Background/Context: This study focuses on the educational disenfranchisement of Diego, a disabled bilingual Latino youth. Less is known about how youth experience these inequities and what they can contribute to better understanding these educational conditions. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: We combine CHAT and speculative education to offer a future-oriented approach grounded in ethical relationality to understand how Diego made sense of the social conditions of his educational experiences and how he used testimonio to reimagine educational systems. Research Design: The original youth program was implemented as a social design–based experiment, from which we used a case study design to highlight the sensemaking and testimoniando process of Diego, a disabled bilingual Latino participant. Conclusions/Recommendations: The case study documented that Diego demonstrated a critical consciousness about the multiple and intersecting systemic inequities and social conditions that shaped his educational experience. Diego used testimonio as a future-making tool to call for collective action and laid out a vision for a system more responsive to his identities.
Background: This autoethnography focuses on my contradictory lived experiences as a bi/multilingual Chicana mother-scholar of my son (Roberto, age 7), who was diagnosed with Down syndrome in utero. It addresses the contradictory discourses, educational and social policies, and epistemologies about disability and Down syndrome that I have navigated and that continue to shape my pivotal role in his schooling, as well as the emotional, affective, and spiritual dimensions of this role. Purpose of the Study: Inspired by cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) perspectives, I conceive of contradictions around disability and difference as having broader social, cultural, historical, political, and epistemological dimensions. Following these perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the extent to which advancing these contradictions collectively has the potential to not only facilitate new learning and problem solving but also lead to social and system-level change. Engaging these contradictions collectively would involve also addressing the emotional, affective, and spiritual dimensions that emerge for parents and families. Research Design: This analysis draws on autoethnography to center my life experiences and situate them within broader sociocultural contexts and meanings. As a particular kind of narrative, I also draw on testimonio methodology to elaborate the political, social, historical, and cultural histories that shape my life experiences as a Chicana mother-scholar with the goal of affecting social change through consciousness-raising. Recommendations: My testimonio demonstrates that although differences and disabilities are socioculturally and sociohistorically constituted, moment-to-moment instantiations can be unsettling, contested, messy, and painful for parents. To more fully support parents in realizing their pivotal roles, I offer implications from a place of just, affirming, and humanizing love that is radically hopeful and future-oriented. Recommendations include deeply relational approaches that engage the contradictions and collective emotional, affective, and spiritual dimensions that emerge for educators and parents in their collective efforts.
Teacher education programs rarely equip educators in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands to confront the entwined effects of racism, linguicism, ableism, and immigration policy on bilingual special education. In this study, the borderlands are understood not only as a geographic region but also as a sociopolitical space where crossing, surveillance, and in-between belonging make these intersecting inequities especially visible. In response, this instrumental case study examines how a newly designed bilingual special education course organized expansive learning among in-service teachers through the lens of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). Framed as a speculative social design experiment, the course engaged teachers in analyzing local data, historicizing language and disability inequities, and reimagining routine special education artifacts as multilingual tools centered on students and families. Drawing on written reflections, visual narratives, and future-making action plans, the study presents three focal artifact analyses that illustrate dimensions of artifact-mediated praxis: situated problem identification, historicized intersectional interpretation, and transformative agency through redesign. Findings show how selected artifacts made emergent shifts from deficit explanations toward systemic critique and from compliance-oriented documentation toward more participatory practices. The study suggests that future-oriented coursework attentive to mediating artifacts can support equity-centered redesign in bilingual special education teacher learning.
Multilingual learners (MLLs) have been underserved in U.S. schools due to siloed infrastructures, fragmented policies, and enduring deficit ideologies. Educational systems continue to frame MLLs’ learning difficulties in binary terms—language acquisition or disability—ignoring the complex sociocultural, historical, and institutional contexts that shape these learners’ experiences. We highlight the fractured coordination between IDEA and ESSA and the consequences for MLLs’ educational trajectories. We propose an interdisciplinary, proleptic analytical frame to inspire future research at the intersections of language and ability differences. The framework invites the research community to reimagine the boundaries and intersections of language and ability in worlds of difference. Grounded in cultural historical theory, learning sciences, raciolinguistics, and an interdisciplinary critical perspective on disability, our framework centers students’ lived experiences, fluid identities, and future aspirations. The analytical framework outlines four guiding commitments for researchers: (1) reconceptualizing language and language use; (2) documenting the heterogeneity and fluidity of MLL identities; (3) historicizing intersections of language, disability, and race; and (4) designing equity-driven infrastructures to challenge deficit paradigms. Our framework invites scholars to co-design studies with school teams, MLLs, and their families in ways that affirm cultural knowledge, honor linguistic repertoires, and build more just educational futures.
