The influence of posthumanist philosophies—broadly defined to include theories such as Baradian new materialism, Deleuzian assemblage theory, Wynterian counterhumanism, Afro-futurism studies, Indigenous studies theories of nonhuman agency, and others—on education research has been increasing at an exponential rate. This chapter provides a review of this literature organized around the theme of ethical and political responsibility. It compares four genres of posthumanist inquiry: assemblage studies, cartographic studies, diffractive studies, and place-based research. It locates these genres on a continuum from descriptive to enactive forms of inquiry. The review concludes with an examination of three different conceptions of futurity that inform posthumanist reconceptualizations of research responsibility, suggesting research is most powerful when all three are attended to in research designs.
Quantitative education research is often perceived to be “objective” or “neutral.” However, quantitative research has been and continues to be used to perpetuate inequities; these inequities arise as both intended effects and unintended side effects of traditional quantitative research. In this review of the literature, we synthesize how quantitative researchers have attempted to use critical paradigms to address questions of equity in education research published over the past 15 years. We identify and describe three main tensions that critical and quantitative researchers navigated: (a) creating and analyzing social group categories, (b) trying to describe commonalities within group experiences without erasing heterogeneity of experience within the group, and (c) determining what is a “significant” result when conducting critical and quantitative research.
A challenge with universal school-based mental health supports is the limited understanding of potential unintended or unanticipated outcomes. In this review, we examined 47 academic and gray literature sources to address the question, “What are the side effects of universal school-based mental health supports?” We discuss how universal supports can positively impact student mental health, enhance school staff’s knowledge and attitudes in addressing mental health topics, and contribute to an improved school climate. However, universal supports can also lead to school staff feeling the strain of resource and time pressures from integrating mental health programming into demanding schedules, voicing frustrations about or exhibiting resistance to mental health supports, and encountering varied, unpredictable outcomes for different student populations across system contexts.
Research has demonstrated positive impacts of behavioral interventions on various educational outcomes for autistic youth, and implementation of these interventions in education settings has been widely advocated. However, recent studies have identified methodological shortcomings in the behavioral intervention evidence base, including lack of reporting on side effects and social validity. This review including 98 studies identified as evidence-based practices by the National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice further highlights the lack of evaluation of side effects and social validity in behavioral intervention research. Suggestions are given regarding assessment of side effects, embedding social validity into intervention, and practical takeaways for educators. Future research and practice should prioritize addressing potential side effects and advancing ethical implementation of evidence-based behavioral interventions.
Role model interventions are often designed to foster students’ pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We hypothesize that role model interventions might also unintentionally shape students’ beliefs concerning the broader social system—their ideologies—leading them to view the (inequitable) status quo in STEM as natural and acceptable. A systematic narrative review (35 articles, 42 studies) indicated that the ideological effects of role model interventions were rarely considered in the literature. Although limited, the few relevant findings revealed both desirable and undesirable side effects of role model interventions on students’ ideologies. This review demonstrates that role models can be a double-edged sword and serves as a call to evaluate role model interventions on criteria beyond motivation.
Performance-based accountability (PBA) has gained popularity worldwide due to its promise to strengthen the effectiveness and equity of educational systems. Nonetheless, its implementation does not always generate the expected reactions within schools. Through a configurative review, we systematically reviewed 133 empirical studies focusing on PBA side effects. We provide novel insights into the literature on PBA side effects, generating a better understanding of how and under what circumstances they are more likely to occur and through which mechanisms. In contrast to existing reviews, our research includes country contexts where accountability designs are predominantly low-stakes and challenges dichotomous ways of thinking about PBA systems. It uncovers side effects across diverse accountability frameworks and investigates differences and similarities in the mechanisms driving them.
There have been countless efforts to improve academic achievement in public schools across the United States, especially in urban school districts. Few efforts, however, use rigorous analytic modeling tools to anticipate and prevent the potential side effects of change. This chapter proposes the application of system dynamics on educational reform efforts by offering a conceptual model, literature review, and research agenda to identify and mitigate the potential side effects of reform. The model is based on interviews and workshops with public school leaders, teachers, and parents in a midsized midwestern urban city. We identify a “capability trap” that may lead to policy resistance with educational reforms. Limitations to this approach are noted, and future areas of research are identified.
Over the past 20 years, there has been a concentrated effort on expanding K–12 pathways, experiences, and access in computer science education (CSEd). Computer science (CS) is a multifaceted discipline within education, and the current emphasis in education policy has focused on how to expand access for K–12 students in CSEd that will lead to increased innovation and bring new participants into the United States labor economy. Industry partners have advocated for policies and incentives to increase pathways to CS opportunities. This chapter interrogates the side effects of CSEd and offers a framework for considering how side effects impact CS teaching and learning. We highlight the barriers that exist within CS and CSEd and how broadening participation in computing efforts could address longstanding equity and disparity issues.
In this systematic review, we examine research from 2009 to 2022 to identify and classify the unintended effects of turnaround in the United States. We develop a conceptual framework classifying three types of side effects—spillover effects, systemic side effects, and internal side effects—and differentiate these side effects from unintended negative intervention effects. We identify four broad categories of side effects within this framework based on the population they impact: communities, school systems, educators, and students. We find that the most prevalent side effects are related to educator experiences, staffing, community reaction, education governance, and the proliferation of external actors. We conclude by calling for future research to explicitly examine common side effects alongside the intended effects of turnaround.
