Background/Context: Worldwide, principals face enormous challenges while translating policies and mandates for which they are accountable into their mission and practice. While some of these school-level challenges are technical, many are adaptive (Heifetz), requiring leaders and those in their care to grow their cognitive and affective…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the micropolitical strategies principals use to influence school staffing within an urban school district. Design/methodology/approach: The author used a qualitative case study approach drawing upon 47 semi-structured participant interviews with 25 individual research participants, 80 hours of…

Purpose: It is known that the consumption of fruits and vegetables in children is declining despite wide-spread national and international policy attempts to increase consumption. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of children's consumption of fruits and vegetables so as to facilitate better health education targeting.…

Teacher turnover and retention has been a challenge within schools for many years. However, schools in low-performing urban settings experience teacher turnover at a much higher rate than schools in higher socioeconomic statuses. Therefore, the purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to determine the reasons why effective teachers at…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine first-year principals' sense-making about two potentially conflicting demands as they take over low-performing urban schools: the demand to exert control over their teachers' practice, and the need to build their teachers' trust, collegiality, and commitment. Design/methodology/approach: This study…

The leadership style in which an educational leader practice may impact the academic achievement of the students enrolled in their school. The specific problem was, when students fail their high-stake test, the educational leader, as well as the school was sanctioned. The purpose of this qualitative study, using a single instrumental case study…

While simulations and role-play have been staples in the civic classroom, little is known about how they work as best practices. This study explores the ways simulations and role-play may influence students' civic identities. Drawing from sociocultural theories, the article seeks to understand how students' practice-linked identities may be shaped…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the types, sources, and cognitive levels of tasks that included real-life situations used in science and mathematics lessons in the classrooms of two 5th-grade teachers at an urban elementary school in Turkey. A qualitative approach was used to analyze data that included classroom observations, teacher…

Latina/o teachers are underrepresented in the educational workforce. As such, the purpose of this narrative inquiry is to explore the experiences of Latinas/os who are teaching in urban school districts. The central question addressed by this narrative inquiry was: "To what do Latina/o teachers attribute to their academic and career…

Educators have regarded building leader-member relationships using collaboration as a fundamental component to successfully improve students' academic achievement. Ineffective collaborative leadership practices may lead to achievement deficits particularly for many urban charter schools operated by educational management organizations. The purpose…

This article reports on a qualitative-interpretative study about how Dutch primary teachers understand socialisation at school, which pedagogical tasks and activities they perform and how they fit this within their professional identity. Teachers unanimously report socialisation to be part of their job. Four types of views on the pedagogical…

Critical Race Theory (CRT) revolutionized how we investigate race in education. Centralizing counter-stories from people of color becomes essential for decentralizing white normative discourse--a process we refer to as realities within the Black imagination. Yet, few studies examine how whites respond to centering the Black imagination, especially…

Purpose: New teacher evaluation systems have expanded the role of principals as instructional leaders, but little is known about principals' ability to promote teacher development through the evaluation process. We conducted a case study of principals' perspectives on evaluation and their experiences implementing observation and feedback cycles to…

Background: The Response to Intervention (RTI) approach involves the use of a dynamic model built around the systematic documentation of students' response to research-based instructional interventions. Although there has been widespread implementation of RTI models for early intervention and in some cases, as a means to identify students with…

One reason reform does not dramatically change public schools is because instructional practices are highly institutionalized. This article advances a theory for how teacher agency can both change and maintain institutionalized instructional practices in schools. Based on findings from one U.S. urban public school undergoing state-mandated reform,…