In this article, we explore frameworks that center cultural and academic excellence of Black teachers and children. Centering the voices of Black thought leaders and scholars such as Asa Hilliard, Betina Love, Gholdy Muhmmad, Gloria Boutte, and Joyce King, we identify for the reader how to create spaces that allow Black children and teachers to pursue educational excellence. Drawing upon Black-centric educational principles and scholarship, define and explore frameworks that positions educational success and excellence within a cultural context that focuses on Black children's holistic development, wellness, and success. We also present frameworks to be considered in the preparation and support of Black teachers within higher education/teacher education programs. Last, we propose allyship and a spotlight on access for Black teachers and children to demonstrate the maroon within us-cultural and academic excellence.
Community/parent engagement techniques as well as school and child well-being, emphasizes co-constructed parent engagement techniques. For Black and Indigenous groups, as well as other People of Color (BIPOC), community-wealth approaches can garner effective parent-engagement. Drawing from current and historic literature on successful parentengagement in communities of color, the article highlights how anti-CRT efforts ignore decades of insight about effective parent engagement practices. Parent engagement in BIPOC communities is more complex than simple, and this article illuminates how aspects of middle-class European American parenting dominate school policy. Although the political rhetoric of conservative forces would argue that Critical Race Theory has no place in elementary schools, successful co-constructed approaches to parent engagement show that community stakeholders, including Black families, refugee, immigrant, and other low-income communities, welcome culturally congruent approaches to parent engagement.
Systemic racial violence, the militarization of the police, and injustice are serious issues that continue to plague schools and communities across the United States. Though politicians have tried to ban the use of critical race theory in schools, more educators are seeking critical pedagogical practices to interrupt and address systemic racism in schools. Critical Race English Education (CREE) combines critical race theory and critical literacy theory to address racism in schools, dismantle the white -washed cannon, and promote black and brown literacies in English classrooms. This article explores how English teachers put CREE into practice at the height of the 2020 election by using the novel "The Hate You Give" by Angie Thomas. Teachers navigated their own fears and a volatile political climate to elevate the voices of marginalized students and cultivate critical literacy and allyship in their classrooms. The researcher is a black teacher educator and former English teacher who interviewed and observed English teachers as they practiced CREE in different high schools. In exploring these stories, educators can learn more about allyship and engagement with marginalized communities through Critical Race English Education.
This article discusses the scholarly significance of incorporating critical theories and pedagogies in teacher preparation programs by sharing the experiences of two teacher education faculty who are coconspirators in their teaching for social justice in the states of Mississippi and Texas, respectively. Drawing on their unique backgrounds, they share classroom experiences implementing critical pedagogy in their teacher preparation programs. First, they discuss their positionalities to this work, especially in this age where curriculum is increasingly contested. Second, they discuss pedagogical strategies that can be useful in interrupting the revisionist curriculum, considering recent legislation that hinders the implementation of critical curriculum. Third, they discuss how their pedagogical practices have fostered a deeper understanding of socio-political and historical events, including civic engagement in both their students and themselves.
This article theorizes emancipation literacies as a framework for how Black and Brown youth reimagine their lives in and beyond schooling. Stemming from a classroom exchange that revealed tensions among emancipation, liberation, and freedom, the authors argue that emancipation is a self-directed, ongoing practice rather than a status granted by institutions. Grounded in Black intellectual traditions such as Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Critical Race Theory, the framework centers visibility, identity, voice, the Black radical imagination, knowledge and power, and redemption. Drawing on qualitative research in classrooms in Jamaica and North Carolina, as well as fieldwork with youth at a Black Lives Matter protest in the Rust Belt, the article illustrates how emancipation literacies operate across educational and community settings. It offers guidance for educators seeking to honor lived experiences, disrupt imposed narratives, and support youth in imagining futures rooted in dignity, agency, and possibility.
This article draws from Critical Pedagogy and Community Cultural Wealth to center the perspectives of Puerto Rican families with students enrolled in U.S. public schools. Scholarship from two separate projects by the author provides lessons for educators and policymakers hoping to better support culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) communities. One project focused on the experiences and voices of displaced Puerto Rican mothers, students, and other stakeholders in 2 Florida districts, while the second focused on the experiences of Puerto Rican mothers living in Pennsylvania post-displacement. The scholarship that emerged illustrates how mothers navigate their communities and schools for their children, advocating for them, modeling dispositions and practices, and offering useful insights. Lessons include the importance of (1) community-building, (2) focusing on families' educational goals, and (3) providing language supports that reflect asset-based language ideologies of CLD students and families.
