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Although multilingual learner (ML) students are present in nearly all K-12 settings, they tend to be served by schools and educators who are inadequately prepared to support them. While state education agency leaders may be well-positioned to address inequities in ML education, given their roles as policy intermediaries, their work is politically complex. Further, professional development support for state-level leaders has historically been limited. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) represent a promising avenue for addressing this absence in state leadership support, as RPPs aim to promote educational transformation through collaboration between researchers and practitioners. In our case, we posit that state-education-agency leaders' engagement in a cross-state RPP has the potential to support enactment of transformative-leadership practices, specifically through opportunities to think and work with role-alike colleagues and external researchers. Drawing on qualitative case study methods, our findings reveal how ongoing RPP collaboration in small groups supported state leaders' enactment of transformative approaches, such as developing a statewide framework for ML education and supporting district leaders with using ML-specific funds in equity- and evidence-based ways. Findings shed light on specific RPP activities that supported leaders' collaboration, which may inform how future partnerships are facilitated to advance equity-focused change efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to explore whether and how various components of cross-border sociocultural competence were attended to in bilingual schools serving Polish minorities in the Zaolzie border region. Zaolzie is on the Czech side of the Polish-Czech border region, where the Polish minority play an important role in cross-border relations. Based on a review of the extant literature on the development of sociocultural competence among students enrolled in bilingual programs, researchers developed a 19-item survey capturing three distinct components of cross-border sociocultural competence: cognitive, social, and political. The survey was sent to teachers in the 14 Zaolzie region schools, with 123 teachers (44%) participating and asked participants to indicate the extent to which different facets of cross-border sociocultural competence were part of their school's instructional program. Most participants were female-identifying and had over 10 years of teaching experience, and most were born on the Czech side of the border but identified as Polish nationals. Results from an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed two unique factors representing different components of sociocultural competence included in bilingual programs in the Zaolzie region: (1) the development of students' intrapersonal skills, motivation, and cross-linguistic understanding, and (2) the development of students' capacity to engage interpersonally with and to understand others in the region. These findings suggest that schools in the Zaolzie region attend to cross-border sociocultural competence through both an intra- and interpersonal lens, emphasizing individual students' linguistic and cultural development as well as their ability to interact in their highly politicized cross-border context. Educators in the region can thus consider assessing students' progress in these two areas over time as measures of program effectiveness. Given that the researchers found that cognitive, social, and political aspects of sociocultural competence were integrated across intra- and interpersonal dimensions, more research is needed to understand if this integration is unique to the teaching of cross-border sociocultural competence in the Zaolzie region or is taught similarly in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Alongside the inequities surfaced by COVID-19, a confluence of demographic and policy-related shifts over the last few decades has elevated the education of multilingual learners (MLs) in state education agency (SEA) leaders' work. This study employs an ecological perspective to examine how SEA leaders promote social justice policy implementation in their efforts to uphold MLs' civil rights under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Research Methods: Given its embeddedness in a research-practice partnership (RPP) that emphasizes integration of researchers' expertise with SEA leaders' real-world knowledge, the study employs a participatory research approach. Drawing on 23 semistructured interviews with SEA leaders and 20 hours of observations during RPP meetings, the authors engaged in an iterative analysis process involving coding, memoing, and extensive member checking. Findings: Findings show the dual roles that leaders played to uphold the spirit of civil rights law across local education agencies (LEAs) and within SEAs, and they highlight the structural, cultural, and political dynamics that operated to enable or constrain this work. The study also reveals that cross-state collaboration may be a powerful mechanism for upholding ML civil rights in ways that go beyond compliance toward transformation and social justice. Implications: Although ESSA expanded the role of the SEA in policy implementation, little attention has been given to supporting state-level organizational development. Our findings suggest the need to allocate resources to support SEA capacity development. Such support is ever more critical as state systems work to develop coherent and aligned supports in response to COVID-19-related disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under federal civil rights law, U.S. school districts have a dual obligation to provide students identified as English learners (ELs) with designated English-language development (ELD) instruction and integrated ELD support during core content instruction. Drawing on an analysis of interviews with 96 educators in two large