Background: Doctoral students’ role as mentees is well documented in studies on faculty–student mentorship in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM); however, they also frequently serve as mentors to earlier-stage (e.g., undergraduate) students. To date, studies have not yet substantively investigated how the mentoring support doctoral students receive from past and present mentors may motivate them to serve in a similar role. Research Questions: Focusing within the field of informatics, this qualitative study examined how past and present mentors shaped doctoral students’ understanding of their possible pathways to and through doctoral education and their motivations to be mentors. We asked: (1) How do informatics doctoral students make meaning of their past and present mentors as possibility models or anti-mentors in their educational pathways?, and (2) What aspects of relationships with past and present possibility models or anti-mentors shape informatics doctoral students’ motivations to become mentors? Research Design: Guided by the theoretical perspectives of graduate socialization and possible selves, we used a critical constructivist paradigm with narrative inquiry to make meaning of participants’ past, present, and future development as mentors. The data for this study included adapted education journey maps and two semistructured 60- to 75-minute interviews with 10 informatics doctoral students, with each data source exploring how past and present mentors serve as possibility models or anti-mentors in doctoral students’ trajectories as mentees and emerging mentors. We then applied a three-part analytic process to establish organizational, theoretical, and substantive categorizations and facilitate our (re)storying process of participants’ narratives. Conclusions: We offer three overarching findings discussing how, as participants received mentorship and conceptualized their motivations to provide support as mentors, they reflected on: (1) clarifying mentoring philosophies and values, (2) redefining potential pathways as mentees and mentors, and (3) understanding stage-ahead mentoring as fundamental to doctoral student training. By positioning doctoral students as mentors rather than only mentees , this study advances our understanding of the roots and potential consequences of mentorship in doctoral education, thereby informing how the next generation of mentors is trained.
This commentary discusses Chinese international students’ experiences in U.S. higher education across three interconnected temporal frames: the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating U.S.–China geopolitical rivalry, and an emerging AI-shaped future. The pandemic exposed long-standing racialized inequalities, positioning Chinese students simultaneously as valued tuition payers and vulnerable outsiders. Geopolitical tensions further complicate their presence, particularly for STEM students, because these students are often constructed as potential agents of a rising China and subjected to heightened surveillance and scrutiny. Looking forward, AI challenges traditional assumptions about merit and the purpose of higher education. The commentary invites dialogue on institutional responsibility, equity, and ethical engagement with international students.
Background: As secondary English language arts (ELA) classrooms become increasingly linguistically diverse, concerns persist about teachers’ preparedness to provide rigorous and equitable instruction in multilingual classrooms. Multicultural teaching self-efficacy (MTSE) has been associated with diversity-responsive teaching practices. However, little is known about how MTSE relates to instructional practices in linguistically diverse secondary ELA classrooms or whether these relationships vary across levels of linguistic diversity. Purpose: This study examines the relationship between secondary ELA teachers’ MTSE and three dimensions of instructional practice: classroom management, instructional clarity, and cognitive activation. It also investigates whether these relationships vary according to the level of classroom linguistic diversity. Research Design: This study used data from the 2018 U.S. Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), drawing on a nationally representative sample of 364 secondary ELA teachers. Survey-weighted multivariable regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between MTSE and instructional practices and to test whether classroom linguistic diversity moderated these relationships. Conclusions: MTSE was not directly associated with classroom management, instructional clarity, or cognitive activation. However, classroom linguistic diversity moderated several of these relationships. Teachers in multilingual classrooms reported lower levels of instructional clarity and cognitive activation overall, yet those with higher MTSE reported greater use of both practices. These findings highlight the importance of MTSE in sustaining rigorous and equitable instruction in linguistically diverse ELA classrooms.
