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The desire to broaden participation and increase campus diversity requires more than simply recruiting students of color. Faculty members' education equity mindset may be useful for determining their motivation to provide students with opportunities to achieve at their highest capacity. The extent to which faculty members think about inclusion and equity and act on those thoughts reflects the strength of their education equity mindset. To begin filling a gap in the literature, we engaged in a cross-section methodology, collecting quantitative and qualitative survey data from 180 faculty members working at four-year institutions to document their education equity mindset and associated teaching practices. We found the faculty members held a moderate education equity mindset, with differences by gender, discipline, years in higher education, number of students taught, age, and level of instruction. Our findings have implications for preparing faculty members and the focus of professional development provided to faculty members.

In an effort to define a principal education equity mindset, we initially identified six essential attributes of the construct and attempted empirically to confirm our definition by gathering a combination of quantitative and qualitative data from 128 principals. We found variations in the expression of the mindset attributes and commitment by principals to create conditions that support success for all students. In addition, we exposed two unanticipated attributes and variations on attribute commitment. The principals' personal, professional, and school variables were associated with significant differences in the mindset attributes. We provide a discussion of our findings, implications for practice, and directions for future research.

This multisite case study explores how rural principals in high poverty schools in a Southern state that had identified themselves as social justice leaders perceived student diversity, specifically LGBTQ students, and how they sustained a socially-just school climate for all students. Using a qualitative approach lent itself to understanding the principals' descriptions of themselves as social justice leaders in their respective school and community contexts through their conversations (Creswell, 2007; Marshall & Rossman, 2016). The investigators drew from Theoharis' (2007, 2009) and Bishop's (2012) studies to serve as the theoretical framework guiding this study. The results indicated that the principals in this case study struggled with recognizing LGBTQ students' needs and well-being. The findings in this study contain implications for preservice preparation and in-service professional development programs to draw upon social justice leadership theory and research to inform leadership practices when addressing external and internal resistance. Moreover, this study recognizes the need for leadership preparation programs to integrate critical self-consciousness (Freire, 2000) with purposeful reflection (Webster-Smith, 2011) as essential to the development of the social justice leader.

This article provides an overview of National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) state affiliate, Arkansas Professors of Educational Administration's (ARPEA), activities, accomplishments, and advocacy efforts. Faced with numerous changes being implemented in education in the state, it became imperative for ARPEA's Executive Board to overcome barriers standing in the way of sharing information in a timely manner, developing a collective viewpoint, and advocating on behalf of the state's leadership preparation programs. As with most state affiliates, geographical distance between institutions, finding common time to meet regularly, and learning collectively about state-wide issues constituted the a need for preservice programs to develop a unified voice. ARPEA began to take advantage of social networking technologies and professional learning community practices on a statewide level. ARPEA began using an online meeting system to build collegial relationship with one another, to provide representation on department of education/state association committees/ad hoc tasks forces, and to collectively advocate for the state's leadership preparation programs.

This paper describes two instructors' efforts to more authentically engage students in a preservice leadership program's course called Program Planning and Evaluation by using a project-based learning approach. Markham, Larmer, and Ravitz (2003) describe project-based learning (PjBL) as "a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed projects and tasks" (p. 4). The instructors revised the course where students were required to conduct a formal, standards-based evaluation of a critical issue in their school settings that immersed students in integrating and applying knowledge using the PjBL approach. The instructors used the Buck Institute for Education's seven PjBL design principles for instructors (Larmer, 2015) to develop and analyze the course revisions. The process, challenges, and the results are discussed in this paper.

As demands for online courses continue to increase and educational institutions rise to meet the needs of students, it is imperative faculty members are guided by the Seven Principles (Chickering and Gamson, 1986; Erhmann, 2003) of effective teaching as they develop online courses. This includes the judicious selection of distance learning tools to support quality teaching and learning experiences in online settings. Simulations delivered in traditional face-to-face courses have provided instructors valuable teachable moments and students with authentic learning experiences. When simulations are well designed in an online course using appropriate distance learning tools, teaching strategies can be thoughtfully developed and successfully delivered that produce quality student learning experiences.

School personnel are not having the number or quality of meaningful conservations needed to move schools forward in a focused, cohesive manner. In the face of compelling evidence and best practices, many school leaders and teachers continue to work in isolation. There remains a dearth of professional learning communities and where they exist, many may limp along with some level of dysfunction. Meaningful conversations are also in short supply with external stakeholders. Hard-to-reach parents need meaningful conversations that help them to understand their roles and ways they can parent academic achievers in partnership with the school. By the same token, the community thirsts for meaningful conversations so that the media are not their sole means of learning about the life of schools. Such conversations, in some cases, could save and/or advance a community's existence and vibrancy. Therefore, the authors use their collective insight to propose a wide-spread shift in how educational leaders, school leadership teams, teachers, students, parents, and the community think about and talk about what it takes to improve schools. In their quest to comprehensively address the needs of schools, the authors took a quick look at the school improvement standards of ten states from all regions of the U.S. "The Standards and Indicators for School Improvement" that several states are using in a variety of ways to improve schools was selected because of its comprehensive approach. So the question begs: what are meaningful conversations? This paper addresses why meaningful conversations are important now and why they will always be important.

This study, conducted through Arkansas State University and the University of Central Arkansas, examined parents' perceptions in the initial year of a three-year period (2004-2007) to determine whether public schools have made progress in their implementation of the parental involvement programs mandated by Arkansas Act 603 of 2003 (known as the Parent Involvement Plan), passed by the State of Arkansas in the 84th General Assembly's regular session. This Act rested on the diverse literature which demonstrated the many benefits of parents' active involvement in the education process of their children. At the end of this first year of implementation of the study, the researchers sought to determine preliminary differences in perceptions about the parental involvement plan at school between respondents' age groups, race/ethnic groups, family structures, gender, grade level groups, school building size, and school setting. The study identified very few differences in response based on ethnicity, age of respondent, gender, or family structure. Instead, the size of building and the grade level of students in the home produced the greatest differences in response to most questions on the survey. Parents from small school buildings and of young students answered questions most differently from all others who responded. Further, two issues on the survey appeared to predict parent satisfaction with school operations in all school settings: an awareness of the identity of the parent coordinator and receipt of the parent involvement "kit."