Education Commons^™

Rural District Leaders And Place In The Shadow Of The Pandemic: Refining The Conceptualization Of Leadership Of Place As Caring, Jeff Walls, Sarah Zuckerman

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the tensions between rural community needs and politicized state-level school closure mandates. District leaders faced competing demands of meeting the basic needs of vulnerable families, supporting the mental health of students and teachers, protecting the health of all community members, and creating new opportunities for learning. This study examines how rural district leaders responded to these challenges through the lens of caring. This lens highlights how district leaders responded to their contexts, as well as their perceptions of student, family, and staff needs in ethically grounded and politically savvy ways. We draw on semi-structured interviews with …

Negotiating Asian American Identities: Collaborative Self-Study Of Korean Immigrant Scholars’ Reading Group On Asiancri, Taeyeon Kim, Soo Bin Jang, Jin Keong Jung, Minhye Son, Sun Young Lee

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to understand how Korean immigrant women early career scholars in higher education in the United States explore their Asian American identities in the identity-based community space. The study considered qualitative data generated by five authors in a collaborative reading group learning more about AsianCrit literature. Our analysis revealed that AsianCrit was used as a tool for revisiting our racialized experiences, negotiating tensions around key constructs of AsianCrit informed by transnational perspectives, and embracing Asian American identities in pursuit of solidarity. The findings contribute to expanding the scholarship of AsianCrit by highlighting its utility and …

Online + International: Utilizing Theory To Maximize Intercultural Learning In Virtual Exchange Courses, Gudrun Nyunt, Elizabeth Niehaus, Ashley Light, Alex Boryca, Angela Bryan

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Virtual exchanges (VEs) are course-based experiences designed to promote global learning, often by integrating cross-cultural interactions and collaborations with people from other areas of the world into coursework in a virtual format. Due to the widespread disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, VEs have seen an increase in popularity. However, research findings on the effectiveness of VEs are mixed, and limited guidance is available to VE instructors on how to structure and facilitate these programs. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how theories and literature in two distinct areas of scholarship, Intergroup Contact theory and the Community of Inquiry …

The Impact On College Students Of Service-Learning In After-School Programs, Ashley Light, Amelia-Marie Altstadt, Olatz Sanchez-Txabarri, Stuart P. Bernstein, Patrice Mcmahon

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

In the United States, the dearth of quality expanded learning opportunities (ELO), such as afterschool and summer programs, has long been recognized as a national concern (DeKanter et al., 2000). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this problem, as expanded learning opportunities of all kinds became increasingly limited in spring 2020 (Carver & Doohen, 2021). This research evaluated a new service-learning project, Honors Afterschool Clubs, which allows college students to fill ELO needs by creating and leading afterschool clubs for high-needs, low-income youth. By analyzing college student pre- and postexperience surveys, semistructured interviews, and focus groups, the authors evaluated the perceived impacts …

Falling Into The Gap: The Coloniality Of Achievement Gap Discourses And Their Responses, James S. Wright, Taeyeon Kim

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This paper critically analyzes gap discourses in student learning, starting from the achievement gap, education debt, and opportunity gaps, applying the lens of coloniality, racial capitalism, and modernity (CRCM). Gap discourses are the prevalent rationale behind educational policies and school reforms globally. Specifically in the United States, achievement gap discourses contribute substantially to the educational framework that minoritized students (students of color) are inherently – intellectually and academically – behind White students. This paper will show the pervasive power of achievement gap discourses and their influence on school policy, practices, and norms. Additionally, we highlight how some of the most …

Examining Responses To A Racist Event In A Sorority And Fraternity Life Community: A Case Study, Crystal Eufemia Garcia, Antonio Duran, Michael Anthony Goodman

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Racism has been interwoven in implicit and explicit ways within historically white sorority and fraternity life (SFL) communities since their inception. However, few studies have provided insight to how practitioners address the realities of racism in SFL broadly, or specifically how SFL practitioners have attended to race-based incidents on their local campuses, the success of these initiatives, and to what degree their actions have been sustainable over time. This project sought to contribute insight to these dynamics by mobilizing a case study approach guided by an institutional response framework to focus on how a particular SFL community at Sunnydale University …

Leading From Equity: Changing And Organizing For Deeper Learning, Taeyeon Kim, Minseok Yang, Yujin Oh

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Purpose – This study aims to explore how educational leaders in South Korea adopted equity mindsets and how they organized changes to support students’ deeper learning during COVID-19.

Design/methodology/approach – The developed a comprehensive framework of Equity Leadership for Deeper Learning, by revising the existing model of Darling-Hammond and Darling-Hammond (2022) and synthesizing equity leadership literature. Drawing upon this framework, this study analyzed data collected from individual interviews and a focus group with school and district administrators in the K-12 Korean education system.

Findings – The participants prioritized an equity stance of their leadership by critically understanding sociopolitical conditions, challenging …

Rural Superintendent Turnover In Challenging Times: A Review Of The Literature, Sarah Zuckerman, Michael Teahon, Jeanne L. Surface, Ann T. Mausbach, Kevin M. Riley

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown a light on structural problems in education. Changing conditions, policy recommendations, and pressure from local communities have caused strain among educators and administrators across the nation. For rural districts already strained by shortages of teachers and administrators, the pandemic particularly raised alarms about the potential for accelerating superintendent turnover. By examining the superintendent turnover literature through the lens of district leadership roles and critical leadership of place, this review can support research to address superintendent turnover, provide guidance for preparation programs that aim to reduce the instability of rural district leadership, and the preparation of …

On The Impossibilities Of Advancing Racial Justice In Higher Education Research Through Reliance On The Campus Climate Heuristic, Elvira Abrica, Deryl K. Hatch-Tocaimaza, Cecilia Rios-Aguilar

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Campus climates are often described as “hostile” for racially minoritized populations. However, growing recognition of complexities associated with intersecting and interwoven systems of social oppression compel the field of higher education to move away from overly simplistic portrayals of postsecondary environments as “welcoming/chilly” or “positive/negative.” More than this, there is a need to engage in a broader discussion of the field’s reliance on the metaphor of meteorological climate itself as a heuristic for characterizing the nature of college learning environments. The central argument presented in this theoretical article is that racial justice is impossible when operationalized through a lens of …