California districts, we use an ecological approach to explore how district and school staff navigated the provision of designated ELD at the secondary level. Findings revealed that state and school structures shaped district culture in ways that deemphasized designated ELD for ELs across proficiency levels. Rather than emphasizing integrated ELD approaches that foster language development through content, however, these structural and cultural dynamics meant that many ELs received few, if any, linguistic supports. Although federal oversight and leaders' agency helped to shift this trend and support ELs' access to ELD, the primary mode of delivery was through required ELD courses, which research shows can preclude ELs' access to core content. These findings have important implications for policymakers and leaders seeking to ensure that all ELs have equitable access to language and content instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an integrated systematic review of scholarship related to preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach multilingual learners in U.S. schools. We drew from cultural-historical activity theory to investigate how teacher educators who focus on preparing PSTs to work with multilingual students attended to the linguistically responsive teaching (LRT) framework. We identified three distinct activity systems, each linked to specific LRT dimensions. The ways in which the components of each activity system integrated LRT have implications for both theory and practice. Specifically, our findings highlight the need for program-wide coherence in teacher preparation and for comparative analysis examining teacher education across diverse policy contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

District and school leaders face the challenge of designing and implementing supports for immigrant newcomers who have recently arrived in the US, speak little English, and are unfamiliar with the US school system. This study draws on 117 interviews with educators in six purposefully-sampled school districts across the country to examine the factors that shaped newcomer educational services across grades K-12. Findings reveal that, although district leaders held particular ideals around positive and negative equality that aligned with their policy designs, how these policies were implemented depended on organizational capacity and resources, as well as school-based perceptions of newcomer needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, we establish why school leaders must be attentive to how the organization of educational programs for English Learners impacts the degree to which they are segregated or integrated. We preview each article in the special issue and clarify the contributions that these pieces collectively make to research and practice. We argue that taken together the articles make the case that school leaders must balance separation and integration in a way that fosters equity of opportunity and affirms English Learners' multilingual and multicultural identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Teachers reporting higher levels of trust were less likely to leave in their first five years. • Network closeness and self-efficacy were not significantly related to leaving. • Special educators were four times more likely to leave than general education teachers. Social conditions in schools can influence teacher turnover. In this study, we use longitudinal data from 47 general and special education teachers in the same mid-sized district in the Midwestern United States, and employ survival analysis to identify the social conditions that predict turnover in teachers' first five years on the job. Findings reveal that the quality of teachers' relationships mattered more than the quantity of their social ties. Specifically, teachers reporting higher levels of relational trust were significantly less likely to leave or move, while social network closeness did not significantly predict leaving or moving. Further, our findings that special education teachers were particularly susceptible to leaving or moving compared to their general education colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School systems around the world are adopting more intellectually ambitious academic content in the hopes of improving their educational productivity. In the United States, these efforts have required significant changes to teachers' instructional practices, and increased attention to teachers' formal and on-the-job professional learning opportunities. Focusing on the initial implementation of a reform-oriented approach to teaching mathematics in two local school systems in the United States, this paper examines whether – and under what circumstances – elementary teachers' professional learning opportunities predict changes in their instructional practices and beliefs related to mathematics. Our findings reveal that teachers' on-the-job interactions during the first year of reform predicted changes in their instructional practices; further, these changes were associated with the infrastructures that local school systems created to support teacher learning in mathematics. Teachers' participation in formal professional development, in contrast, predicted changes in their instructional beliefs, but not their practices. These findings have implications for future efforts to design formal and on-the-job professional learning opportunities that support ambitious educational reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics coaching initiatives are being implemented in schools and districts across the country, guided by the notion that these initiatives will foster individual teacher’s learning and thereby support system-wide instructional improvement in mathematics. This paper explores the evolving roles that mathematics coaches played in a system-wide instructional improvement effort focused on elementary mathematics education in a medium-sized suburban school district. Using