Mixed methods research is increasingly used to study educational inequities, yet its potential to serve as a transformative approach remains underarticulated, particularly in higher education. Drawing on the transformative paradigm and foundational mixed methods scholarship, this essay conceptualizes transformative mixed methods research (TMMR) as an orienting framework that guides how researchers approach study design, knowledge production, and the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in pursuit of justice and social change. Using higher education, including community colleges, as a generative context, the essay articulates core considerations and practices of TMMR that move mixed methods inquiry beyond methodological pluralism toward transformative engagement. In doing so, it positions TMMR as a way of aligning how we study inequity with how we seek to transform it.
India’s multilingual classrooms require more than formal language policy; they require communicative pedagogies that enable equitable participation in learning. Although India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes mother tongue instruction, implementation often overlooks how teachers steer through linguistic diversity in practice. This essay reviews emerging research on teacher-student communication across Indian classrooms, foregrounding adaptive strategies such as translanguaging, visual scaffolding, and peer mediation. These practices, although essential, remain undervalued in teacher education and curriculum design. Introducing the framework of “communicative justice,” the essay argues that meaningful inclusion requires recognizing students’ linguistic repertoires and supporting teachers’ communicative agency. It calls for systemic investment in multilingual pedagogy, inclusive assessment, and discourse-based research to align policy with classroom realities.
This study examined the development of achievement differences by gender from kindergarten through fifth grade using data from almost 12 million U.S. students across nine kindergarten cohorts. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, girls entered school ahead in both subjects, but their math advantage has diminished over time. Boys consistently surpassed girls in math skills during elementary school, while girls maintained a steady lead in reading. These findings challenge assumptions about an early schooling disadvantage for boys and highlight persistent, subject-specific gender gaps. We argue for targeted instructional strategies to support boys’ reading development and counteract stereotypes that may hinder girls’ math achievement.
As international student mobility increases, research on students’ experiences with race and racism has expanded. However, much of current scholarship relies heavily on U.S.-based racial theories, often neglecting how race operates fluidly across global contexts. This conceptual article revisits the concept of “race” by extending critical race theory and raciolinguistics beyond U.S. and Western borders to examine racism and racialization as global phenomena. It argues that international students’ racial identities are shaped by preexisting racial discourses in their home countries, reinforced by global structures of racialized power, and continuously reshaped as they navigate transnational social fields. By broadening the theoretical scope of race, this article highlights the need for a globally inclusive race framework in international student research.
Brown v. Board of Education has played a central role in imagining educational justice in the United States. However, the lessons that we should draw from school desegregation is contested terrain, and desegregation efforts have largely failed both to grapple with the country’s multiracial constituency and to offer a positive vision for schools. In this essay, we use theoretical conceptualizations of justice, relational theories of race, and research literature to offer a more robust vision of public schooling for a multiracial democracy. This multidimensional, situated, and relational framework is one powerful tool for those designing research, policies, and practices that help us move toward multiracial democracy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected students in segregated Black and Latine communities, highlighting the need for equitable workload and resources for teachers to support these students effectively. Analyzing the 2020-2021 National Teacher and Principal Survey data and guided by a critical quantitative framework, we found that teachers in predominantly Black and Latine schools had heavier workloads and were given less adequate resources than their counterparts in predominantly White schools, especially when they were teaching hybrid. We also found that teachers with hybrid instruction in predominantly Black and Latine schools who received more adequate resources were less likely to be dissatisfied and express their intention to leave teaching. Policy and leadership implications in times of crisis are discussed.
Gulino v. Board of Education is a class action employment discrimination lawsuit awarding approximately $1.8 billion to over 5,200 Black and Latine teachers in New York City in response to a racially discriminatory teacher licensure exam. This essay explores Gulino as an attempt at assessment reparation. Using frameworks of harm and constructive-based repair, the essay examines the harm-based logic of the ruling that provides restitution for individual teachers but does not reduce the broader discriminatory pattern of licensure systems. We then explore how a constructive approach to repair might have worked, and might still work, through participatory policy analysis, community answerability, and antiracist assessment. We apply insights from Gulino to current policy shifts loosening teacher licensure requirements and potential lawsuits against edTPA.
Fenton’s article, “Reconsidering the Use of Oral Exams and Assessments: An Old Way to Move Into a New Future,” argues that oral assessment can restore authenticity and support academic integrity in the generative artificial intelligence era. Drawing on this synthesis, this letter offers three refinements to enable adoption at scale: operationalize equity by separating language production from disciplinary reasoning and providing targeted accommodations; bolster validity and reliability by constraining examiner behavior through standardization, recording, and interrater checks; and enhance feasibility via a scalable “viva-lite” oral verification appended to selected tasks.
In recent years, the far-right movement in education, characterized by anti-critical race theory, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-woke campaigns and policies, has gathered steam, threatening to roll back hard-won advances in educational justice, including diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; detracking efforts; student success initiatives for Black and Latinx students; culturally responsive curriculum; ethnic studies; and social-emotional learning programs. The research available on these most recent far-right movements is understandably limited. That said, many education scholars are attempting to study the current wave of far-right activity. To take stock of what these scholars have learned, we conducted a systematic search of the literature, which yielded 80 empirical studies. We review the empirical literature we found and propose a broader, multidimensional research agenda.
