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The authors' purpose is to illuminate ways in which care within the mentor–mentee relationship influences the efficacy of mentoring for/in the professoriate, within and beyond the novel circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A narrative inquiry design drew on the authors' distinct positionalities and experiences of mentoring and being mentored by one another to provide a multi-layered analysis of mentor–mentee relationships. Utilizing care theory, we paid particular attention in our narratives and analysis to the affective dimensions of mentoring within the distinct context created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our data analysis revealed three themes: (1) mentor humility was relevant to mentees' success, (2) relationship longevity mattered, and (3) caring mentoring relationships were affectively and empirically generative.

Narrative inquiry, generally, is limited in its generalizability but can be a powerful tool to facilitate knowledge sharing. Our analysis suggests areas which merit further research and may have broader implications. Namely, during trying times the normalization of professor humility may enhance the quality and generativity of the mentoring relationships, especially when combined with networking support.

We make seven recommendations to enhance the efficacy of professors as mentors and mentees in need of mentorship.

Mentors who practice care-for their mentees, as opposed to care-about, enhance the efficacy of the mentoring relationship.

This introductory chapter to “The Emerald Handbook of Evidence-Informed Practice in Education: Learning from International Contexts” describes the volume's purpose/intended contribution, analytic framework, and organization. Accordingly, first it provides a definition of evidence-informed practice while also outlining challenges and benefits of broadly bringing it about. This chapter explains how comparative analyses using systems approaches – which have, to date, been scarce and limited – can hold great potential for achieving context-specific insights regarding how to foster EIP. The present volume, as noted in the chapter, aims to do just this: It houses a massive, international comparative study of educators' patterns of evidence use across a range of global contexts. Volume contributors each followed a particular, dual analytic framework, which is detailed in this chapter. The chapter concludes with a description of how the volume is organized and provides a brief thematic analysis to showcase the volume's intended contribution.

This chapter examines Massachusetts (USA) public primary and secondary educators' use of evidence-informed practices (EIPs). We pay special attention to the role of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in this regard while employing the dual analytical frame laid out in this handbook's introduction. The first section provides relevant background/context and tentatively classifies the system according to the matrix. The next sections describe educators' use of evidence, and provide context, insights, and analyses in relation to the patterns presented. We note how certain forms of data are routinely being used (and describe DESE's role in facilitating and shaping such use), and we describe some bottom-up (and DESE-supported) research that is occurring within districts. Applying institutional analysis to this case, EIP in Massachusetts is skewed top-down in important ways, but there is also recognition of, and some earnest efforts also/instead to promote, more bottom-up EIP in and across Massachusetts schools and educational organizations. Overall, we advance this case as providing an example of a robust infrastructure at the macrolevel (DESE) that can facilitate and shape EIP, and especially in relation to providing relevant and timely data and supporting its use by educators. Accordingly, our final section focuses on how/why DESE has been successful in these endeavors, as a way of drawing out key lessons. This chapter also includes an appendix containing links to a variety of tools, reports, and resources, which may be of interest to readers interested in further exploring or applying similar approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to examine data use practices within a cross-sector initiative involving high school career academies. It discerns how partners used data to assess the public value of academies and address equity concerns.

A case study methodology was applied to examine cross-sector activities supporting the district’s career academy reform. Data were collected through interviews, observations and document analysis. Datnow and Park’s (2018) conceptual framework involving key equity dimensions guided the analysis.

Partners used data for both accountability and continuous improvement. Educators were required to document student growth for state accountability purposes, while providing evidence of the public value of the academies to the community. Data use for continuous improvement included identifying annual goals to improve academy performance. There was a lack of a district-wide focus on equity, with educators taking a passive approach to academy and career pathway selections by student subgroups.

The findings provide insights into data use practices school and district leaders can implement to ensure equitable student participation in career academies and appropriate data use within cross-sector collaborations.

Students who are traditionally underrepresented in career fields, including students of color and females, need intentional efforts to encourage their participation in high-skill, high-wage career fields.

This study identifies critical issues involved with data use for equity when promoting education-centered cross-sector collaboration, while also highlighting existing tensions between data use for accountability and continuous improvement.

The purpose of the present study was to identify the conditions that affect the absorptive capacity (AC) of knowledge, discover its consequences and design an AC paradigm pattern in public academic libraries. To do so, AC was investigated at the levels of individual and organizational learning.

In this paper, to answer the three major questions of this qualitative-survey study, the views of 24 experts were examined using an in-depth semi-structured interview and grounded theory strategy. The data were collected using a nonrandom combined targeted sampling procedure (targeted and snowball) and analyzed based on Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) approach and utilizing MAX Qualitative Data Analysis (MAXQDA) software.

Throughout the grounded analytic stages, 121 open codes were identified. These were distributed around the AC axial category in academic libraries in terms of individual and organizational learning. The 33 axial concepts were then categorized into 16 selective general categories. The paradigm pattern was initially designed to explore the relationships between causal, intervening, strategies, context and consequences conditions. The transition from academic libraries to learning organizations, their increased functional value and the development of their innovation were identified as the consequences of AC development.

This qualitative research is the first in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) to support AC both theoretically and empirically in terms of learning in academic libraries. This study thus not only addresses a key research gap in LIS but also provides significant insights and direction to interested librarians and researchers.

