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Esau Jenkins (1910–1972) was a grass-roots activist who used a community-based approach to aid the oppressed and impoverished African American families and children in the low country regions of South Carolina.

Education in social work has seen considerable growth over the course of the 20th century. Social work education in the United States began with only a few training programs established in partnership with charitable organizations at the end of the 19th century (Austin, 1997), and has grown to 641 accredited baccalaureate and master's programs at of the February, 2007 Commission on Accreditation meeting, and over 70 doctoral programs (Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education, 2007). These programs represent over 7,000 faculty and administrators and over 60,000 students at the baccalaureate and master's level (Council on Social Education, 2007). Social work education is available at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral level with at least one level of program represented in each of the states, as well as in the United States' Territories of Puerto Rico and Guam. Concentrations and specializations are offered in programs in many areas from practice levels (for example, direct practice, policy analysis) or areas of interest (for example, child welfare, medical social work, housing policy). Current trends in social work education include the use of distance education, the call for more accountability from accrediting bodies and social work programs (Watkins & Pierce 2005), and work toward unification in social work professional organizations (Hoffman, 2006).

Dual degree programs are growing rapidly around the country with increasing numbers of universities offering students an opportunity to earn an M.S.W. along with another degree. While two degrees offer clear benefits to the students and provide revenue to the institutions, they also raise some issues and concerns about the “relative worth” of an M.S.W.

Language rights are an integral part of civil rights. They provide the tools that permit individuals to engage with and participate in society. The broad use of the Spanish language in the United States by both citizens and immigrants—it is the second-most-spoken language in the country by far—has a long history. Spanish was the first European governing language in parts of the future United States that included the Southwest, portions of the Louisiana Purchase, and Florida. The use of the language did not disappear when these regions became part of the United States, but rather persisted in some locales as a politically important language. In the 20th century, Spanish-speaking immigrants entered not just the Southwest and Florida, but also Chicago, New York, the South, Michigan, and other locales across the country in large numbers. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, Spanish speakers and their advocates have reasserted their cultural preference by fighting for monolingual speakers’ right to use Spanish in legal settings, in public, as voters, as elected officials, at work, and in education. The politics of the Spanish language have only grown in importance as the largest influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants ever has entered the United States. This demographic shift makes the longer history of Spanish a crucial backstory for future language-policy decisions.

When recognizing the cultural political agency of Black women and girls from diverse racial and ethnic, gender, sexual, and socioeconomic backgrounds and geographical locations, it is argued that intersectionality is a contributing factor in the mitigation of educational inequality. Intersectionality as an analytical framework helps education researchers, policymakers, and practitioners better understand how race and gender intersect to derive varying amounts of penalty and privilege. Race, class, and gender are emblematic of the three systems of oppression that most profoundly shape Black girls at the personal, community, and social structural levels of institutions. These three systems interlock to penalize some students in schools while privileging other students. The intent of theoretically framing and analyzing educational problems and issues from an intersectional perspective is to better comprehend how race and gender overlap to shape (a) educational policy and discourse, (b) relationships in schools, and (c) students’ identities and experiences in educational contexts. With Black girls at the center of analysis, educational theorists and activists may be able to better understand how politics of domination are organized along other axes such as ethnicity, language, sexuality, age, citizenship status, and religion within and across school sites. Intersectionality as a theoretical framework is informed by a variety of standpoint theories and emancipatory projects, including Afrocentrism, Black feminism and womanism, critical race theory, queer theory, radical Marxism, critical pedagogy, and grassroots’ organizing efforts led by Black, Indigenous, and other women of color throughout US history and across the diaspora.

The rising number of students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in schools, and the unique characteristics of these students, has led many educators and parents to question the types of programs and strategies that are most effective in supporting them to achieve within school climates and curriculum of the early 21st century. Moreover, educators and parents must sort through the plethora of information and reports of interventions and treatments claiming to treat or cure autism in order to determine what strategies will best support their children or students. A number of studies have focused on determining the evidence base of specific practices for students on the autism spectrum. However, only a few have investigated the applicability of these strategies in inclusive school environments or specifically employed strategies to address academic needs. This has created a research-to-practice gap for educators working with students on the autism spectrum in inclusive school settings. More promising are studies which have highlighted elements of effective practice in education programs. An analysis of this research reveals four principles of best practice for schools and educators working with students on the autism spectrum: provision of a supportive and structured learning environment for staff and students; consistent provision of child-centered and evidence-based curriculum and instruction; multidisciplinary engagement and collaboration; and meaningful communication and collaboration between families and schools. These principles provide a framework for teachers and parents to work alongside students on the autism spectrum to plan, implement and evaluate strategies that can be embedded and implemented in the class program and are effective in supporting the specific needs of individual students on the autism spectrum.