Extending findings from a 26-year longitudinal study of educational opportunity, we examine whether opportunities are related to the educational attainment and earnings of children from lower-income households ( n = 226) as a function of when in a child’s development they occur. We compare the predictive power of opportunities accrued within three key developmental stages—early childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence—with the combined power of opportunities accrued across these stages. Our findings point to the value of educational opportunity in all three stages, particularly for educational attainment.
The 70th anniversary of the Brown decision provides an opportunity to shed light on the story of Black educators who were recruited to schools on the Navajo Nation after being fired in the transition to desegregated schooling. With the support of the Navajo Tribal Council, the 1954 Navajo Emergency Education Program established funds to create additional schools throughout the Navajo Nation. Contacted through Black newspaper and magazine advertisements and direct recruitment, hundreds of Black teachers, displaced from schools throughout the South, ended up at schools like Chinle Boarding School. We share one former student’s story and contextualize it within the broader Brown historiography.
Children’s testimonial learning undergoes a developmental shift from credulity bias to selective trust. Whereas young children tend to accept others’ testimony without question, they gradually learn to evaluate its credibility based on cues, such as the speaker’s accuracy, expertise, and contextual reliability. Drawing on research in developmental psychology, this article challenges the romanticized view of children as autonomous learners, highlighting the crucial role of testimony in learning, and further argues that testimonial learning is also shaped by sociopolitical contexts.
Despite growing interest in education for children in conflict and crisis (CAC) settings, evidence on how these children learn and develop—and how best to support them—remains limited. The fragmented research landscape across disciplinary traditions and sectoral silos limits holistic understanding and actionable insights to inform policies and programs. By focusing on four drivers of learning and development—access, quality, continuity, and coherence—the Education Research in Conflict and Crisis (ERICC) framework maps educational processes across local, regional, national, and global levels linking children’s experiences with system-level dynamics. Integrating diverse evidence into a coherent analytic structure, the framework provides a foundation for strengthening education system responses in CACs and generating systematic, actionable knowledge that enriches the global evidence base.
We study guidance counselors by examining how they influence enrollment in Advanced Placement courses. We examine the proportion of students enrolled across different racial and ethnic groups and whether the student-counselor ratio is related to the size of these enrollments. We also consider whether schools with lower ratios have a smaller enrollment gap between White students and students of color. We examine these questions using restricted national data. Our findings show that ease of access to counselors is associated with higher proportions of enrollment for White students and sometimes also for Black students but infrequently for Latino and Asian students. Greater ease of access is also associated with a smaller enrollment gap between White and Black students.
Although YouTube is widely used worldwide, little is known about how pre-K-12 teachers employ it for instructional purposes. This article reports findings from a national survey of U.S. pre-K-12 teachers (N = 393) on their instructional use of YouTube. Nearly three-quarters of respondents reported using the platform as a classroom resource, with almost half doing so at least daily or weekly. On average, teachers devoted 17.9% of instructional time to watching videos, often alongside lectures, group work, and independent practice. These findings underscore YouTube's important role in supporting instruction and enhancing teachers' content knowledge.
Residential instability is linked to lower educational attainment, but research—particularly quantitative research—often overlooks the causes underlying residential moves and the differential effects of forced and voluntary mobility. Using longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine how different trajectories of residential mobility shape high school completion among low-income children. We find that both forced and voluntary moves are associated with lower graduation rates. Repeated moves and moves during adolescence are also linked to lower graduation rates, while eviction-specific moves are not uniquely predictive of graduation.
Fenwick asserts that the failure to integrate Black principals and teachers into desegregating public schools remains the unfulfilled promise of Brown and has resulted in four traumas that continue to stymie the nation's progress toward the conjoined goals of racial justice and educational equity. Brown was not intended to simply mean that African American and White students were to be educated side by side in order to achieve integrated schools. Often overlooked, many legal decisions subsequent to Brown asserted that the criterion for knowing that integration was achieved was the racial integration of district and school leadership and the teaching force.
Labor organizing efforts grew following the COVID-19 pandemic in American higher education institutions. This research brief examines unionization trends at private colleges and universities from 2007 through 2023, revealing staff as the main force behind unionization attempts, followed by contingent faculty. The Service Employees International Union plays a significant role in representing college and university employees. A disproportionate number of elections occurred in a handful of union-friendly states and well-resourced institutions. This study underscores the importance of understanding historic unionization efforts, shedding light on often overlooked staff categories, such as maintenance and campus security.
Students often become homeless due to conventional, economic instability; however, they also become homeless from natural disasters. We provide initial empirical evidence comparing these pathways to homelessness in the context of Houston and Hurricane Harvey. Analyzing 7 years of data on 321,439 students using a comparative interrupted time-series approach incorporating student-level fixed effects, we find students who became homeless due to Harvey were more representative of district students overall and had more similar educational outcomes after the storm. Conversely, students who became homeless due to conventional reasons had more adverse outcomes, which improved after identification. We discuss these findings in light of the differential social constructions of these subgroups and conclude with implications for policy and practice.
