The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a professional learning intervention on conceptual coherence and inquiry orientation for teachers and leaders participating in a K-12 Mathematics Committee (N = 18). This 9-month mixed methods single case study, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, was designed using the principles and…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides guidance and expectations to state education agencies. We examined the intersection of improvement science and ESSA through a qualitative analysis of the state guidance documents. Utilizing six principles of improvement as a conceptual framework, we identified three themes: improvement as an outcome;…

A growing body of work regarding teacher learning and implementation of reform has pointed to the significant role organizational contexts play in shaping teachers' engagement with reform and their implementation decisions. Within science education, the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and standards reflective of the…

All over the globe, educational technology (EdTech) is being sold to schools as a central mechanism for improving access to quality learning for high poverty populations. There is a growing scholarship that interrogates the institutional drivers of the 'EdTech craze'. Building on this work, this paper examines how technocentrism as a specific…

Culturally responsive practice (CRP) is a popular approach educators utilize to improve the gaps in achievement and discipline within U.S. schools. Current research provides insight into singular experiences of both school leaders and teachers working individually to enact CRP (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016; Ladson-Billings, 2009). Although…

Educational reforms are often translated in and implemented through artifacts. Although research has frequently treated artifacts as merely functional, more recent work acknowledges the complex relationship between material artifacts and human/organizational behavior. This article aims at disentangling this relationship in order to deepen our…

Appreciative Leadership is unique among leadership theories both past and present. This uniqueness includes its strength-based practice, search for the positive in people and organizations, and the role this plays in organizational innovation and transformation. What follows is a summary of Appreciative Inquiry and the five main principles on…

Partnerships between teachers and parents from nondominant communities hold promise for reducing race- and class-based educational disparities, but the ways families and teachers work together often fall short of delivering systemic change. Racialized institutional scripts provide "taken-for-granted" norms, expectations, and assumptions…

This article looks at the role of school leadership vis-à-vis the curriculum. First, it offers a brief overview of school leadership in Germany. Next, curriculum development and curriculum research in Germany is briefly recapped. We present empirical data on school leadership preferences, strain experience, and practices as to curriculum work.…

One of the more frequently cited cultural dimensions within the field of cultural research is that of cultural strength (Cameron & Ettington, 1998). Early published works on organisational culture argue that there is an absolute need for a "strong" culture for organisations to be effective. This study has examined the contradiction…

2016 marks an important milestone for the American Association of School Librarians (AASL). Despite the ever-changing and always-challenging economic, political, and societal landscape, for nearly sixty-five years the association has grown and prospered within the structure of the American Library Association (ALA) and remains "the only…

There has been substantial growth in Education for Sustainability (EfS) in the United States over the past 10 years. Efforts within higher education have created thousands of new programs, majors, minors, specializations, certificates, and across-the-curricula integrations of sustainability learning with an emphasis on real-world problem-solving…

This research project focused on explaining the decision making process of K12 Christian school superintendents whose schools belong to the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) organization. In spite of their similar religious and philosophical beliefs, ACSI K12 Christian school superintendents differed significantly in…

Drawing on the author's experience as director of a long-lived school-university partnership, this essay describes how one such organization can "do it right" and enhance the development of teacher leadership in schools. It also provides a cautionary tale about how that same organization can "do it wrong" and achieve the…

The underlying theoretical argument in this article views municipal school superintendents in the Nordic context as middle managers in organizational theory terminology. Empirical support for this discussion emerges from national data collected among Norwegian school superintendents in 2009. Findings show that the actual work and leadership…