Transnational education-driven mobilities produce a particular kind of academic diaspora in global higher education that is often valued by both home and host countries but in ways that vary and serve different interests and aspirations. These interests and aspirations are usually tied up with the contrasting perspectives on brain drain and brain circulation. With the promotion of worldwide globalization-driven internationalization of higher education, brain circulation and the associated discourse of connectivity have increasingly dominated policy and scholarly debates. The discourses of brain circulation and connectivity are furthered supported by technological advancements and numerous education-driven mobility programs introduced at all levels. While evidence of gain, circulation, and connectivity remains limited, there are concerns about capacity, knowledge and intellectual dependency, and academic inequalities between more developed higher education systems and those in developing countries. At the same time, varied privileges attached to academic diasporas and educational mobilities can cause tensions and hierarchies within a higher education system. The academic diaspora politics is located within this complex, hierarchical, and dynamic cultural, political, and economic space. As a way forward, grounded/home-based transnationality and a shift in discourse are discussed as a possible productive counter position to help reduce inequalities. Examples from Vietnam and several African countries as well as their respective transnational academic diasporas are provided to demonstrate the nuanced academic diaspora, brain drain, and brain circulation discourses.
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Academic Diaspora, Transnational Education-Driven Mobilities, and the Nation State
Le Ha Phan
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Academic Optimism
Martinette V. Horner, Derrick D. Jordan, and Kathleen M. Brown
Academic optimism was developed in 2006 as a latent concept that provides insight into the improvement of student outcomes especially for those who, because of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and other demographics, have historically been labeled as underperforming. The three main components of academic optimism (academic emphasis, collective emphasis, and faculty trust) underscore the reality that the teachers, parents, and students all play a critical role in the education arena when it comes to ensuring that students fully grow and stretch to the fullest extent possible. High academic optimism in a school suggests that academic achievement is valued and supported; the faculty has the capacity to help students achieve; and students and parents can be trusted as partners of the school for student achievement. Each of these can be controlled by the actions and decisions of school leaders and faculty so that schools can overcome the effects of poverty on student achievement.
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School Accountability
Esther Dominique Klein
Accountability has always been deemed a necessity for schools to fulfill their purpose in society. Because of the nature of their operational core, this has for a long time been based on bureaucratic and professional accountability in most countries. In the second half of the 20th century, several countries have started implementing instruments of managerial accountability. While bureaucratic accountability means that accountability is focused on functionality and regularity, and professional accountability means that the profession itself defines standards and mechanisms of holding one another accountable, managerial accountability focuses on the effectiveness of schools based on externally defined standards instead. In many countries, this change of focus in the accountability system has entailed strengthening the managerial power of school leadership and introducing performance measurement through tests and inspection. This has shifted the power balance between teachers and schools on the one hand, and education authorities on the other. At the same time, it has created the opportunity for schools to use the new data for improvement, albeit with varying results. The fact that so many countries have adopted managerial accountability accordingly is not based on evidence about its positive effects, but on convergence in an international organizational field. However, comparisons of accountability systems in the United Stated, Germany, and Finland show that the adoption of this global strategy is dependent on how it fits with the local institutional norms in each country. While the United States have traditionally had a system of managerial accountability, the other two countries have only recently supplemented their systems with elements of managerial accountability, and the instruments are therefore adapted to each context.
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A Critical Review of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics)
Laura Colucci-Gray, Pamela Burnard, Donald Gray, and Carolyn Cooke
“STEAM education,” with its addition of “arts” to STEM subjects, is a complex and contested concept. On the one hand, STEAM builds upon the economic drivers that characterize STEM: an alignment of disciplinary areas that allegedly have the greatest impact on a developed country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On the other hand, the addition of the arts may point to the recovery of educational aims and purposes that exceed economic growth: for example, by embracing social inclusion, community participation, or sustainability agendas. Central to understanding the different educational opportunities offered by STEAM is the interrogation of the role—and status—of the arts in relation to STEM subjects. The term “art” or “arts” may refer, for example, to the arts as realms/domains of knowledge, such as the humanities and social science disciplines, or to different ways of knowing and experiencing the world enabled by specific art forms, practices, or even pedagogies. In the face of such variety and possibilities, STEAM is a portmanteau term, hosting approaches that originate from different reconfigurations or iterative reconfiguring of disciplinary relationships. A critical discussion of the term “STEAM” will thus require an analysis of published literature alongside a review and discussion of ongoing practices in multiple field(s), which are shaped by and respond to a variety of policy directions and cultural traditions. The outcome is a multilayered and textured account of the limitations and possibilities for and relational understandings of STEAM education.