Although much can be learned from schools that regularly foster deeper learning, little research has been undertaken into how and why these schools have been effective or to elucidate key leadership and cultural characteristics. Moreover, there has been limited attention toward deeper learning within schools that focus on career and technical education (CTE), a major omission given the potentially elevated potential for deeper learning in these contexts. This study aims to partially rectify these issues by examining the intersections of leadership and culture at an innovative school that has demonstrated excellence whilst providing a curriculum centered on CTE.

This instrumental, insider, single-case study is focused on how leadership–cultural interactions have fostered and shaped students' opportunities to experience deeper learning. The authors take the perspective that it is largely through these leadership–cultural intersections that an organization and the work that happens within it takes on a particular meaning, direction and value. This study applies ethnographic methods, drawing upon formally and informally collected data over the past three years – e.g. from field notes, from leadership meetings and site visits; focus group interviews with students, parents, teachers, partners and school leaders; and additional artifacts.

The authors detail three interrelated features at this school, noting that it is: (1) driven by moral purpose; (2) open, collaborative and trusting; and (3) ambitious and entrepreneurial. The authors explain how/why such a culture has developed and to what effects, especially in relation to facilitating deeper learning.

Study findings meaningfully add to the literature regarding leadership for deeper learning, broadly and in relation to career and technical education and yield recommendations for educational leaders and policymakers.

The global challenges and growing diversity in schools require an educational system that is responsive and agile, putting evidence-informed practice (EIP) at the center of the policy and research agenda. The rationale behind this is obvious: using data and research evidence should lead to better-informed policy, higher quality decisions, more effective practices, and, in turn, improved and fairer outcomes. Because EIP in schools is likely to be influenced by the educational system in which they are embedded, in this chapter I discuss the (non) use of EIP in the educational system of Flanders. The Flemish educational system can be defined as “the individualist way,” characterized by individual approaches within loosely coupled, competing systems that protect their own norms and beliefs. This chapter discusses how this can influence policymaking and the implementation of EIP. Drawing on institutional theory, I also investigate the impact of drivers and obstacles at the school and individual level. At the school level, evidence seems to be used mainly ad hoc rather than strategically and policy is largely driven by short-term solution-focused actions based on experience and quickly available data. At the individual level teachers strongly rely on their expertise and feel less competent and motivated in using data or research. Key lessons for policy and practice are discussed at the end of this chapter.

Evidence-informed practice (EIP), broadly conceived as a data and research-based approach to enhance practice, has recently come to the fore of the Irish education system. With changes to the structure and duration of professional education over the last decade, most notably Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs, coupled with the implementation of a school leadership framework upon which a mandatory data-informed school improvement process of school self-evaluation (SSE) is based, multiple reforms connected to EIP have been introduced. Furthermore, in terms of compulsory education, assessment practices at the lower secondary level have also been significantly reformed. EIP has now become a core element of almost all educational reform initiatives in Ireland. This is a remarkable achievement given that prior to the Education Act (Government of Ireland, 1998) the conception that data and research-informed decision-making should form a core component part of school life was rarely conceived if at all in the policy discourse of educational reform. We draw on the Malin et al. (2020) interpretation of Hoods (1998) social cohesion/regulation matrix to describe and classify the Irish system. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key lessons for policy and practice based on Ireland's experience over the course of the last decade.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how two urban principals, in high schools that feature comprehensive college-and-career readiness practices, utilize distributed leadership to facilitate their implementation.

This study employed qualitative methods. Drawing upon semi-structured interview data, observational data gathered as part of site visits, and internal and electronic documents, case descriptions were developed of each school, focusing on principals’ activities in support of career pathways.

The principals contributed significantly to their schools’ college-and-career readiness reforms and programming. Although their approaches were distinct, six common themes were identified: facilitating processes to form a shared vision, developing relational trust, a focus on learning, successful partnerships, conducive structures, and developing leadership skills and capacity. The principals described utilizing distributed leadership approaches – including practices, structures, and tools – to support these reforms.

This study represents the initial phase of a multi-year research project investigating the implementation of college-and-career pathways in urban communities. Prior research has overlooked the important role of principals in leading and facilitating these reforms, and this study contributes to the literature because it focuses on principals’ contributions in supporting college-and-career readiness. Additionally, in both cases, substantive, regular leadership contributions were made by business representatives external to the organization.

The German evidence-based model of educational governance is bureaucratically regulated, but teachers and schools are autonomous in their way of implementing requirements in schools. Accountability is ensured by regularly monitoring educational outcomes with reference to national educational standards, e.g. in the form of mandatory comparative performance tests. In this context, it is worth determining the process stages of research engagement with which the available data or evidence is associated and which purposes they can serve in teacher education and practice. Building on that, an overview is provided of the state of (mainly German) research on teachers' and school leaders' research engagement and influencing factors. This research field has flourished in the wake of the Empirical Shift in German education. By now the understanding has emerged that ultimately the depth of inferential processes is vital for sustainable development and this in turn is influenced by data, context and user characteristics. On the individual level, in particular, positive affective-motivational dispositions and research literacy are deemed important, whereas the feeling of being controlled has detrimental effects. On the school level, school culture and leadership are of impact, whereas a certain continuity of measures on the governance level proves meaningful for the engagement with data and evidence in educational practice. With regard to the German experience, it is concluded that more (funded) dialogue opportunities between different actors and professional groups in education are needed and that initial and further training should strive even more to impart a meta-reflective stance or enquiry habit of mind.