We call attention to the historical divisions in the study of learning defined by populations, with some scholarly communities focused on learners with disabilities and others studying learning with nondisabled students. We believe this to be an unfortunate circumstance that needs to be addressed explicitly so the needs of students with disabilities will be more aptly addressed. We describe the coexistence of these two epistemic cultures that have been maintained in part by disciplinary silos, identify potential contributors to the provenance and persistence of these parallel cultures, and close with reflections on the road ahead.
Teachers in the United States report persistently high levels of stress and burnout. In response, teacher well-being interventions have become increasingly prevalent in educational settings. To advance the development of a rigorous science of teacher well-being, our chapter offers a bioecological framework for understanding this construct; synthesizes findings from 15 years of peer-reviewed, published interventions; and critiques gaps in the literature. Of the 24 studies reviewed, most used experimental methodologies to evaluate mindfulness-based approaches aimed at bolstering teachers’ individual skills of both a positive and negative valence. Ultimately, far more attention to the unique experiences of teachers of color is needed, as is more focus on essential components of interventions and contextual-level factors related to the school system.
This chapter focuses on the utopian methodological approach taken up by social design-based experiments, their conceptual underpinnings, and commitments. The methods are drawn from Gutiérrez’s empirical work and detail ways of seeing and capturing human learning activity crucial to envisioning and enacting new social futures with radical possibilities for those from historically nondominant communities. It elaborates methodological commitments to seeking complexity in human learning activity as it centers equity understood as worldmaking. A review of a range of methodological tools employed across Gutierrez’s studies is presented—from an analytical focus on ensembles and the multiplicity of social spaces in learning ecologies to attending to how people’s repertoires of practices are constituted through participation in everyday activity, as they move in and across the ecologies of everyday life.
This commentary outlines the potential benefits of applying advances in the science of learning and development to special education service delivery and research. Building from a dynamic ecological systems perspective of development, it is argued that special education should focus on the whole child in context to leverage the correlated contributions of multiple factors in the learning and development of students with disabilities. The concept of targeted universalism is presented as a framework for creating universal service delivery structures that are centered on tailoring supports to the daily experiences and functioning of students who receive special education. Person-oriented analysis and longitudinal, idiographic designs are considered as an approach to guide the development and evaluation of such frameworks.
This chapter focuses on effective preparation for civic reasoning, discourse, and problem solving. It reviews literatures, including major synthetic reviews and studies from the science of learning and development (SoLD), civics education, and mathematics education. Based on these reviews, the authors make the case for a more comprehensive form of civic education in which reasoning, discourse, and problem solving permeate the curriculum across grades and subject matter. As an example, the authors illustrate how mathematical tools and techniques inform powerful fact-based civic reasoning and discourse and how SoLD informs both. This approach to learning engages students in politically relevant issues in a nonpartisan way as they prepare to become democratic decision-makers and problem solvers of the future.
We integrate work from human development, psychology, education, and neuroscience to argue for five interrelated developmental principles that together provide the conceptual basis for a fundamental shift in thinking in education about the nature of learning, and hence the work of teaching, and the purpose and design of schools and youth-facing policies. These principles foreground humans’ natural agency, subjectivity, and variability and the dynamic, adaptive interdependence of body, mind, and culture in development and learning. We take the analogy of weaving cloth to highlight the properties and valuable variations of effective educational systems. We argue that reconceptualizing learning is necessary to meaningfully improve schooling and its outcomes, support equity and human dignity, and ultimately, build a sustainable democratic society.
This chapter explores how learning to be in relation is core to human learning. Reductive views of cultural variation and individualized conceptualizations of thriving overlook the processes through which human beings learn to live relationally in ways that support systems transformation and collective well-being. Synthesizing literature on learning and development, we provide a conceptual model that examines four interrelated dimensions of relationality: (a) embodiment, mobilities, attention, and place; (b) affect, awe, and emotion; (c) pedagogical interactions, supports, and participation; and (d) reimagining learning and the disciplines. We argue that attending to relationality in ways that include between-persons + place + more-than-human relations helps conceptualize learning as deeply tied to the ongoing forms of adaptation, ethical relations, and worldmaking required for socio-ecological well-being.
Researchers of child learning and development continue to hone understandings of cultural and social impacts on cognition, development, and education. Concurrently, Indigenous educators call for decolonizing schooling at all levels. Land-based education (LBE), as an instructional approach, responds to calls to decolonize education. The authors use LBE to understand the cultural and social nuances and complexities of Indigenous learning in preschool and primary school age Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children. Through ethnographic case studies in Hawai’i and Sāmoa, we expand conceptions of culture in learning to attune to the diversity and specificity of Indigenous contexts, argue that LBE must be place-based, and recognize land is an active and necessary coparticipant in the learning process.
Transforming the South African education system after decades of apartheid remains a dream for all. This chapter contributes on how this dream can be achieved. To this end, I raise two arguments. First, transformation will require young people to become adept at handling tensions and dilemmas. Second, I propose that the science of learning and development (SoLD) has a possibility to develop such competences. I begin with a look at the colonial education curricula in South Africa until the dawn of a democratic dispensation in 1994. This is followed by a critique of the post-1994 curriculum. In closing, I propose the SoLD model as an alternative to the classroom in South Africa as a route to equity and justice.