Context: Coaching has been associated with changes in teacher practice and gains in student learning, but logistical and financial obstacles limit the extent to which individualized coaching can be offered and sustained. These challenges are especially pronounced in social studies, a subject area where teachers receive little content-specific oversight, professional development, or instructional coaching. Against this backdrop, districts would be wise to leverage experienced social studies teacher leaders to serve as coaches for their colleagues. Doing so would require supporting teacher leaders to take on new identities as coaches. Focus of Study: In this study, we follow two middle-school teacher leaders who were invited to coach fellow teachers in their district as part of a design-based effort to create a teacher-led coaching program. The program was intended to help teachers enact document-based history lessons that centered student sensemaking. After two years, one teacher left the classroom to take on greater administrative responsibility over the coaching program; the other left coaching altogether. How do we account for these different trajectories? Research Design: In this comparative case study, we applied the dynamic systems model of role identity (DSMRI) to analyze the coaches’ interviews over two years and elucidate the factors that contributed to these disparate outcomes. Conclusions: Our findings make a conceptual case for the complex dynamic process of coach role identity development: the development of an aligned coach role identity cannot be reduced to a single factor, such as instructional vision or experience, but rather should be seen as a constellation of personal and situated factors that shape the extent to which one has opportunities to engage in productive role identity exploration.
This special issue interrogates enduring inequities at the intersections of language and disability by advancing speculative approaches as historically grounded, future-oriented modes of inquiry. Moving beyond technical refinements that leave dominant systems and deficit logics intact, the collection foregrounds historical epistemology, sociocultural imagination, and collective agency as foundations for educational transformation. Across five articles, an interview, and a commentary, contributors examine how multilingual learners with and without disabilities, families, educators, and researchers disrupt monolingual and ableist assumptions, reframe educational problems, and design alternative tools, practices, and learning ecologies. Collectively, the issue positions speculation not as abstract futurism but as an ethical, epistemological, and methodological project that exposes historically sedimented contradictions, expands knowledge and possibility, and constructs more humanizing and expansive educational futures grounded in human dignity and collective flourishing.
This interview is part of a special issue on reimagining education for learners at the intersections of disability and language, with a focus on speculative approaches for equity and inclusion. In this conversation with Alfredo J. Artiles, Nicole Mirra discusses speculative approaches and methods.
In this commentary, I trace the evolution of “sense of belonging” from a foundational psychological construct to a widely studied element of student experience in higher education, particularly for marginalized groups. I also differentiate between the idea of belonging as a psychological construct and as a sociopolitical one, acknowledging its complexities. I then critique the recent politicization of the term, illustrating how its association with DEI initiatives has led to censorship pressures that undermine research and institutional decision-making, with some examples from my own personal and professional experiences. Next, I present evidence to suggest that fostering belonging is financially advantageous for colleges and universities through its positive effects on recruitment, retention, graduation, and alumni engagement. Finally, I include a call to action for institutional leaders to respond to government pressure with principled advocacy and continued support for belonging.
Background: Community colleges are central access points to postsecondary education, particularly for racially minoritized, low-income, first-generation, and adult students. However, the COVID-19 pandemic intensified existing inequalities in health, employment, and educational access. Understanding how community college enrollment changed before and after the COVID-19 outbreak requires attention not only to aggregate trends but also to how institutional and labor market conditions shaped enrollment differently across race and gender. Purpose: This study examines how institutional and labor market conditions shaped first-time degree-seeking community college enrollment at the intersection of race and gender in the United States before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. The study centers the COVID-19 outbreak as a natural intervention that exposed how systemic inequities in health, employment security, and educational opportunity affected access to open-access community colleges. Research Design: Using national datasets from 2017 to 2021, this study applied a Quantitative Critical Race (QuantCrit) approach and a longitudinal multilevel mixed-effects design. The analysis focused on first-time degree-seeking enrollment in open-access community colleges, disaggregated by race and gender. Institutional characteristics, minority-serving institution status, and local labor market conditions were included as key predictors, with the COVID-19 period modeled as a critical disruption in enrollment patterns. Conclusions: The findings show that community college enrollment declines were sharpest for Black and Latina women, while enrollment patterns varied substantially across minority-serving colleges. Labor market conditions were also associated with racialized and gendered disparities: local unemployment was linked to higher White enrollment but lower enrollment for students of color, while growth in healthcare and social-service employment was associated with reduced enrollment for women of color. These findings suggest that institutional and economic contexts interact with racialized and gendered structures to shape who accesses higher education. The study calls for equity-centered policy approaches and more critical uses of quantitative data in postsecondary education research.