Tragedy is a central theme in the work of Albert Camus that speaks to his 46 years of life in “interesting times.” He develops a case for the tragic arts across a series of letters, articles, lectures, short stories, and novels. In arguing for the tragic arts, he reveals an epic understanding of the tensions between individual and world manifest in the momentum of liberalism, humanism, and modernism. The educational qualities of the tragic arts are most explicitly explored in his novel The Plague, in which the proposition that the plague is a teacher engages Camus in an exploration of the grand narratives of progress and freedom, and the intimate depths of ignorance and heroism. In the novel The Outsider Camus explores the tragedy of difference in a society obsessed with the production of a normal citizen. The tragedy manifests the absurdity of the world in which a stranger in this world is compelled to support the system that rejects their subjectivity. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus produces an essay on absurdity and suicide that toys with the illusion of Progress and the grounds for a well-lived life. Across these texts, and through his collection of letters, articles, and notes, Camus invites an educational imagination. His approach to study of the human condition in and through tragedy offers a narrative to challenge the apparent absence of imagination in educational systems and agendas. Following Camus, the tragic arts offer alternative narratives during the interesting times of viral and environment tragedy.

In various ways, the notion of interconnection between all things takes on importance for all aspects of Indigenous life, and therefore, writers in the field of Indigenous education often allude to the priority of interconnection for teaching and learning. The theoretical lens on interconnection, in Indigenous writing, tends to fall into two camps: one, that the world is comprised of distinct entities that are nevertheless connected; and, the other, that one thing is constituted by the entire world. In both cases, Indigenous theories of interconnection can be contrasted with, and even galvanized by, Western rationality, which overwhelmingly tends to fragment things in the world from each other. Education itself for the Indigenous participant may then be more a reflection of the fact of all things—its constitution of the self and all other things—than simply a transmission of knowledge. In this sense, the problem of “education” for Indigenous peoples may not lie only in the fact that education is separated out from other disciplines in dominant Western practice, but also that its attitude towards the world, with its focus on the mind, and with the clarity that fragmented things bring, does not reflect interconnection. It is unlikely that dominant Western modes of education can fully incorporate the values and ethics of Indigenous interconnection. In both pre-tertiary and tertiary education, however, some advances towards holistic and interconnected approaches are possible. In pre-tertiary, a focus on the development of the rational mind (which, from an Indigenous perspective, sits unspoken at the base of Western education) can be moderated somewhat by looking to the human self as a culmination of the world (and vice versa); and, in tertiary education, participants may revise notions of ethics and proper writing to incorporate those things that exist beyond human knowledge.

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.

Case studies in the field of education often eschew comparison. However, when scholars forego comparison, they are missing an important opportunity to bolster case studies’ theoretical generalizability. Scholars must examine how disparate epistemologies lead to distinct kinds of qualitative research and different notions of comparison. Expanded notions of comparison include not only the usual logic of contrast or juxtaposition but also a logic of tracing, in order to embrace approaches to comparison that are coherent with critical, constructivist, and interpretive qualitative traditions. Finally, comparative case study researchers consider three axes of comparison: the vertical, which pays attention across levels or scales, from the local through the regional, state, federal, and global; the horizontal, which examines how similar phenomena or policies unfold in distinct locations that are socially produced; and the transversal, which compares over time.