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A Critique of Neoliberalism in Higher Education
Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría
Neoliberalism—the prevailing model of capitalist thinking based on the Washington Consensus—has conveyed the idea that a new educational and university model must emerge in order to meet the demands of a global productive system that is radically different from that of just a few decades ago. The overall argument put forward is that the requirements, particularly the managerial and labor force needs of a new economy—already developing within the parameters of globalization and the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs)—cannot be adequately satisfied under the approaches and methods used by a traditional university. Neoliberalism affects the telos of higher education by redefining the very meaning of higher education. It dislocates education by commodifying its intrinsic value and emphasizing directly transferable skills and competencies. Nonmonetary values are marginalized and, with them, the nonmonetary ethos that is essential in sustaining a healthy democratic society.
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Active Listening, Music Education, and Society
Dan Mamlok
A common definition of listening distinguishes between hearing and listening. The basic distinction describes hearing as a passive action of perceiving sounds, whereas listening involves paying active attention to various layers and elements of what one is hearing. Active listening to music, featuring the discerning of sounds, musical structures, harmonies, and the interrelations between the sounds, is akin to contemplating complex ideas. Providing meaning for this nexus of relationships requires listeners to grapple with these complex musical nuances, listening to different layers of the melody and harmony and connecting them to cultural and historical aspects. Challenging students to grapple with the complex nuances of musical pieces, to listen to different layers of the melody and harmony, and to connect those elements to cultural and historical aspects will provide them the opportunity to reflect upon the social and cultural contexts in which they live. The concept of what it means to be active (or mindful) has been examined from various perspectives and theories and holds great potential in advancing individual growth and social sensitivity.
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Activism and Social Movement Building in Curriculum
Julie Gorlewski and Isabel Nuñez
Curriculum, while often conceived as a static entity delivered as a neutral set of facts arranged in disciplinary categories, is, in reality, a pedagogical artifact—a product generated as a result of decisions made by a range of stakeholders who represent different cultural imperatives linked to contested perspectives about the purposes of school. Students’ and teachers’ experiences of school, then, are dialogic performances of a curriculum that promotes various levels of power and privilege, as well as understandings of equity and diversity. Therefore, whether or not it is recognized, the curriculum delivered in schools serves to either maintain or interrupt the status quo. Given the number of students who participate in public education, curriculum contributes a great deal to shaping the national narrative. Curriculum contributes to social movements, and the nature of the curriculum determines the direction of the movement.
Since curriculum development and implementation involves myriad decisions, influence is wielded by those with decision-making power. Social status and cultural capital, both of which are historically linked with political power, largely determine who makes curricular decisions, as well as how decisions are made. These conditions pose challenges for those who have been historically marginalized within educational institutions. Despite obstacles related to systemic inequities, different forms of curriculum can and do contribute to the creation and perpetuation of social movements. Moreover, educators who understand how educational institutions function, how curricular changes occur, and how curriculum can be a source of and vehicle for change can create conditions for transformative activist curricular movements.