Although higher education is rich in talent and innovation, it remains poor in structures that allow good ideas to persist. This commentary confronts an uncomfortable truth: when progress depends primarily on individuals, the system itself becomes fragile, particularly because people experience, inhabit, and are positioned within systems in unequal ways. I argue that our goal should not be to make ourselves indispensable, but to build systems and structures capable of thriving without us. Accordingly, I advance the notion of intentional dispensability : a commitment to and practice of designing sustainable policies, relationships, and infrastructures that endure and evolve amid inevitable human turnover. Achieving such dispensability requires four complementary approaches: share what we know, formalize relationships and collaboration, plan for who comes next, and reward system builders. Together, these approaches reflect a deep ethic of care for those whose success relies on stable, functional systems: students, colleagues, and institutions alike. Taken up as a practical lens for leadership, organizational change, and policy development, intentional dispensability helps ensure that the work continues beyond us, and future generations inherit systems more functional, inclusive, and resilient than those we found.
Background: Technology and the tech industry have gained increasing power in many societies over the past half century. In Israel, like other countries in the Global North, the public education system has experienced a shift toward enterprise culture, with policymakers and educators jointly collaborating in idealizing the Israeli high-tech sector. Focus of the Study: In light of the growing dominance of tech ideology in the Israeli education system, the study explores how dominant views of the tech industry may influence teachers’ perceptions of the industry and tech ideology’s role in education. We were particularly interested in exploring how a host of factors, including teachers’ previous professional experience in the tech industry (or lack thereof) and the content area they teach, shape their perspectives on the involvement of the tech industry in Israeli public education. Research Design: Our data consists of interviews with 22 Israeli high school teachers. The participants were purposively chosen to include two groups of teachers who differ in their professional experience and background: teachers who joined the profession following substantial experience in the tech industry and teachers who joined the teaching profession early on and evolved solely through its ranks. Conclusion: Findings suggest that (1) teachers both admire and resist tech ideology and its impact on schools, and (2) their attitudes toward the tech industry relate to their educational aims, highlighting the significance of tech involvement and its hegemonic impact on the future of teachers and public education. The discussion employs institutional isomorphism to illustrate how the education system might imitate the tech industry, identifying discursive and normative conditions under which institutional educational change may be legitimized or resisted.
After 11 years of being a professor, I finally have the privilege of going on sabbatical. Most people ask me: “What major project do you plan to work on during that time?” To which I have honestly been answering: “Myself!” I am going to focus on myself because I am tired. But why am I so tired, and how did I get to this point? Using “select” journal entries over my 11 years, I share my pedagogical and personal evolution and learning about the professoriate and about myself. This commentary offers insights into how current scholars and emerging scholars might navigate the academy, its demands, and their own self-expectations. And in reading it, hopefully you will identify and implement your own strategies for how to profess while being healthy and whole.
Background: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) have acknowledged culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) as a transformative approach to addressing equity in higher education. However, faculty often lack the formal training and communal support necessary to implement CRP meaningfully. With HSIs enrolling nearly two-thirds of all Latinx undergraduates, understanding how institutions cultivate servingness through faculty development is essential. Focus of Study: This study examines how faculty members who participated in a CRP-focused curriculum design institute characterize their experiences as both learners and educators. It explores how these experiences shape their teaching philosophies, classroom practices, professional identities, and understanding of servingness. The central research question is: How do faculty characterize their experiences of learning and teaching as a result of their engagement in a CRP-focused curriculum design institute? Research Design: This study employs a qualitative, embedded case study design to analyze the experiences of 25 faculty participants across disciplines at an HSI. We analyzed interviews and classroom observations from faculty participants for this study. Guided by CRP and servingness frameworks, the thematic analysis revealed how this institute fostered transformation, cultivated pedagogical reflexivity, and built communal capacity. Conclusions: Findings suggest that faculty experienced both personal and pedagogical transformation, practiced reflexivity as an ongoing process of teaching with intentionality and equity, and built communal capacity by cultivating cross-disciplinary connections that advanced servingness as both a pedagogical and institutional commitment. Together, these insights highlight that CRP is not only a matter of individual teaching strategies but also a structural shift, positioning faculty development as a powerful lever for equity-centered transformation in higher education.
