In this essay Naomi Mulvihill uses vignettes from her bilingual kindergarten classroom to explore the dynamic processes by which young children make sense of language, focusing on instances in which she asks her students to compare texts presented in English and Spanish. Using Piaget's concept of disequilibrium as a guiding framework,…

In this piece, Gretchen Brion-Meisels investigates how adolescents conceptualize support in the context of school. Student support systems have become a permanent structure in most U.S. public schools, responsible for ensuring equal access to support services. Unfortunately, little is known about how adolescents make meaning of school-based…

What are the origins of educational rights? In this essay, Espinoza and Vossoughi assert that educational rights are "produced," "affirmed," and "negated" not only through legislative and legal channels but also through an evolving spectrum of educational activities embedded in everyday life. Thus, they argue that the…

Whereas instruction on how to conduct original research can build on beginning college students' tacit information literacies, the explicit articulation of existing processes for information gathering is rarely elicited by instructors prior to students' submission of a final research paper. In this essay, authors Nicholas Bauch and…

Through a comparative case study, Sheridan and colleagues explore how makerspaces may function as learning environments. Drawing on field observations, interviews, and analysis of artifacts, videos, and other documents, the authors describe features of three makerspaces and how participants learn and develop through complex design and making…

In this article, David J. Knight investigates where and when Black and Latino male adolescents engage in self-disclosure--sharing their emotions, thoughts, and social perceptions--with their peers. Building from asset-based research and ecological theories of development, Knight analyzes in-depth interviews and finds that these adolescents may…

In this research article, Myosha McAfee presents findings from her grounded theory and microethnographical study of math instruction in a racially and socioeconomically diverse public school. Her analysis puts forth a new theory-the kinesiology of race-which conceptualizes race as a verb rather than a noun. It centrally considers how racial…

In this essay, Erica Halverson and Kimberly Sheridan provide the context for research on the maker movement as they consider the emerging role of making in education. The authors describe the theoretical roots of the movement and draw connections to related research on formal and informal education. They present points of tension between making…

Electronic textiles are a part of the increasingly popular maker movement that champions existing do-it-yourself activities. As making activities broaden from Maker Faires and fabrication spaces in children's museums, science centers, and community organizations to school classrooms, they provide new opportunities for learning while…

In this article, members of the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective argue that Peggy McIntosh's seminal "knapsack" article acts as a synecdoche, or as a stand-in, for all the antiracist work to be done in teacher education and that this limits our understanding and possibilities for action. The authors develop this argument by…

In this article, Uma Jayakumar, Rican Vue, and Walter Allen present their study of Young Black Scholars (YBS), a community-initiated college preparatory program in Los Angeles. Through in-depth interviews and surveys with twenty-five middle- and higher-income Black college students, they document the positive role of community in facilitating…

In the spring of 2013, the "Harvard Educational Review" ("HER") published a special issue entitled "Expanding Our Vision for the Arts in Education" (Vol. 83, No. 1). Following a variety of forward-looking essays and arts learner reflections concerning the potential of the arts in education, the issue concluded with a…

In this article, Amy N. Farley, Matthew N. Gaertner, and Michele S. Moses examine the use of ballot initiatives as a particularly attractive form of direct democracy for opponents of affirmative action in higher education. Building on previous scholarship, the authors question whether anti-affirmative ballot initiatives validly reflect…

In this essay, Jal Mehta examines the challenges faced by American schooling and the reasons for persistent failure of American school reforms to achieve successful educational outcomes at scale. He concludes that many of the problems faced by American schools are artifacts of the bureaucratic form in which the education sector as a whole was…

In this empirical study, the authors draw on classroom observations and interviews with twenty-three Black male ninth graders in an urban district to focus on the nature of disciplinary practices in an all-Black, all-male manhood development class. While scholars have identified the "discipline gap" as a salient aspect of the experience…