Search results

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, in the fall of 2020, 72.8% of U.S. postsecondary students were enrolled in distance education courses—up from 36.3% in the fall of 2019. While this surge may be explained by a number of factors, one of the most significant factors is the COVID-19-induced pivot to online learning. The rapid and intense expansion in distance education due to COVID-19 offered learners some sense of continuity in their studies, but it also revealed stark inequities in learner resources and access—especially for students of Color and students from lower-income households. Further, as COVID-19 spread, the U.S. roiled in a “twin pandemic” of racial injustice that continued to metastasize—spawning more pain-points such as online environments where racism became unmasked when face-to-face norms were abandoned. These revelations about the shadow side of online learning are particularly concerning in the context of leadership education and its commitment to inclusion, collaboration, and holism. Given this new context for online leadership education, the purpose of this piece is to reflect on how the Journal of Leadership Education has shepherded the journey of online leadership education and what the future of this journey might look like for online leadership educators committed to change. Scaffolded by the Community of Inquiry model, we offer promising practices that address cognitive, social, teaching, and learner presence in the pursuit of culturally relevant/sustaining and equitable online leadership education.

As the P-12 student landscape continues to grow in cultural and linguistic diversity, teacher preparation programs have yet to adequately prepare teacher candidates' teaching and learning skills in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of diverse student demographics. This article examines teacher candidates’ cultural competence and cultural responsiveness to enhance candidates' educator preparation and stimulate candidates' personal growth development as developing culturally and linguistically responsive new teachers. While many teacher preparation programs require one multicultural or diversity education course, the authors examine a minority serving institution's integration of a cultural immersion experience for teacher candidates as one way of supporting their development as culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogues. This paper aims at supporting school districts' need of culturally competent new teachers who have the content knowledge and pedagogy to teach and support culturally and linguistically diverse children. Recognizing this need, this qualitative analysis highlights the importance of and a need for cultural and linguistic competence among teacher candidates. Findings from this study provides a means by which universities can implement cross-cultural coursework and field-based experiences to prepare culturally responsive teacher candidates.

Our goals were to explore the pedagogies applied by instructors that supported Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) student learning in a leadership course and the leadership behaviors BIPOC students identified as being applicable after the course.

Through survey research and qualitative data analysis, three prominent themes emerged.

High-quality, purposeful pedagogy created opportunities for students to learn. Second, a supportive, interactive community engaged students with the instructor, each other and the course material to support participation in learning. As a result, students reported experiencing big shifts, new growth and increased confidence during their leadership courses.

We discuss our findings and offer specific recommendations for leadership educators to better support BIPOC students in their leadership courses and classrooms and for further research with BIPOC students.

This paper is intended to contextualize the major themes of the special issue, “The Intersections of Open Education and Equity Pedagogy” in the Journal for Multicultural Education, by providing a brief history of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) and highlighting the growing focus on social justice within the field. The purpose of this paper is to generate discussions around the potential of OER and OEP to increase equity within education.

This featured paper summarizes and reviews a brief history of OER and OEP, discusses the integration of equity pedagogy within open education, elaborates on the rationale and process for developing the special issue and concludes by identifying challenges and ongoing conversations for the field as a response to the need for social justice action.

Despite increasing acceptance of OER, educators are not aware of how to implement OER and OEP with equity in mind. As OER and OEP continue to expand, teachers across all educational sectors need examples of how to teach effectively with these resources and practices. There is also a rising focus on culturally relevant and sustaining teaching practices, which OEP can complement.

The authors provide this featured piece to contextualize the special issue for those new to open education. The authors hope to further the discussion of social justice and equity pedagogy within open education.

This paper provides background for the special issue, to orient readers to the field of open education.

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.

Tracing the development of a parallel-engaged pedagogy of care that extended and adapted the critical and transformative pedagogies of Freire, De Sousa Santos and hooks to the South African context. The development of this transformative pedagogy addresses the local conditions of an architectural design studio at a postcolonial, post-Apartheid and post “Fees must Fall” protests South African university. This pedagogy used practice-based design research to build a more conscious, critical and careful design practice in both students and educators.

The pedagogy was developed through participatory action research, over five years, from 2019 to 2023 including two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parallel and active engagement of students and educators within a nurturing and caring environment evolved from year to year, through a conscious and critical reflection on the process. Student surveys, reflective essays and focus groups unearth the impact of the parallel-engaged pedagogy of care.

The parallel-engaged pedagogy of care was shown to support and scaffold students becoming more conscious, critical and careful in their design practices validating diverse lived experiences as generative for design and important for social justice and transformative equity.

The parallel-engaged pedagogy of care is part of a global shift to more transformative pedagogies that address student diversity and decoloniality.

Through dismantling traditional hierarchical teaching modes, the pedagogy is more student-led, agile and adaptable. Through centring and demonstrating care in the pedagogy, students are encouraged to develop both self-care and care in their design practice. This is especially critical in the South African context where the cultural capital of the institution, with its roots in colonial and Apartheid education differs from that of the majority of students of colour.