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Adult Education, Community, and Learning for Democracy in Scotland
Jim Crowther, Aileen Ackland, Margaret Petrie, and David Wallace
Historically, the relationship between adult education and democracy has been one of mutual synergy with education providing the context for thoughtful reflection and democratic action. The social purpose of adult education was precisely in its contribution to making the world a more socially just and more democratic place. However, this relationship has been eroded over the years as adult education and democratic life have become increasingly distanced from each other. Can this be repaired? This is the central theme of this entry, which is explored through trends relating to adult education, community, and democracy, and articulated through the particular experiences of the Scottish context we are familiar with. This article argues that adult education can enrich democratic culture and practice and that in turn democratic issues and debates can energize and stimulate adult education.
While the Scottish lens is distinctive, our argument has a broader reference point, as the neoliberal economic forces and subjectivities shaping adult education are global and pervasive, busily percolating in, down and across all sectors and levels of education. Our claim is that adult education can still play a critical role in nurturing democratic life. Rather than abandon democracy, the task of education is to deepen it at all levels and ensure politics is educative. From this view, adult education for democracy can reinvigorate the culture and institutions of democracy and, in the process, help to reclaim the lodestone—or soul—of adult education. For some readers, this may seem a nebulous idea; however, for others it will mean that which animates what is worthwhile in adult education. A profession without a soul is a dead one.
This article is a collaborative effort that draws from different university institutions involved in the training and formation of community educators. Together these institutions represent a spectrum of the Scottish university sector involved in this work and bring to this analysis considerable experience. Although different interests and distinctive emphases are represented in the perspectives here, this entry focuses on common ideas and values. We start therefore by situating ourselves in terms of professional, political, ideological, and theoretical orientations.
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Adult Education for African Victims of Human Trafficking
Antonio Alfaro Fernández and Beatriz Villora Galindo
For decades and due to the dire situations that exist in many African countries, the migratory phenomenon to Europe has witnessed an unprecedented increase. The desire to seek a better future, to flee from poverty, hunger, and war, among other reasons, has caused the victims to employ legal or illegal means to leave their country and reach Europe.
The receiving countries have increased the restrictions to welcome immigrants from African countries, which means the arrival of migrants by illegal means has grown spectacularly. Likewise, this situation has caused trafficking in persons, especially women, to become a common phenomenon in Europe. Spain, due to its geographical location, is one of the countries where the greatest number of people are exploited.
The eradication of this problem involves the identification of the exploited and liberation from their captors. But the problem does not end with their release; psychological and educational intervention is essential to achieve their integration. The importance of designing and developing educational programs are main objectives, including language learning, professional training, establishing good habits of nutrition and hygiene, and providing alternatives for leisure and free time.
These education programs, designed for adults, should be initiated in shelter houses where the victims are first placed. Multidisciplinary teams formed by professionals in education, psychology, nursing, and social work can cooperatively help the victims, offering the best method for successful integration. The final objective is to provide competences to the people included in the program, who can then leave the shelters, join the local community, and live autonomously and independently in the host society.
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African Centered Education
Kmt G. Shockley
African centered education (ACE) is a type of pedagogy and educational practice that centers the needs and interests of Black children and communities by requiring educators to become familiar with the issues, problems, and perspectives that exist within Black communities. Pedagogically, it involves including ideas and practices that come from African cultural groups (such as Ashanti, Zulu, Wolof, etc.) into the educational process. Several theories provide the major constructs upon which ACE is articulated, namely: (a) an understanding that Black people are, in fact, Africans; (b) an understanding that all people identified as being of African descent are Africans with a common aim and destiny, a sentiment called Pan Africanism; (c) the practice of re-Africanization, which relates to adopting aspects of indigenous African cultural practice into one’s life; (d) the adoption of traditional/indigenous African values, such as the ancient concept of Maat, into one’s life; (e) the practice of Black nationalism, which relates to believing that people of African descent constitute a nation that must be built for survival and sustainment; (f) an understanding and belief that educational institutions for Black children must be fully controlled by people of African descent; and (g) an understanding that there is a difference between education—which is the type of knowledge transmission process that Black youth need in order to solve problems and build institutions within their own communities, and schooling—which relates to the culturally mismatched training process that Black children are receiving in schools which prevents them from being able to use their “education” to solve problems and build institutions within their own communities.