social network analysis and qualitative analysis of interviews, we argue that coaches facilitated teachers’ implementation of a new mathematics curriculum by acting as brokers, first as intermediaries between the district office and schools, then as catalysts for collective inquiry. Further, we show how coaches’ work was both enabled and constrained over time by various organizational dimensions at the school and district levels. Overall, our findings suggest that district and school leaders should think beyond the roles and responsibilities of individual coaches, and consider how to support coaches as participants in system-wide networks focused on continuous learning and instructional improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the context of reception for immigrant students and English learners in one medium-sized suburban school district in the northeastern United States. Using qualitative methods, the authors describe how, despite a troubling context of reception emerging from a normative and political community context that harbored resentment toward the new immigrant population, a community-based organization whose members served as boundary spanners between the school district and the community helped prompt district leaders toward more equity-minded policies. Given increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student populations in suburban school districts across the United States, findings from this paper have important implications for community engagement and school district policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on institutional theory, this study describes how cognitive, normative, and regulative mechanisms shape bilingual teachers’ language policy implementation in both English-only and bilingual contexts. Aligned with prior educational language policy research, findings indicate the important role that teachers’ beliefs play in the policy implementation process. However, findings also reveal several other dimensions of the policymaking process that contribute to the coupling of language policy and classroom practice, including district-level policy, administrative oversight, and teacher training policies. This study thus offers an institutional view of language policy implementation that accounts for teachers’ beliefs in a more nuanced and realistic way. Results from the study suggest the need to respond to both individual- and systems-level policy mechanisms—and the interplay between them—when designing school systems that address the educational needs of English language learners, whose presence is increasing in districts and schools across the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although social ties are a necessary condition for social capital, there is a dearth of research on the factors associated with the existence of such ties among school staff. Using a mixed-methods approach, we examined the role of both formal organizational infrastructure and individual characteristics in shaping advice and information interactions about instruction among school staff within and between schools. Our findings from social-network models showed that, while individual characteristics were associated with within- and between-school ties, aspects of the formal school organization had larger effects. Moreover, having a subject-specific leadership position most strongly predicted between-school ties. Our analysis of interview data supported and extended these findings, showing that leadership positions worked in tandem with other aspects of the organizational infrastructure, such as organizational routines, to influence school staff members' interactions about instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While few would disagree that a key component of educating teachers to teach happens on the job, research rarely explores the schoolhouse as a site for teacher education. This study thus focuses on inservice as distinct from preservice teacher education and explores how beginning teachers’ learning about mathematics and literacy instruction was supported within 24 elementary schools in two midwestern school districts. A mixed methodology was used in this exploratory study, including social network and interview data analysis, to examine beginning teachers’ advice- and information-seeking behaviors related to mathematics and literacy. Findings revealed that formal organizational structures inside schools were critical for shaping beginning teachers’ opportunities to learn about instruction, including grade level teams and formal leadership positions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teaching, the core technology of schooling, is an essential consideration in investigations of education systems and school organizations. Taking teaching seriously as an explanatory variable in research on education systems and organizations necessitates moving beyond treating it as a unitary practice, so as to take account of the school subjects implicated in the work. Building on and extending earlier work, in this paper we examine subject matter differences in how one education system (Local Educational Agency) and its elementary schools organize for instruction in the core elementary school subjects. Specifically, this paper explores how education leaders and teachers in one local American school district interact with one another with respect to advice and information about teaching and learning in literacy, mathematics and science. We examine similarities and differences in school staff members’ advice and information networks and consider how these differences relate to the formal organizational infrastructure intended to support instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Designing infrastructures to support instruction remains a challenge in educational reform. This article reports on a study of one school system's efforts to redesign its infrastructure for mathematics instruction by promoting teacher leadership. Using social