Background: Educational outcomes for language minority (LM) children are of great concern across the nation because these students have lower grades, are rated by their teachers as having lower skills, perform worse on standardized tests, and are more likely to drop out than are non-LM students. Given this context of underperformance, there is a…

Background: An enduring question about achievement gaps is, which aspects of schools contribute most? At the early grade levels, when children spend the vast majority of their school day in a single classroom with a single teacher, school inequities that correlate with achievement gaps likely originate within the classroom. This study examined the…

Background/Context: Some school districts across the country have begun to convene principals in professional learning communities (PPLC) as a strategy to help principals develop as instructional leaders, and they have designated executive-level central office staff to lead the PPLCs. Extant research suggests the promise of PPLCs for supporting…

Background: Increasingly, teachers and other educators are expected to leverage data in making educational decisions. Effective data use is difficult, if not impossible, without computer data systems. Nonetheless, these systems may be underused or even rejected by teachers. One potential explanation for such troubles may relate to how teachers…

Background/Context: Across the United States, secondary school curricula are intensifying as a growing proportion of students enroll in high-level academic math courses. In many districts, this intensification process occurs as early as eighth grade, where schools are effectively constraining their mathematics curricula by restricting course…

Background: In this paper we call for studying school leadership and its relationship to instruction and learning through approaches that highlight the role of configurations of multiple organizational supports. A configuration-focused approach to studying leadership and other essential supports provides a valuable addition to existing tools in…

Background/Context: Scarce research has been conducted examining why students choose to attend higher priced for-profit institutions over community colleges. The authors suggest that increased national concern over proprietary higher education warrants an in-depth comparative case study of the choice factors utilized by for-profit and community…

Background: Off-task behavior can be defined as any behavior that does not involve the learning task or material, or where learning from the material is not the primary goal. One suggested path for understanding how to address off-task behavior is to study classrooms where off-task behavior is less common, particularly in Asia, in order to…

Background/Context: On January 29, 2008 the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) approved a city-wide Africentric elementary school under their Alternative School policy, sparking a contentious debate. Calls for Black-focused schools also arose in 2008 in London in response to the disengagement of African Caribbean youth. The historical record…

Background/Context: Lesson planning is one of the most common activities required of teachers; however, since the late 1970s and early 1980s, it has not been a major focus of study, either conceptually or empirically. Although there are recent articles on the topic, much of the current work is specific to examining a particular teaching method or…

Background/Context: For more than a decade, large alternative teacher certification programs (ATCP) such as the New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) have provided qualified applicants with fast-track or "early entry" routes to paid teaching. While early-entry ATCPs enjoy powerful support in the public and private sectors, critics…

Background/Context: Students of Color continue to be underrepresented at the undergraduate level. Recent research has demonstrated the importance of non-academic psychosocial factors for understanding college experiences. One factor, identity, is a broad, multidimensional construct that comprises numerous distinct domains, including political,…

Background: The number of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF), including both full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) positions, has risen to two-thirds of faculty positions across the academy. To date, most of the studies of NTTF have relied on secondary data or large-scale surveys. Few qualitative studies exist that examine the experience, working…

Background: Teacher quality plays a key role in student learning outcomes. Yet, data suggest that elite college graduates who enter teaching are less likely to stay in schools serving low income and minority students compared to other teachers. Thus, many educators and policy makers agree that in order to equalize the playing field, recruitment,…

Background/Context: Recent research in mathematics education has employed sociocultural and historical lenses to better understand how students experience school mathematics and come to see themselves as capable mathematics learners. This work has identified mathematics classrooms as places where power struggles related to students'…