latin@ students to a liberating pedagogy of praxis which counters dehumanization they experience in their high school. The researcher spent 180+ hours over 14 months in the field collecting data through participant observation, field notes, and personal…

As neoliberal reformers are appointed to manage the "crisis" of U.S. public schools, their power has become a pressing reality for grassroots movements in education. I examine how the Small Schools movement in Oakland, California--just as the school district fell under state administrative control--employed rites of passage to socialize…

It is widely recognized today that a teacher's surrounding professional community inevitably affects the kind of teaching that students are offered. However, until recently, it has been difficult to quantify and systematically study the nature of professional relationships in schools and districts. The articles in this special issue provide a…

Purposes: This study investigates the role of formal and informal leaders in the diffusion of external reforms into schools and to teachers' practices. Formal leaders are designated by their roles in the formal organization of the school (e.g., principals, department chairs, and instructional coaches) and informal leaders refer to those who do not…

This article aims to illuminate how and why public schools have been sustained and/or strengthened as hierarchical, inequitable, and undemocratic sites that serve the corporate capitalist state. In doing so, the author draws on three theoretical ideas: the "shock doctrine," described vividly by Naomi Klein (2007); "critical…

In this article, we draw on critical philosophies and theories related to diversity, leadership, and learning to suggest that successful school-family partnerships not only encompass collaborative structures but involve educators who reject deficit-based views of diverse families. We marshal data from our studies of school-family relations in two…

This study was an exploration of how high school language learners and their teacher jointly constructed word meanings through multimodal representation and the sociopolitical reality of learners' lives as mediating factors in the context of simultaneous multiple learning activities. Thirty-three high school Advanced ESL 3 students were taught…

The chancellor of the California community college system has begun a controversial effort to achieve higher academic standards through governance reform. (MSE)

This report examines twenty-three schools in their first year of participation in a California-State-sponsored restructuring initiative called Every Student Succeeds (ESS). Four areas of restructuring are reviewed: (1) curriculum and instruction; (2) governance; (3) professional development of teachers; and (4) coordination of community resources.…