network and interview data from 12 elementary schools, we explore how the district's infrastructure redesign efforts were internally coherent with and built upon existing infrastructure components. We then explore relations between infrastructure and school practice as captured in the instructional advice- and information-seeking interactions among school staff, finding that teacher leaders emerged as central actors and brokers of advice and information about mathematics within and between schools. Further, changes in school advice and information networks were associated with shifts in teachers' beliefs about and practices in mathematics toward inquiry-oriented approaches consistent with district curriculum. We argue that the district's redesign efforts to support teacher leadership coupled district curriculum and school and classroom practice in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the unique contributions that bilingual and bilingually credentialed teachers make to the instruction of emergent bilinguals in the United States. This mixed methodological study involved 474 teachers in Arizona, California, and Texas, which represent distinct language policy contexts. Results revealed that, irrespective of context, teachers' bilingualism and bilingual certification significantly predicted their reported use of practices that build on students' primary language as well as their prior knowledge and experiences. Given declining numbers of teachers completing bilingual credentials in English-only states, findings suggest that English-only policies are diminishing the supply of teachers with the potential to improve emergent bilinguals' classroom experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the oversight of language policy in U.S. schools shifted from federal to state governance. Although the education of students officially designated as English learners (ELs) has historically been grounded in federal law, we argue that ELs' educational experiences are also largely influenced by societal attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. Using a critical policy analysis (CPA) approach, we examine how 12 states' immigrant policy contexts are associated with the EL educational policies articulated in their ESSA implementation plans. We find that states' demographic and immigrant policy contexts combine to produce four distinct approaches toward EL education, from departing to approaching equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The back and forth migration of children and youth between the United States and Mexico has created a unique group of approximately nine million "students we share" who have been educated in both countries (Jensen and Sawyer 2013). The social, political, and economic interconnectivity of the United States and Mexico suggests that these trends are likely to continue, making the education of transnationally mobile students, or those students who have formative schooling experiences in both countries, a topic in critical need of research. This article presents findings from a systematic literature review and describes how sociopolitical, sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and socioemotional factors influence transnationally mobile students' educational experiences. We assert that future research on transnational education within the US-Mexico nexus and beyond should attend to the interconnectedness of these dimensions, rather than viewing them in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative synthetic methodology for the direct installation of sulfonamide functionality is a highly desirable goal within the domain of drug discovery and development. The formation of synthetically valuable N-sulfonyl imines from a range of aldehydes, sulfonamides, and PhI(OAc)2 under practical and mild reaction conditions has been developed. According to mechanistic studies described within, the reaction proceeds through an initial step involving a radical initiator (generated either by visible-light or heat) to activate the reacting substrates. The reaction provides a synthetically useful and operationally simple, relatively mild alternative to the traditional formation of N-sulfonyl imines that utilizes stable, widely available reagents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on assisting intercultural communication in parent-teacher conferences often facilitated by child translators. It mentions that being a translator requires being a good listener and speaker in two languages, and to be able to express things appropriately for different audiences. It conveys that child translators intercede between parties that have different points of view. It says that complexities arise when children serve as translators in their own parent-teacher meetings.

A variety of arenes and heteroarenes are chlorinated in moderate to excellent yields using N-chlorosuccinimide (NCS) under visible-light activated conditions. A screening of known organic dye photocatalysts resulted in the identification of methylene green as the most efficient catalyst to use with NCS. According to mechanistic studies described within, the reaction is speculated to proceed via a single electron oxidation of NCS utilizing methylene green under visible-light photoredox pathway. The photo-oxidation of NCS amplifies the electrophilicity of the chlorine atom of the NCS, thus leading to enhanced reactivity as a chlorinating reagent with aromatic substrates. Image 1 • The first example of non-metal photo-oxidative activation of N-chlorosuccinimide by a visible-light photoredox catalyst. • Utilization of methylene green, an inexpensive visible-light photoredox catalyst in the thiazine family of organic dyes. • Good to excellent yields of chlorinated (hetero)arenes using mild reaction conditions (ambient temperature, open to air). • Wide range of functional group tolerance – a feature important for fine chemical chlorination of complex molecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]