Brandi Hinnant-Crawford

As political opposition to equity-centered education intensifies, PK-12 school and district leaders committed to social justice face mounting pressure to conceal or compromise their efforts. This qualitative study examines how school leaders navigate hostile political environments while advancing equity and improvement for minoritized students. Drawing on discreet activism and improvement science as theoretical frameworks, the study catalogs the strategies leaders employ to promote social justice amidst resistance from policymakers, community members, and institutional structures. Our analysis reveals a “resistance playbook” characterized by strategic reframing of language, relationship-building, data-driven advocacy, and targeted coalition formation. The study also documents the profound emotional and professional toll this work exacts, including burnout, moral distress, and departure from the field. Implications are offered for leadership preparation programs and policymakers committed to sustaining equity-focused leadership in contested educational landscapes.

Introduction: Continuous improvement (CI) has transformative potential but far too often that potential is unrealized. Practitioners engaging in CI are frequently guided by mindsets that derail system transformation by shifting the focus from improving systems to fixing people.Methods: Employing multiple data sources (document analysis of dissertations in practice and interviews) this multi-case study examines nine cases of scholar-practitioners engaging in CI work and how they mitigated the impact of deficit mindsets.Results: Cross-case analysis revealed four strategies for disrupting deficit ideology in CI work: composing intentional teams, building team capacity, employing critical theory, and involving those impacted.Discussion: Implications for engaging in CI and teaching CI are discussed.

While project-based learning (PBL) and asset-based equity pedagogies (ABEPs) have traditionally been studied separately, there is reason to believe that the combination of the two strategies can produce unimaginable. This study examines the relationships between students’ perception of both PBL and ABEPs as it relates to non-academic outcomes such as problem-solving abilities, likelihood to persist, and civic consciousness and engagement. Bivariate regression was used to determine the degree to which exposure to PBL and ABEPs explains the variance in student outcomes. Student focus group data confirms and expands our quantitative findings.

In this essay, we explore the tension between research using continuous improvement (CI) paradigms, such as improvement science, and conventional research, and the role and regulation of Institutional Review Board (IRB) oversight. We argue that the current regulatory structure privileges traditional research and hinders collaborative inquiry that centers the voice and agency of those traditionally marginalized. We also question whether IRBs should limit CI efforts required of educational leaders as part of their jobs. We offer recommendations for how IRBs and scholar-practitioners can together support CI efforts.

Educational researchers have offered a number of different measures to explore the use of equity pedagogies. Such measures traditionally use teacher self-report as the primary metric and few investigate from the student perspective. This exploratory psychometric article details the use of a new instrument, the Asset-Based Equity Pedagogy Scale (ABEPSc), that captures the student perceptions of three constructs, one of which is criticality, which is overlooked in the existing survey instruments. The initial validation process is outlined. Using QuantCrit as a guide, we argue that this scale offers a new way to understand approaches to instruction, teacher expectations, care, and the pursuit of criticality in the classroom.