This article draws upon the experiences of three members of an Anti-Racist Task Force (ARTF) at a predominantly white university (PWI) in the Midwest. The group was conceived as a space where selected faculty members would think deeply about and respond to the racial and social unrest that overtook the United States in the summer of 2020 and identify ways the unrest brought to light the university's role in turning away from anti-racist practices instead of embracing them. Police murders of unarmed Black people made trauma associated with white police officers and Black people in the U.S. even more apparent. Coupled with this was the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the isolation of all people, making it difficult to engage with others. The article shares relevant reflections on the potential and difficulties of anti-racist work; offers ways faculty at other institutions can strive to dismantle white supremacy in higher education educational spaces; and bestows practical strategies for engaging in anti-racist advocacy on behalf of university faculty. Implications and limitations of this labor are also recognized.
This article calls for educators to think about what it might mean to listen deeply and to think critically to sounds and silences as they exist as a form of curriculum in their classrooms, in the corridors of schools, and across the broader school community. The author argues that by attending to what one learns through the reverberations that compose sounds and silences in schools, educators can engage in a form of critical allyship or, as possible, co-conspiratorship that attends to the complex nature of such relations and relationships. Finally, this article calls for a greater attention to curriculum theorizing as a central facet of both attending to sounds and silences in schools and in being and becoming a stronger ally to and with minoritized populations.
As African immigrant and transnational youth navigate geographic and digital borders, they bring their languages into spaces shaped by global anti-Blackness, anti-immigrant sentiments, and hierarchical linguistic ideologies. Amid increasing global migration and the enrollment of African immigrants and transnational youth in schools within societies governed by strict immigration and language policies, I propose the African Linguistic Gaze (ALG). ALG foregrounds African youths' agency and desire in shaping how their languages are heard and valued. Comprised of six tenets, ALG theorizes African youths' linguistic lives at the intersection of transnationalism, ethnocultural family values and practices, and racialization. It also recognizes African youths' repertoires as fluid and evolving while embedded in global struggles against linguistic erasure. Drawing from a critical ethnographic research partnership with African youth and families, the article concludes with pedagogical and policy implications that urge schools to expand linguistic equity in solidarity with other racialized multilingual students.
For over a century, teacher evaluation in the U.S. has been the primary practice providing feedback to teachers on their performance. However, coaching, because of its promising results, is fast becoming a preferred source. In addition, there are reports that a "computer coach"-not a "human person"-is giving teachers feedback. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) enabled feedback and its digital technology have the potential to change the practice of delivering feedback to teachers, promising to save time and reduce paperwork. It also appeals to our need to simplify and reduce the hard work of improving teaching while being convenient, unobtrusive, and easy to use. This article describes how automated feedback, an emerging practice that has become a federal educational priority, has arrived at this moment, what appears to be its promises and challenges, and what cautions should guide practice. The author hopes that educators will not be lured by the promises of automated feedback but stay informed and cautious. In addition, the author hopes this article starts a conversation before automated feedback circumscribes practice.
Joyful and participatory classroom culture is the foundation for dialogic literacy communities. The significance of joyful pedagogies is particularly overlooked in contexts of teaching children with literacy difficulties. This article highlights pedagogical feedback methods to support elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) in developing dialogic and joyful literacy communities in small group differentiated literacy instruction. I detail feedback methods provided within PSTs' final reading practicum internship. Self-reflective feedback, teacher educator feedback, and peer-to-peer feedback are embedded across practitioner research and multiple pedagogical tools to nurture dialogic communities of joy. Impacts from PST feedback include a nuanced understanding of the relationship between student engagement and literacy development through differentiated instruction, as well as an expanded conception of joyful literacy communities across disciplines. Future directions for pedagogical feedback are further discussed, including community-engaged teacher education, novice teacher professional development, and digital technologies to hone dialogic literacy communities of joy.
Feedback is a significant element in the supervision process; yet, teachers rarely receive content-based feedback from their supervisors. As mathematics education continues to advance and encounter emerging challenges, the role of effective supervision becomes more crucial. We highlight the importance of content-specific supervision and feedback in the development of mathematics pre- and in-service teachers. We apply pedagogical content knowledge, developmental supervision, and reflective theory to illustrate how supervisors can provide meaningful and actionable feedback to mathematics teachers.