Background: In interrogating systems of whiteness that govern the protection of language ownership, this study draws on raciolinguistics and highlights the experiences of Hispanic male teachers in Texas K-12 systems, where responsibilities and knowledge sharing were shaped by assumed linguistic abilities. On a national scale, Hispanic male teachers account for less than 2% of the teacher workforce. As noted in the literature, this small percentage is due to several reasons, such as teacher pathway programs not being inclusive; teachers having to navigate educational systems that reinforce racialized, gendered, and linguistic prejudices; and, as documented in this study, stereotypical assumptions of their linguistic identities. The overrepresentation of Eurocentric language perspectives and the underrepresentation of the perspectives of those historically marginalized that threaten settler futurity ideologies within the vast majority of K-12 environments influence how Hispanic male teachers navigate their educational spaces when representing all of their identities.Purpose: For this study, we examine how 839 Hispanic male teachers navigate their Texas K-12 school environments when assumptions about their linguistic identities impact their sense of belonging, professional opportunities, and relationships with colleagues, administrators, and students. This paper contributes to the literature on Hispanic male teachers by centering their voices, which are often excluded by dominant epistemologies.Research Design: Our research draws on data from the National Hispanic Male Teacher Survey (NHMTS), which explored the experiences and characteristics of Hispanic male teachers in the United States. Participants were identified through the fall 2021 Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) survey, which is administered by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Survey design prioritized inclusive and equitable practices by employing multiple-select and self-describe options, in addition to working alongside Hispanic male teachers to develop the study. Our analysis of the qualitative data, including survey responses and focus groups, was done in relation to the literature through a reflective lens.Conclusion: Hispanic male teachers in Texas navigated assumptions of their linguistic identities and expressed (1) a lack of racial and cultural awareness from colleagues and administrators, (2) assimilation pedagogies and praxis inside and outside the classroom, and (3) bilingualism as both a bridge and a burden. The dismantling of white Eurocentric language ideological practices within educational systems begins with counterstories, like those of Hispanic male teachers in this study, that refute the normative behaviors and beliefs that govern the systematization of white Eurocentric language norms as standard and return ownership of one's linguistic identity to those who have been siloed by inferior assumptions.
Background: Black women remain significantly underrepresented among tenure-track and tenured faculty in U.S. higher education, despite decades of graduate preparation initiatives. Graduate preparation programs provide invaluable resources and experiences that support historically minoritized students’ pathways into the academy. Prior research focused on navigational challenges and barriers, but there is less insight regarding the role of graduate preparation programs in shaping academic pursuits and faculty bidirectional trajectories. The landscape for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs has endured cataclysmic shifts in recent years, so understanding the impact of prefaculty’s exposure to academia through undergraduate research preparation and resource opportunities is critical to their long-term success in higher education. Purpose: To better understand the influence of preparation programs, more understanding is needed on how to create academic spaces for Black women academics to flourish and not simply survive. Inquiring how Black women faculty persisted through programs that increased their cultural and social capital needed to navigate higher education into faculty careers is one way to reveal pathways for meaningful inclusion and retention. As such, in this paper, we asked: How do Black women faculty reflect on their graduate preparation program experiences? In what ways, if any, did their experiences in these programs facilitate their pathways into the professoriate? Research Design: We combined Black feminism and a bidirectional socialization model to contemplate the racialized and gendered experiences Black women faculty encounter during their socialization through the academy. This analysis drew data from a larger, explanatory sequential, mixed methods study focused on the ways that racial stress in the academy relates to Black women faculty’s health outcomes. We focused on the qualitative component, which consisted of two rounds of interviews with 54 faculty; in this analysis, we focused on the 17 participants who discussed graduate preparation programs and identified participation in these programs on their CVs. Recommendation: This article asserts that through these experiences a bidirectional possibility exists where Black women faculty are affirmed in their backgrounds, identities, and research interests through early exposure to be socialized as valuable knowledge producers. We recommend institutions and practitioners review missions and visions to ensure a bidirectional socialization is embedded where the Black women who are matriculating through these programs into the academy are also challenging and changing the program to be more intentional. As the sociopolitical landscape of diversity, equity, and inclusion programming has continued to shift in recent years, it is crucial to understand how the norms and resources needed to thrive in the academy influence Black women who participated many years after initial exposure.