Mindfulness and leadership come together as a model for arriving at solutions in the field of education. Two approaches, Eastern and Western, present perspectives on mindfulness that are distinct, however both aim towards the same goal of enhancing awareness. Originating in the East, mindfulness is at the core of Buddhist philosophy and includes enhanced attention and an attentiveness to the present. Conversely, the Western approach to mindfulness gained traction in the 1970s in the field of cognitive and social psychology. Within the field of education in the United States, mindfulness has contributed, primarily in the classroom, as an activity to foster better classroom management and improved focus on learning. Mindfulness has also been applied to mindful learning, aimed at revealing enhanced approaches to learning. Along a similar vein, applications of mindfulness in the leadership field, encourage the approach of focused attention to individual leadership development, problem-solving, and self-reflection. Resonant leadership and authentic leadership are two of the primary leadership models that include the strategy of mindfulness. Moving beyond the individual perceptions of mindfulness in leadership development, a more collaborative approach of mindfulness has emerged, where social change emerges from interdependence and mutuality amongst a number of individuals. Whether at the individual or collective level, mindfulness is impacted by cultural influences. Educational leaders are tasked with leading ethnically diverse learning communities by necessity, as demographics change and ethnic minority populations become minority majority populations. Thus, awareness of one’s cultural mindset, both limitations and strengths, can contribute to one’s leadership abilities. Mindfulness, when directed inward, can paradoxically enhance one’s ability to better understand others and to breakthrough stereotypes. This perspective could foreseeably foster cultural competence and greater levels of cultural integration, but as a function of greater self-awareness. Thus, mindfulness and leadership, as a creative combination of self and other, come together as a promising model of leadership for educators. Whether integrated as a necessary element of existing leadership theories, or identified as an important process of reflection in leadership development, mindfulness opens a pathway to greater insight and awareness. Aspects of mindfulness can therefore contribute to leadership, in particular, at the intersection of these elements relative to culture.

Poststructuralism is broadly considered to be a particular movement of thought that emerged in France during the 1960s in response to a range of philosophical approaches such as modernism and structural linguistics. Poststructuralism has been extensively explored across philosophy, cultural studies, politics, and numerous other fields. It has also received significant attention in education, particularly in relation to education policy, although much less so in relation to educational leadership and administration. Nevertheless, it is important to identify some of the main thinkers who have been associated with poststructuralism, examples of how their work has been used and drawn from in educational leadership, and explore how these ideas might be useful in providing alternative perspectives to much of the existing research in educational leadership and administration.

The ability to effectively lead schools serving Indigenous students in the United States is contingent upon one’s ability and willingness to acknowledge and honor the cultural, linguistic, and tribal diversity of Indigenous peoples and communities, coupled with a commitment to abiding by the federal trust responsibility for the education of Indigenous peoples—a federal responsibility unique to American Indian and Alaska Native peoples. This also requires educational leaders to create and sustain educational environments that are culturally relevant and responsive and that respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and their tribal nations to be involved in, and ultimately to determine, the educational pathways and futures of their tribal citizens.

Organizational theory involves various approaches to analyzing organizations and attempts to explain the mechanisms of organizations. Organizations embody structured social units that need to achieve aims and needs as well as pursue shared goals. Organizational theory is made up of various disciplines and bodies of knowledge. Some of the theories of organization include classical theory, neoclassical theory, contingency theory, human relations theory, and modern systems theory. These theories are based on multiple perspectives including modern and postmodernist views. In education management and policy, it is necessary to understood organizational theory within the micro and macro realms of the education settings. Another factor that affects organizational theory within educational settings is organizational culture. Organizational culture is made up of a system of shared assumptions, beliefs, and values that governs how people in organizations behave and act. In organizations, shared values and beliefs that evolve over time strongly influence how members function and perform their duties and tasks in the organization.. Organizations develop and maintain a specific unique culture that acts as a guide and molds the behavior and roles of the members of the organization. Organizational culture can be further understood by examining it on multiple levels including artifacts of the organization, advocated values, and underlying assumptions within the organization. Various principles that govern organizational culture may help explain organizations and their members. It is also pertinent to observe how organizational culture affects practices and principles of organizations as well as how organizational culture governs members and aims of organizations. The various organizational theories and the organizational culture perspective can help provide a more comprehensive understanding of organizations and their members and practices, especially within educational settings and contexts.

Petra de Joya (1913–1987) was an eminent educator and social administrator. She spearheaded the professionalization of social work in the Philippines by advocating for the passage of laws that were instrumental for the development of social work in the country. The following laws were enacted as a result of her advocacy: (a) Republic Act regulating the social work profession in the Philippines and requiring social welfare agencies to hire professional social workers; (b) a Republic Act elevating the Department of Social Work to the Institute of Social Work and Community Development at the University of the Philippines; and (c) a Republic Act transforming the Social Welfare Administration (SWA) into the Department of Social Welfare (DSW). She was appointed as one of the first board of examiners for social work.

Mary Ann Quaranta (1926–2009) was a visionary and a builder of partnerships and collaborative efforts. At the forefront of her visions were individuals across the life cycle, families, communities, and organizations. She was a formidable leader and was recognized nationally within and outside the social work profession for her important contribution to social work practice, education, and research.

