This collection of reflections serves as a companion to the California Collaborative's report, "Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing: Lessons About Effective School Board Governance From Napa Valley and San José Unified School Districts." The report describes the experiences, practices, and learnings from two school boards in California…

Although several studies highlight the benefit of short-term immersion programs abroad among social work students, few studies have examined their transformative nature. In response, this study aimed to describe the transformative change experienced by MSW students from the Southwest USA who participated in a short-term, immersion program in…

In this study, we explore systems thinking maps as a local literacy practice in a systems thinking professional development institute for PreK-8 teachers. Existing literature underscores the necessity of equipping teachers with a robust understanding of systems thinking; this study addresses a call in the research to find ways to do so. Rooted in…

The purpose of this study was: (1) to build embedded reflective practices with qualitative data in alignment with existing continuous improvement (CI) for equity processes; and (2) provide professional development (PD) to support educators in using qualitative data sharing processes with the expectation of collective teacher efficacy (CTE)…

While ample research has examined how youth in the United States define 'Americanness', little attention has been given to how youth imagine the nation of the future, particularly in light of ongoing immigration. This study investigates how middle school students envision necessary national reforms, and how these views reflect different models of…

This brief on including student voice, agency, and co-creation in education decision-making proceeds from the premise that successfully transforming education systems to be more student centered involves addressing four key elements: Individual Mindsets, Interpersonal Relationships, Community Culture, and Structural and Systemic Supports. The…

This study explored the role of critical reflection on faith formation of Indonesian female Christian students who study in selected colleges in Southern California. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants and the age of interviewees ranged from 19 to 26 years old. Data analysis was carried out using NVivo 12. From the…

This study examines how teacher leaders across the Central Valley support the implementation of the English Language Roadmap Policy (ELRP) utilizing a qualitative, multi-case study approach. Relying on semi-structured interviews and a series of project presentations, this study examines teacher leaders' perceptions and identifies the attributes of…

The study described in this article was designed to assess students' faith integration (FI) learning in a mathematics writing course and its impact on service-learning (SL) as well as to understand how SL can be used to help students think in new ways about the integration of mathematics and faith. A Scholarship of Teaching and Learning…

Equity work can be deeply personal and may include unlearning and shifting individual biases, beliefs, and practices. This paper builds on the premise that ongoing self-reflection in equity work is critical, as failing to attend to this internal work may result in education leaders reinforcing the very systems they are seeking to disrupt. And yet,…

In a struggle to cope with school closures and shifting instructional paradigms from face-to-face to virtual, agriculture teachers across the United States were drastically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We sought to understand how early-career agriculture teachers (ECATs) in California reflected on their teaching experience before and during…

Podcasts are one of the fastest-growing media platforms for sharing content to meet both personal and professional interests. myPD Unplugged is a podcast about professional learning that is leveraging this popular platform to create "anywhere, anytime" professional learning for educators. The Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and…

This article discusses "Rhetoric of Storytelling," a course that looks at the purposes of storytelling across different rhetorical traditions, beginning with Ancient Greek and Roman traditions and traversing African American, Indigenous Latin American, American Indian, feminist, and Latinx rhetorical traditions. The course operates from…

This educational case study examines the efforts of one Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) to counter deficit narratives and provide institutional as well as interpersonal supports for Latinx student success through a Student Leadership Retreat. We consider these activities and students' experiences therein through the lenses of Latinx leadership…

This article describes the results of an experiential learning activity conducted at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) and the University of North Florida (UNF). The activity formed the basis for an assignment required for class credit in a course titled "Politics of the Developing Areas" ("Politics of Developing Countries" at UNF). The…