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African Philosophies of Education
Yusef Waghid
African philosophies of education are multifold, depending on the specific geographic location in which a particular African philosophy of education is advanced. In northern Africa, African philosophy of education is biased towards Muslim understandings of education, whereas in western Africa, African philosophy of education is mostly attuned to Francophone thinking. In eastern Africa, Anglophone thinking seems to dominate an African philosophy of education. The focus on African philosophy of education is guided by thinking in the southern African region. In the main, African philosophy of education in the southern African region of the continent is considered as a philosophical activity that aims to identify major socio-economic, environmental, and politico-cultural problems on the African continent, and simultaneously to examine the educational implications of such problems for teaching and learning in higher education. It can be construed, for instance, that a military dictatorship is a major political and social problem on the continent, which implies that any form of democratic governance would be undermined. An educational implication of such a problem is that deliberative engagement among university teachers and students would not be regarded as appealing for higher education, as such a practice would be considered incommensurable with dictatorial rule. Identifying any other major problems or dystopias—such as terrorism committed by Boko Haram in western Africa (a violent movement undermining any form of Western education); children being used as soldiers in central Africa; and drug trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa—by proffering reasons why the latter instances are problems, and then examining how educational practices will manifest, are tantamount to enacting an African philosophy of education.
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Agency in Teacher Education
Ryan Flessner and Brooke Kandel-Cisco
Teachers enact their agency when they make decisions informed by, and aligned with, their beliefs and values. A balanced view of teacher agency attends to the interaction of the agent with structural and contextual influences. Agency can be enacted individually, in relation with others with similar beliefs and contexts, and/or collectively with others who possess disparate talents and operate in other contexts. Enacted in these ways, teacher agency provides avenues for critiquing and combatting the status quo in schools, providing children from minoritized backgrounds with equitable access to educational opportunities, and collaborating with stakeholders from outside of the educational institutions. While there is great potential for teacher agency to contribute to positive changes in the profession of teaching, in educational settings, and in the broader community, there are misperceptions (e.g., agency is classroom-bound, agency is fixed and invariable, agency is always about resistance) that sometimes limit educators’ abilities to enact agency. In order to support teacher agency, teacher educators must examine their curricula, their roles and responsibilities in supporting preservice and in-service teachers’ understandings of agency, and their own willingness to act as agents of change.
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Aligning School Autonomy and Social Justice Approaches to Reform in School Breakfast Clubs in Australia
Fiona MacDonald
The purpose of education and school reform is a topic of constant debate, which take on a different perspective depending on the motivation of those calling for change. In the Australian context, two of the loudest school reform agendas in the early 21st century center on school autonomy and social justice. The school autonomy agenda focuses on freeing up schools from the centralized and bureaucratic authorities, enabling them to respond to the local needs of their students and school community. Social justice reform focuses on equity, including lack of opportunity, long-term health conditions, low educational attainment, and other intersecting inequalities, and practices of care and nurture that focus on emotional, behavioral, and social difficulties in order to address the disadvantages and inequalities experienced by many students and families.
In the early 21st century, school autonomy and social justice reform have been engulfed by neoliberal ideology and practices. Schools are encouraged to engage in a culture of competitive performativity dictated by market-driven agendas, whereas equity has been transformed by measurements and comparisons. Neoliberalism has been heavily critiqued by scholars who argue that it has mobilized the school autonomy agenda in ways that generate injustice and that it fails to address the social issues facing students, families, schools, and the system.
Schools are committed to care and social justice, and, when given autonomy without systems-level constraints, they are adept at implementing socially just practices. While the neoliberal agenda focuses on the market and competitive performativity, the premise of school autonomy is to empower school leadership to innovate and pursue opportunities to respond more effectively to the needs and demands of their school at the local level. Schools are implementing social justice practices and programs that introduce responsive caregiving and learning environments into their school culture in order to address the holistic wellbeing and learning needs of their students and school community. With an increasing commitment to addressing disadvantage through the provision of breakfast food, schools are creating wraparound environments of nurture and care that have become enablers of students’ learning and of their connectedness to school and their local community. Adopting a whole-school approach, principals have demonstrated how social justice and school autonomy reform has aligned to address the overall educational commitment to excellence and equity in Australian education.