Background: Emerging educational technologies like artificial intelligence, automated assessment, and online proctoring have been adopted quickly across higher education, often without enough critical examination of how they affect disabled students and faculty. No comprehensive framework has existed to analyze how these technologies, as designed, marketed, and implemented by institutions, both reflect and shape understandings of disability. Technologies designed for disabled people often view disability as a problem to fix rather than a valued aspect of human diversity, thus reproducing the inequities institutions claim to address. Focus of Study: This paper introduces DISCO-Tech (DISability Conservation Technology Framework), a conceptual tool for critically analyzing how educational technologies position disability. The framework synthesizes Shew's critique of technoableism, Costanza-Chock's design justice principles, and crip technoscience into a unified analytical structure grounded in higher education contexts. DISCO-Tech considers not only whether a technology is accessible but also whether it conserves disability as a valued aspect of human diversity and whether it reflects disabled people's lived experiences rather than idealized narratives of unrestricted access. Research Design: This paper employs theoretical analysis grounded in critical disability studies, interpretive scholarship, and disability activist knowledge. DISCO-Tech is organized around two intersecting axes (Conservation versus Normalization and Lived Experience versus Idealization), creating four analytical quadrants. The framework is illustrated through applied analysis of learning management systems, Al tutoring tools, and proctoring platforms, showing how it reveals ableist assumptions that single-axis evaluations overlook. Conclusions: We argue that moving beyond accessibility compliance requires analytical tools that center disability as a valued form of human diversity rather than a deficit to be fixed. DISCO-Tech shows how technologies that appear inclusive can simultaneously erase disability identity, impose normative expectations, and create new burdens for disabled people, contradictions only visible through multidimensional analysis. We suggest this framework for faculty development, institutional technology review, vendor evaluation, and research at the intersection of disability and educational technology.
Background: Racial disproportionality in school discipline is an obdurate injustice, particularly for Indigenous youth who experience systemic exclusion and punitive treatment in educational spaces. Although interventions such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) have helped reduce exclusionary practices, they have not adequately addressed racial disparities. Emerging scholarship calls for race-conscious, locally grounded approaches that move beyond universal, technical solutions to foster systemic transformation. In response, the Indigenous Learning Lab (ILL), a participatory co-design intervention, was launched with a rural high school to develop a culturally responsive and inclusive behavioral support system that addresses school discipline disparities affecting American Indian students. Research Question: This study examines how a rural school community, serving students across 12 townships and an American Indian reservation, engaged in critical implementation praxis, iterative cycles of collective reflection and action, to enact a new behavioral support system co-designed through the ILL. Specifically, it investigates how school community members, including students, families, educators, and Tribal partners, collaboratively refined the system through reflective dialogues and design experiments that responded to the school’s sociocultural and political realities. The study explores how the school community addressed systemic contradictions that emerged during implementation, disrupting and reimagining punitive disciplinary structures. Research Design: This study employs Critical Design Ethnography to analyze the participatory co-design process led by the school community. Data generation focused on the implementation phase of the ILL and included video/audio recordings, field notes, session artifacts, and weekly memos. An abductive analytic approach was used to identify patterns of reflective dialogue and collective action across 11 implementation team sessions, involving educators, students, Tribal partners, and university researchers. Conclusions: Findings indicate that critical implementation praxis enabled the school community to (1) continually revisit and concretize core principles of dignity, equity, and Indigeneity into actionable policies and practices; (2) work through systemic contradictions by transforming germ-cell ideas into context-specific programs and relational practices; and (3) build bottom-up, community-led forms of implementation that redefined discipline as community building rather than exclusion. Through ongoing reflection and iterative refinement, the behavioral support system was reconceptualized as a dynamic, evolving artifact, positioning systemic change not as a one-time intervention but as a sustained commitment to educational justice. This study illustrates how context-specific, community-led implementation praxis can catalyze systemic transformation and suggests that future discipline reform efforts should prioritize relational trust, the school community’s agency, and critical reflection to develop locally meaningful responses to racialized school discipline.
