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The paper aims to address the increasing issue of teacher shortages and the lack of diversity in America’s educators. Highly diverse communities need ways to support community members interested in careers as teachers. This article explores one promising approach to reach and inspire high school students considering the teaching profession. Camp ExCEL (Exploring Careers in Education and Leadership) provided a pathway allowing rising high school seniors an opportunity to explore the teaching profession. This pathway utilized the Grow Your Own framework, recruiting students from a diverse community and providing them resources and information that would further efforts to become an educator within their community.

The current study examined outcomes from an education summer camp, using qualitative thematic analysis to reflexively interpret participants’ (n = 29) feelings and beliefs about effective teaching, culturally responsive teaching (CRT), project-based learning (PBL) and their camp experience. Data were collected using Google documents and surveys. The four connected themes that emerged were obstacles and barriers to teaching, qualities of an effective teacher, the impact of culturally responsive teaching and project-based learning on classrooms, and the importance of mentorships within education.

The paper provides insight about how an education camp can support high school students as they explore a career in education. Results suggest that focus on high-quality pedagogy can support student understanding of the career. Students also suggested their perception of effective teaching that includes acknowledging the needs of the whole student, modeling high-quality teaching practices and displaying positive professional dispositions.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to conduct and examine education camps further.

The paper includes implications for the development of other education camps, especially in areas with highly diverse populations.

This paper fulfills an identified need to increase the number of persons pursuing a career in education. The focus on a highly diverse community is also an area of need in education. This article details the description of an education camp and the curriculum used, along with findings from data collected during the first year.

This paper provides a methodological map for guiding the choice and application of research paradigms and design frames that can be of value to a wide range of researchers in the fields of education, social sciences and interdisciplinary studies who are interested in teaching and learning in context. Following an interpretivist/constructivist paradigm, I used a mixed methods research approach to study the spatial experiences of Emirati female students in a gender--‐ segregated educational context. The main component was qualitative, using ethnography, while the quantitative part included a survey. In such a research approach, my reflexivity and unique positionality as both insider and outsider played a significant role. The paper is divided into three sections: the beginning, which justifies the choice and philosophies of the methodological route; the journey, which illustrates the data collection techniques; and the destination, containing reflexive lessons from the field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Ontario principals make sense of difference within student populations and how this sensemaking influences how they do their work.

The paper reports on a qualitative study in Ontario, Canada that included 59 semistructured interviews with school principals from English public, secular school districts in Southern Ontario.

Four themes emerged in principals’ descriptions of student populations: perceiving everyone as the same, or homogeneous; perceiving visible differences associated with particular religions, race and cultures; perceiving invisible or less visible differences, such as academic differences, socioeconomic status, mental health issues, gender identity and sexual orientation; and perceiving both visible and less visible differences through an inclusive lens. When asked about how their understanding of difference influenced how they did their work, principals’ responses varied from not influencing their work at all to influencing practices and activities. Participants’ context – both personal and local – influenced some of the work they did in their role as school principal. Lastly, multiple sources of disconnect emerged between how principals understood difference and the practices that they engage in at their school site; between their sensemaking about difference and diversity and preparing students for the twenty-first century competencies as global citizens; and between principals’ understanding of difference and diversity and existing provincial policy.

Study insights not only contribute to an existing body of literature that examines principals’ sensemaking around difference, but also extend this line of inquiry to consider how this sensemaking influences their professional practice. These findings pose additional research questions about how to approach principal professional learning for inclusive and equitable education. For example, even though principals are contractually responsible for students in their care, why is it that their efforts toward equitable and inclusive schooling appear to be limited to the school site and not the wider community?

Study findings can be used to inform principal preparation programs and professional learning opportunities. Namely, these programs should provide the skill development required as well as the time needed for principals to reflect on their local context and beliefs, and to consider how their local context and beliefs are connected to larger societal efforts to create a more inclusive and equitable society.

School leadership is integral to creating and building more inclusive and equitable public education that improves all students’ success at school. As Ontario’s general population becomes increasingly diverse, it is imperative that principals support success for all students; this can only happen if they understand the complexity of difference within their student populations and beyond, how to address these complexities and how their own understandings and beliefs influence their leadership practices.

Although other papers have examined how principals make sense of difference and diversity in student bodies, this paper also explores how this sensemaking influences how school leaders do their work.