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Ambitious Goals and Emerging Issues in Singaporean Education
Jason Tan
Singapore, a former British colony with a population of 5.6 million, has made rapid economic progress since attaining political independence in 1965. By the early 1980s, it had become known as one of the four Asian tiger economic powerhouses and enjoyed one of the highest per capita incomes in Southeast Asia. More recently, it has received international attention because of its students’ repeated outstanding performances in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) international comparative educational assessment exercises, as a result of which a small but growing number of school districts in the United States have adopted modified versions of Singapore mathematics and science textbooks. With an ethnically diverse population within a relatively small land area of about 720 square kilometers, Singapore has been ruled for 63 years by the same governing party. The People’s Action Party has, since coming to power in 1959, accorded education priority in terms of serving the needs of economic development and social cohesion. To this day, education remains the second largest item in the government’s annual budget after defense, in view of the perennial governmental concern with harnessing education in the service of economic competitiveness and social cohesion.
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A Multi-Level Model of Moral Functioning: Integrating Socio-Bio-evolutionary Science, Socio-Constructionism, and Constructivist-Developmental Theory
Silvia Diazgranados Ferráns and Robert L. Selman
Tensions chronically exist in the research literature among bio-evolutionary scientists, constructivist-developmental psychologists, and socio-constructionist scholars about how to describe, understand, and predict our moral functioning. An analysis of the assumptions of each of these theoretical paradigms, the disciplinary fields that inform their conceptual models, and the empirical evidence they use to sustain their claims reveals the tensions that exist, as different communities of scholars assign different roles to nature and nurture, reason and intuition, and to the private minds of individuals and the social intelligibilities available to them in a given time and place of history. Using simple multilevel structures, it is possible to see that the divisions that exist within these scientific communities can be conceptualized in terms of their use of different levels of analysis, as they each focus on different populations and employ different underlying units of time and space. Bio-evolutionary scientists study humans as species, using slow-paced time units of analysis such as millennia, and their studies focus on the epigenetic dimensions of our moral sense, documenting inter-species variance in moral functioning. Socio-constructionists study humans as members of groups, using moderately paced time units of analysis such as decades and centuries, and their studies focus on cultural variations in what different groups of people consider to be good or bad, according to the social structures and intelligibilities that are available to them in a given time and place of history. Constructivist-developmental psychologists study humans as individuals, using fast-paced time units of analysis such as months and years, and their studies focus on the maturational dimension of our moral sense, documenting within- and between-individuals variation throughout their lifetime. Unfortunately, by focusing on different populations and time units, these communities of scholars produce research findings that highlight certain aspects of our moral functioning while downplaying others. Interestingly, complex multilevel structures can illustrate how different levels of analysis are nested within each other and can demonstrate how different scientific endeavors have been striving to account for different sources of variability in our moral functioning. The use of complex multilevel structures can also allow us to understand our moral functioning from a dynamic, complex, multilevel theoretical perspective, and as the product of (a) genetic variations that occur between and within species, (b) variations in the social structures, discourses, and intelligibilities that are available in the culture and regulate what social groups consider good and bad at different places and times of history, and (c) variations in the personal experiences and opportunities of interaction that individuals have in different environments throughout their lifetime. Researchers need to clarify the epigenetic, historical, and developmental rules of our moral functioning, and the ways in which different dimensions interact with each other.