The history of social work education is replete with accounts of how the early charity organizations influenced its development. For example, Toynbee Hall in London inspired the founding of Hull House in Chicago as well as the London Charity Organization, the Women’s University Settlement, and the National Union of Women Workers. In addition, Octavia Hill established one of the first training programs in social work education that emphasized the principles for helping impoverished clients. The program was later expanded in 1890 into a one-year program of courses and supervised practice. Later, the program expanded to outlying areas and provinces and eventually evolved into two-year programs of study at the London School of Sociology Defining today’s baccalaureate social workers as entry-level professionals is indeed a paradigm shift. Tracy Whitaker, Toby Weismiller, and Elizabeth Clark stated in their 2006 work, “Clearly, the social work profession is at a crossroad. If there are to be adequate numbers of social workers to respond to the needs of clients in the 21st century and beyond, the sufficiency of this frontline workforce, must not only be ensured, it must be prioritized.” In our ever-changing society, the social work profession must rethink the various levels of the profession and recognize, as well as promote, a professional career trajectory that embraces the baccalaureate social work professional. Administrators and faculty of each social work program are responsible for ensuring that students are competent, and that they possess skill sets that will elevate their marketable in a competitive workforce. Recruiting new social workers, replacing retiring social workers, and retaining social workers in the profession are all needed.

Girls with disabilities should receive the same opportunities to remain in school and complete education as their non-disabled peers. Education leads to more prosperous futures and is a way of overcoming poverty, particularly in contexts where the intersectionality of being a girl and having a disability increases vulnerability. In Sierra Leone, the risk of leaving school because of being a “night wife” is a concern for girls with disabilities. The concept of night wives is based on the experiences of girls and women with disabilities who are being used as sex partners by men who would not be seen openly with women with disabilities and who have no intention of long-term commitment. Men are abandoning girls and women with disabilities, often after the women become pregnant and have dropped out of school. This practice leaves girls and women with disabilities without support, education, or the means to raise a child, and further intensifies the vulnerability of girls and women with disabilities.

Transnationalism describes the ways in which ties between two or more nations are maintained; these ties abound in social practices that are, at times, situated within rigid governing structures. Transnationalism implies not only physical movement across borders, commonly referred to as “immigration,” but also emotional ties across borders. It also includes distinct ways of knowing that are informed by social media, loved ones, and cultural practices that span borders. The transnational social spaces in which youth are raised are often filled with deep understandings of geopolitical contexts that weave together multiple national perspectives, personal navigation of physical borders (both with and without authorized documentation), and complex social networks in more than one country sustained through ever-changing media applications. However, these knowledges often remain unengaged in and underacknowledged by schools. The disciplines of sociology and anthropology have informed much of the research on transnationalism, although from different standpoints. Sociology has taken a more literal sense of transnationalism, focusing narrowly on physical bodies’ movements back-and-forth over borders. Anthropologists have more robustly engaged the emotional and psychological aspects of transnationalism as it impacts the groups generally described as “immigrants.” Unfortunately, most of the research related to transnational children and education has been under the larger framework of assimilation. The unfortunate result is that the focus on how immigrants assimilate misses the opportunity to interpret (and perhaps misinterprets) a larger set of accompanying phenomena alongside the immigration act. For education, transnational experiences can help students develop a sense of identity, which in turn helps them achieve in the school settings of both receiving and sending countries, should they have to return. Similarly, transnationalism complicates and makes notions of citizenship more robust. Immigrant students are always potentially engaged transnationals during their settlement processes—the possibility exists that they will remain actively connected to their home countries and even potentially return for visits or permanently. Educational research has more recently examined how transnationalism helps create and can deepen literacy practices, especially digital literacies. Numerous education scholars have called for educators to draw upon students’ transnational lives in the curriculum. This can help prepare all students for an increasingly globalized world. This does not suggest a “learning styles” approach in which transnational students are considered a monolithic group in need of a repertoire of instructional strategies to meet the group’s needs. Instead, educators need to create the space in which students’ transnational experiences and perceptions are allowed to be aired, understood, and built upon in schools. In education, the commonly stated goal is for the classroom to function as a “community of learners.” If, in fact, educators aspire to build true communities, transnational students’ lives should no longer remain hidden from the view of their peers and teachers.