Critical Perspectives on the Contexts of Improvement Research in Education
Recent protests and national conversations about racial injustice have significant implications for education research, policy, and practice. Researchers have been called upon to rethink their approaches to studying race and racism in education. Scholarship has challenged traditional modes of inquiry that have framed students of color as having a deficit (Milner, 2015), devalued the importance of urban education (Warren & Vanzent Chambers, 2020), and failed to cite contributions from diverse faculty backgrounds (Madyun et al., 2013; Childs & Johnson, 2018). Our review of improvement research in education argues that deeper engagement with critical perspectives, methodologies, epistemologies, and frameworks is necessary to engage historically marginalized and disempowered people as active collaborators in improvement processes and policy/program implementation. We draw on examples of scholars of improvement research who have taken up critical approaches, as well as scholars in the broader field of education, specifically those studying education policy and organizations. Improvement research should involve an analytical process that goes beyond understanding what or how change occurs and reveals how improvement affects (and is affected by) race, gender, structural inequality, power, systems, and democratic control in classrooms, schools, and districts. In the sections that follow, we posit from the research literature a model of critical improvement research in education that is inclusive and collaborative among diverse stakeholders—one that interrogates issues of race, class, gender, and power in efforts to understand the contextual factors that can impede sustainable change. We demonstrate how the field of improvement research can begin to unpack the contingent and situated nature of educational improvement (Honig, 2009), drawing on examples from within the field (e.g., community-based design research [Bang et al., 2016]) and the critical learning sciences (Philip & Gupta, 2020) and from critical policy analysis (Young & Diem, 2017, 2018) while arguing that the field as a whole must engage more deeply with scholarship examining race, class, and gender as it relates to practitioners, students, and researchers.
The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education
Section II: Contexts of Improvement Research in Education [Foundational Handbook]
Jabbar, H., & Childs, J. (2022). Critical Perspectives on the Contexts of Improvement Research in Education. In D. J. Peurach, J. L. Russell, L. Cohen-Vogel, & W. R. Penuel (Eds.), The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education (pp. 241-261). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538152348/The-Foundational-Handbook-on-Improvement-Research-in-Education
Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better
Getting Ideas into Action: Building Networked Improvement Communities in Education
Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the Intersections of Race and Dis/ability
The Rapid Demographic Shift of American Public Schools
Technical Curriculum Form and American Elementary School Art Education
Ethical and Professional Norms in Community-Based Research
A Neoliberal Grammar of Schooling? How a Progressive Charter School Moved toward Market Values
Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
When They Go Low, We Go High: Scholars of Color, Activism, and Educational Research in a Post-Truth Era
Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools
Framing the Problem of Reading Instruction: Using Frame Analysis to Uncover the Microprocesses of Policy Implementation
Improvement Science Meets Improvement Scholarship: Reframing Research for Better Healthcare
Industry's Push for Computer Science Education: Is Computer Science Really for All?
Integrative Research Review: Syncretic Approaches to Literacy Learning. Leveraging Horizontal Knowledge and Expertise
Race-Neutral Doesn’t Work: Black Males’ Achievement, Engagement, and School Climate Perceptions
Transforming Out-of-School Challenges Into Opportunities: Community Schools Reform in the Urban Midwest
Community-Based Equity Audits: A Practical Approach for Educational Leaders to Support Equitable Community-School Improvements
Centering Race in a Framework for Leadership Preparation
Toward a Critical Approach to Education Policy Implementation
Comprehensive School Reform in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts: Implementation and Outcomes from a Four-Year Study
Power and Politics in the Adoption of School Reform Models
Striving in Common: A Regional Equity Framework for Urban Schools
The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for Democratic Schooling
Improving Schools by Strategically Connecting Equity Leadership and Organizational Improvement Perspectives: Introduction to Special Issue
Assessing Neighborhood Racial Segregation and Macroeconomic Effects in the Education of African Americans
Networked Social Enterprises: A New Model of Community Schooling for Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Facing Challenging Times
Lessons for Teacher Education: The Role of Critical Professional Development in Teacher of Color Retention
From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools
On the Importance of African-American Faculty in Higher Education: Implications and Recommendations
Generating a Networked Improvement Community to Improve Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation: Network Leadership, Organization, and Operation
Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Poverty and Race in Schools and Classrooms
Opening Commentary: The Permanence of Racism, Critical Race Theory, and Expanding Analytic Sites
Student-Led Improvement Science Projects: A Praxiographic, Actor-Network Theory Study
The Five Essential Reasons for the Failure of School Reforms
So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools
Promoting Equitable and Just Learning Across Settings: Organizational Forms for Educational Change
From Designing to Organizing New Social Futures: Multiliteracies Pedagogies for Today
Emerging Perspectives on the Co-Construction of Power and Learning in the Learning Sciences, Mathematics Education, and Science Education
Establishing and Sustaining Networked Improvement Communities: Lessons From Michigan and Minnesota
Breaking the “Adopt, Attack, Abandon” Cycle: A Case for Improvement Science in K–12 Education
Can You Really Measure That? Combining Critical Race Theory and Quantitative Methods
Community Health Improvement and the Community Psychology Competencies
The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy
The Political Economy of Market-Based Educational Policies: Race and Reform in Urban School Districts, 1915 to 2016
Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research
“Geography of Opportunity”: Poverty, Place, and Educational Outcomes
Discursive Burdens: Negotiating Difference in an Education Movement
Toward a Practice-Based Theory for How Professional Learning Communities Engage in the Improvement of Tools and Practices for Scientific Modeling
The Modern Cult of Efficiency: Intermediary Organizations and the New Scientific Management
Democratic School Turnarounds: Pursuing Equity and Learning from Evidence
Equity-Oriented Reform Amid Standards-Based Accountability: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of an Intermediary’s Instructional Practices
Getting Better at Getting More Equitable: Opportunities and Barriers for Using Continuous Improvement to Advance Educational Equity
The Privatization of Education: A Political Economy of Global Education Reform
The Imperative of Social Foundations to (Urban) Education Research and Practice
How Central Office Leaders Influence School Leaders’ Decision-Making: Unpacking Power Dynamics in Two School-Based Decision-Making Systems
Evaluating PK–12 Professional Learning Communities: An Improvement Science Perspective
Teaching and Learning About Complex Systems in K–12 Science Education: A Review of Empirical Studies 1995–2015
Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth
Introduction: Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis
Doing Critical Policy Analysis in Education Research: An Emerging Paradigm
Improvement Science as a Promising Alternative to Barriers in Improving STEM Teacher Quality through Professional Development
Purposes of Higher Education and Visions of the Nation in the Writings of the Department of Education
Questioning the Global Scaling Up of Low-Fee Private Schooling: The Nexus between Business, Philanthropy, and PPPs
Analyzing Education Policy and Reform with Attention to Race and Socio-Economic Status
Five Myths of School Turnaround Policy and Practice
Network Governance and Regional Equity: Shared Agendas or Problematic Partners?
Contemporary Federal Education Policy and Rural Schools: A Critical Policy Analysis
Chinese Lesson Study: A Deliberate Practice, a Research Methodology, and an Improvement Science
What Works in Defining “What Works” in Educational Improvement: Lessons from Education Policy Implementation Research, Directions for Future Research
Putting Collective Impact in Context: A Review of Literature on Local Cross-sector Collaboration to Improve Education
Collective Impact and the New Generation of Cross-Sector Collaborations for Education: A Nationwide Scan
The Intellectual Landscape of Critical Policy Analysis
More than a Network: Building Professional Communities for Educational Improvement
Reconsidering School Improvement Through the Community Equity Literacy Leadership Assessment (CELLA) for Principals
Replacing Representation With Imagination: Finding Ingenuity in Everyday Practices
A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory's Controversiality
Beyond Ritualized Rationality: Organizational Dynamics of Instructionally-Focused Continuous Improvement
Principles of Collaborative Education Research with Stakeholders: Toward Requirements for a New Research and Development Infrastructure
Participatory Design Research and Educational Justice: Studying Learning and Relations Within Social Change Making
Disrupting and Displacing Methodologies in STEM Education: from Engineering to Tinkering with Theory for Eco-Social Justice
Participatory Design Research as a Practice for Systemic Repair: Doing Hand-in-Hand Math Research with Families
Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground
Organizational Theory for Equity and Diversity: Leading Integrated, Socially Just Education
With Scale in Mind: A Continuous Improvement Model for Implementation
Supporting Continuous Improvement in California's Education System
A Model of Continuous Improvement in High Schools: A Process for Research, Innovation Design, Implementation, and Scale
Introduction to New Frontiers in Scaling Up Research
Gates Unveils First-Round Grants in New Education Strategy
Black Girls and School Discipline: The Complexities of Being Overrepresented and Understudied
Introduction to Postracialism in U.S. Public School and Higher Education Settings: The Politics of Education in the Age of Obama