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Analytical Review of School Reforms Toward the Education 2030 Agenda in Zanzibar
Said Juma
Zanzibar is a semiautonomous archipelago in the Indian Ocean along the East African coast. It gained independence in 1963 from the British. After the Zanzibar Revolution in January 1964, it united with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania in April 1964. The Government of Zanzibar has its own executive branch led by the president of Zanzibar, legislative body (called the House of Representatives), and judicial system. The national framework for the education sector is informed by legislations, policies, and plans such as Zanzibar Vision 2020, the Zanzibar Strategy for Economic and Social Transformation, the Zanzibar Education Development Plan II, Education Act No. 6 of 1982 (amended in 1993), Children’s Act No. 6 of 2011, the Spinster and Single Parent Children Protection Act No. 4 of 2005, the Local Government Authority Act No. 7 of 2014, the Zanzibar Vocational Education and Training Policy, and the Zanzibar Education Policy. The mission of the 2006 Zanzibar Education Policy is to strive for equitable access, quality education for all, and promotion of lifelong learning. This mission is consistent with the global Education 2030 Agenda as elaborated in United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4.
Responding to reforms in both local and global education-related goals and plans, Zanzibar introduced reforms to address areas such as (a) the structure of the formal education; (b) the language of instruction; (c) the entry age; (d) curriculum; (e) inclusive education and learners with special educational needs; (f) alternative education; (g) decentralization; (h) school inspection; (i) married students, pregnant girls, and young mothers; and (j) education financing. Other measures to reform the education sector were announced by the Zanzibar president on the anniversary of the country’s revolution in 2015 and 2017. Many of these reforms are in effect, and plans for decentralization, education financing, and school inspection reforms are not yet in full operation.
Some of the reforms promise positive results, such as an increase of enrollment in preprimary and primary schools, due in part to the removal of the voluntary financial contribution. Introduction of inclusive education has contributed to increasing community awareness of the right to an education for all without regard to gender, (dis)ability, or socioeconomic status. Likewise, some pregnant girls resume studies after delivery. However, there have been challenges in the implementation of some of the reforms, including the change in the language of instruction from Kiswahili to English for some subjects at the primary level. Though the actual implementation of the reforms on decentralization and education financing is yet to come into effect, there are potential risks that might negatively impact quality, equity, and inclusion. The risks include the lack of clarity of the responsibilities and functions of each actor, insufficient resources to meet the actual needs of schools, and limited capacity at the local level for the commitment to inclusive education.
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Analyzing Everyday Life at School Through Lenses of Feminist Ethnography
Elina Lahelma, Tarja Tolonen, and Sirpa Lappalainen
Feminist ethnography in education has in so-called Western countries developed in the late 1900s into a research approach with its own identifiable characteristics. Starting points are in feminist theorizations that draw from perspectives of different marginal groups, raised in the context of cultural radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s. In Finland, feminist ethnography took the first steps in the 1990s and achieved a stable position in educational research in the early 2000s. This emerging research has provided possibilities for subtle analysis in educational institutions on gendered, spatial and embodied practices, which have impact on intersectional inequalities.
A theoretical and methodological invention developed by the first Finnish feminist ethnographers in the 1990s is differentiation between the official, informal, and physical layers of the school. Teaching and learning, the curriculum, pedagogy, and formal hierarchies belong to the official layer. Interaction among teachers and students, including informal hierarchies and youth cultures, takes place in the informal layer. The physical school refers to temporality, spatiality, and embodiment. These layers are intertwined in the everyday life of the school; the distinctions between them are analytical. This differentiation is one illustration of nuanced ways to conduct analysis of gendered, classed, and racialized processes and practices in schools.
This analytical tool was elaborated in the large ethnographic project, Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools—With Special Reference to Gender (1993–1998). The project was conducted in schools in Finland, collaborating with a similar project in the United Kingdom. The collective project was conceptualized in comparative reflections on contemporary educational politics and policies in both countries and included cross-cultural ethnographic analysis. The layers were used as tools in constructing the theoretical-methodological layout of the project and in focusing the ethnographic gaze in the field, as well as in analysis, interpretation, and writing. Using the layers of the school as an analytic tool passed on to later studies and have further been developed in novel ways, demonstrating the usefulness of collaborative feminist work in national and international networks.