This article presents a theory-informed framework for using ChatGPT to enhance instructional feedback to K-12 teachers for teaching engineering terminology. Engineering concepts often present abstract challenges for young learners, creating instructional difficulties for teachers without specialized training. While generative AI tools like ChatGPT offer promising support, their educational value depends on principled and context-sensitive design. Grounded in Control Theory, Sociocultural Feedback Theory, and Feedback Intervention Theory, our framework enables ChatGPT to deliver goal-oriented and developmentally appropriate feedback through structured prompt design. We demonstrate theory-based prompt examples and analyze ChatGPT's capabilities alongside its limitations, particularly regarding contextual and pedagogical awareness. We recommend that ChatGPT be used as a complementary tool to support teachers' reflective practice, rather than as a replacement for traditional professional development. We conclude by identifying future research opportunities for integrating AI-mediated feedback into sustainable teacher learning systems that enhance engineering education outcomes.
Inclusive education demands that all students are afforded opportunities to learn and belong in classroom communities. Yet, barriers persist. We argue that centering access, equity, and inclusion in a common classroom occurrence - the observation of teaching by a supervisor or coach - can advance these goals. We offer a professional development practice, grounded in Disability Studies in Education, which informs the focus and approach while challenging notions of a presumed "norm." We asked: In what ways can collaborative professional development cycles use performance-based feedback to prioritize the participation, membership, and learning of all students? We outline a 4-phase cycle that positions teachers and coach-supervisors as co-inquirers. We draw on the Universal Design for Learning framework to guide decision-making for curricular planning, instruction, analysis, reflection, and goal setting. In these ways, we aim to support the development of inclusive pedagogy.
Despite their distinct purposes, formative supervision and summative evaluation are frequently conflated in teacher evaluation systems, limiting opportunities for meaningful teacher growth and trusting supervisor-teacher relationships. This article proposes a conceptual framework to guide administrators' approaches to providing teachers with feedback as part of a cyclical formative supervision process consisting of frequent informal observations followed by timely reflective conversations. Guided by instructional supervision and trust theories and concepts developed by education scholars and practitioners, the article asserts that trust will be developed through reflective conversations if supervisors use collaborative and nondirective feedback strategies with an emphasis on teachers' perspectives and strengths. Trusting supervisor-teacher relationships support teachers in their willingness to take risks and seek supervisors' feedback and guidance. The article also recommends a specific formative supervision approach that is aligned to, and puts into practice, the formative supervision concepts and theories depicted through the conceptual framework.
Currently, 2 of the important movements impacting teaching and learning in schools are high rates of teacher turnover and a shift away from the accountability-based teacher evaluation systems implemented about a decade ago. Although many issues influence how teachers feel about their profession and shape decisions to stay or leave, one important aspect is teacher sense of autonomy and agency. Self-determination theory suggests there are 3 basic and universal psychological needs: autonomy, concerning the ability to make and carryout independent choices; competence; and relatedness. In this article, we describe how teacher retention and evaluation are connected and propose ways to use feedback as a lever for improving teacher retention. Consistent with self-determination theory, we offer suggestions for evaluators regarding how to engage in evaluation feedback with teachers in ways that will support autonomy directly and through fostering competence and relatedness to ultimately help them remain in the field.
Teacher reflection is key to the improvement of teaching and learning, and reflective feedback from supervisors and colleagues is a powerful way to promote teacher reflection. In this article I describe teacher reflection and reflective feedback, then propose 4 frameworks for reflective feedback: clinical supervision, peer video analysis, teacher learning walks, and collaborative autobiography. In clinical supervision, the supervisor takes the lead in providing reflective feedback to an individual teacher, while also requesting such feedback from the teacher. In the other 3 frameworks, teachers are facilitated by the supervisor as they provide reflective feedback to one another.
School leaders are often tasked with supporting teachers in situations where leaders lack meaningful content or disciplinary expertise, making instructional leadership challenging. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how collaborative work, anchored in communities of practice (CoP), distributed leadership, and sensemaking theory, can contribute to leadership capacity for content- and discipline-specific feedback. Two exemplars - one in social studies and one in instruction for bilingual/multilingual students - illustrate how leaders can build leadership content knowledge (LCK) through engagement in rich meaning-making alongside teachers and content/instructional specialists. Supervisory tools and artifacts familiar to the context of practice serve as boundary objects as collaborative teams dialogue to heighten awareness and deepen understanding of content- and discipline-specific pedagogies. This work demonstrates that school leaders need not be expert in every area but can develop the capacity needed to support teachers across a range of content areas and disciplines.