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An Ecological Preventative Approach to Adolescent Psychology and Youth Mental Health Needs in China
Xu Zhao, Zhiyan Chen, and Leiping Bao
Adolescent psychology and mental health needs in China are part of an interdisciplinary area of research. In this area of research, macro and micro processes are closely linked; biological, cultural, and socio-structural influences tightly intertwined; and patterns identified in other societies fall apart due to the impact of powerful societal forces on individual psychology. As a result, there has been a fundamental and long-lasting split between the idea that “Chinese adolescent psychology” should be a distinctive science within China, addressing issues specific to the circumstances of Chinese children and families, and the argument that it should contribute to a universal theory of human development by documenting its applications to Chinese societies. The problem of the first idea lies in its assumption of cultural relativism or the incommensurability of the human experience of growing up in particular sociocultural contexts. In contrast, the problem of the second argument lies in its failure to ask what is “universal,” when a universal theory is applicable to China, and when it may not be. Arguably, adolescents in all cultures carry vulnerabilities and strengths as they go through the process of major biological and psychological transitions. Certain psychosocial needs, such as the needs for self-exploration, quality peer relationship, and continuous guidance and support from adults, are shared by adolescents across the world, albeit through different forms. When their basic needs are neglected by ideology-driven policies and practices that are carried to an extreme extent, youth mental health is seriously threatened. It is important for researchers not only to go beyond the dichotomous view of the field by taking an ecological approach and multidisciplinary perspectives to investigate the salient issues in adolescent psychology and mental health needs in their specific sociocultural context, but also to consider their broader implications for understanding universally relevant questions about success and sacrifice in human and social development.
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An Emerging Framework for Inclusive Educational Leadership
Michelle D. Young and Noelle W. Arnold
Ongoing shifts in demographics, knowledge, and expectations require continuous critical reflection on the leadership of K-12 schools. The models of school leadership offered in the past, which focus on management, are no longer adequate. Today, leaders must also ensure that all the students in their care are being provided high-quality, developmentally appropriate, and challenging educational opportunities that prepare each student for college, careers, and life. In other words, leaders must engage in “Inclusive Educational Leadership.”
Inclusive Educational Leadership is a reconceptualization of traditional education leadership, which is dedicated to equity, quality and inclusion. We emphasize “inclusive” because it is our contention that providing a quality education experience that is both equitable and fosters equitable outcomes requires an intentional focus on inclusion.
Inclusive Educational Leadership has three key areas of emphasis: place, preparation, and practice. Place refers to social practices and policies that reflect competing meanings and uses of spaces, the role people play in a given space and articulations of locations (geographic positions), environments (conditions), and ranks (hierarchies). Preparation refers to education, training and mentoring that is provided to leaders, and practice refers to the work leaders do to cultivate dispositions that support inclusion, support inclusive and culturally responsive practice, and develop an inclusive school culture.
The goal of inclusive leadership is to cultivate an inclusive, caring, and supportive school culture that promotes the academic success and well-being of each student. In other words, its goal is to offer more than expectations that lightly touch on all students; its goal is to deliver results for each student. Thus, the work of Inclusive Educational Leadership involves a restructuring of the education experience to prevent marginalization, while creating school cultures based on dignity and respect and focused on achieving equity, high-quality educational experiences, and life success for all students.
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An Exploration of Evolving Approaches to Teacher Identity Revealed in Literature on Teaching from 2010 to 2018
Catherine Beauchamp
Teacher identity is conceived in complex ways, in part because of the attention that must be paid to both the personal and the professional dimensions of teaching experience. In addition, teacher identity as a concept is closely intertwined with the notion of teacher agency, as well as with the potential for a teacher to encounter ongoing challenges in the development and adjustment of identity in diverse educational contexts. Literature on teaching from a range of areas—teacher education, preservice teaching, in-service teaching in schools, and university or higher education teaching—reflects a variety of existing approaches to teacher identity. Despite the complexity of the concept, understanding teacher identity remains of critical importance to individual educators, to institutions and to society as a whole.
