Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Imagine a school where educators actively listen, effectively collaborate, manage conflict, embrace difficult conversations, and set appropriate boundaries. That is a powerful school with powerful educators! In today’s rapidly evolving educational landscape, technical expertise alone is insufficient. While hard skills like subject knowledge and pedagogy are essential, the power skills—the combination of communication, collaboration, and social intelligence—determine an educator’s actual impact. Recent societal shifts have disrupted social interactions for many and only heightened the need for power skills. At the same time, education has become more collaborative than ever.Powerful Schools, Powerful Educators: Using Power Skills to Unlock Excellence bridges that gap by providing an actionable, structured approach to mastering power skills in educational settings. Each chapter follows a three-part framework: Learn – Engaging real-life examples illustrate the power skill in action (or its absence) followed by important information on the power skill Reflect – Thought-provoking questions help readers assess their current strengths and areas for growth Do – Practical exercises and strategies enablereaders to develop and refine their skills through hands-on practice Key topics include: Active Listening Building Trust Collaboration Managing Conflict Difficult Conversations Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Setting Boundaries Personal Branding Applying Power Skills Beyond the Classroom Powerful Schools, Powerful Educators is specifically tailored to the unique challenges of the teaching profession. Whether used as a textbook in teacher education programs, a resource for professional development workshops, or a guide for mentoring new teachers, this book provides invaluable tools for fostering meaningful connections, leading with confidence, and navigating the complexities of modern education.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Education; Instructional Strategies and Techniques; Foundations of Educational Leadership; Professional Learning Communities; Collaborative Leadership; Instructional Coaching and Teacher Collaboration

Thanks to Literacy Pedagogy with Whole-Earth Consciousness, teachers of young and older novice readers alike no longer have to separate structured reading instruction from meaningful, engaging, age-appropriate content. In clear language and with multiple examples drawn directly from practice – including case studies, vignettes, discourse analyses, text sets, samples of curriculum, and more – this book shows how literacy pedagogy can be merged with science-based concepts, understandings, and practices relating to caring for ourselves, caring for others, and caring for the earth as a whole. With environmental challenges pressing ever more closely on everyday life – including effects of extreme heat, flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfire, among others – Literacy Pedagogy with Whole-Earth Consciousness offers a hopeful path forward for literacy educators, science educators, elementary educators, tutors, university faculty and students, homeschooling families, and childcare providers. Readers will draw inspiration from seeing how earth-conscious literacy pedagogy unfolds in multiple educational contexts: an afterschool program, a virtual literacy tutorial, a 3-week school enrichment program, and a graduate-level literacy course. Rogers and Schaenen showcase how place-based approaches to literacy instruction can empower students and teachers alike as readers while also dramatically deepening their relationships with the environment. Uniquely, Literacy Pedagogy with Whole-Earth Consciousness merges together teacher action research, discourse analysis, literacy teacher education, and eco-justice pedagogies. What results is a timely, conceptually rich guide to an experiential and evidence-based approach to literacy teaching and learning. Experiential approaches to literacy learning can help enrich the understanding young people have about themselves, other people, and their sense of belonging on planet Earth. Literacy Pedagogy with Whole-Earth Consciousness can be a central adopted text in undergraduate and graduate classrooms: with student reading scores seemingly stuck or worsening, what’s urgently needed are innovative, thoughtful, authentic approaches to teaching literacy comprehensively at the earliest and intermediate stages, especially in classes preparing teachers for service or extending the repertoires of in-service teachers at the graduate level. It will also be a useful adopted text in graduate classes that explore discourse analysis and teacher action research. Because the book will include examples of critically oriented discourse analysis within an action research framework, Literacy Pedagogy with Whole-Earth Consciousness will appeal to fellow critical literacy researchers, as well as scholars and practitioners of discourse analysis. The book will extend approaches to critical discourse studies in educational 4 settings by engaging eco-linguistics as a pedagogical and research tool. For this reason, literacy clinic directors and their affiliated faculty will also be interested readers. As a guide to cutting-edge curriculum and instruction with regard to literacy and the environment, college, university, and public libraries will want to include this book in their collections. The authors write with clarity for the ever-growing number of homeschooling families, microschools, and indeed any caregivers of young children who are interested in merging research-based developmental literacy with environmental content in age-appropriate ways. Literacy Pedagogy with Whole-Earth Consciousness is accessible and useful to all participants in an ever-growing and collaborative community of learners. The authors made the decision to jump into the kind of work that would foreground relationships, seek continuities, embrace non-linear patterns of change, and adhere to a basic ecological principle of favoring diversity over monoculture. Through a two-year inquiry across multiple contexts, they have worked to envision and construct a conceptual and practical trellis that will support the fruits of comprehensive literacy development – phonics, comprehension, fluency, writing, spelling, curiosity, and joy – while remaining grounded in place-based content and care. Along the way, they have engaged in reflexive research, documenting, analyzing, synthesizing, and reflecting on their practice across multiple learning ecologies.Perfect for courses such as: Eco-Literacy; Action Research/Teacher Research; Foundations of Teaching Literacy; Teaching Reading and Writing in School and Community Settings; Education and Society Through Service Learning; Climate Change Narratives; Literacy and Social Justice; Discourse Analysis; Theory and Practice of Literacy Tutoring; Teaching and Learning in Environmental Education; Science Communications; Science Literacy

Cultivating Belonging by Design: The Q10 Way of Being; Leading with Intention, Teaching with Purpose, and Transforming Learning is an invitation to build schools where every learner truly belongs. Rooted in the Quantum Ten (Q10) Framework developed by Talisa Sullivan PhD, this book offers a powerful practical roadmap for educators and leaders ready to move beyond slogans and checklists into deep sustainable change. Written as both guide and companion, Cultivating Belonging by Design: The Q10 Way of Being walks readers through each Q10 element with clarity, courage, and heart. Cultivating Belonging by Design: The Q10 Way of Being aspires to revolutionize educational best practices by offering a comprehensive guide to the intentional integration of the ten essential educational best practices—also known as the Q10 elements. These elements include Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Growth Mindset, Inclusive Practices, Culturally Responsive Practices, Restorative Practices, Universal Design for Learning, Response to Intervention, Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports, Social-Emotional Learning, and Trauma-Informed Practices. This book aims to provide access, opportunity, engagement, and success to all learners. Every chapter opens with an inspiring quote and a personal story, drawing readers into the real work of cultivating belonging. These narratives remind us that belonging is experienced in the daily lives of students, families, and educators. Chapters provide research informed background on a Q10 component, presented as parts of a coherent equity driven ecosystem. Readers see how these elements connect to create environments where every learner is seen challenged and supported. A Q10 Inquiry in every chapter invites readers to examine beliefs, policies, and habits through the lens of equity and belonging, helping individuals and teams surface assumptions, confront inequities, and imagine new possibilities. A Q10 Action offers concrete steps, real life examples, and strategies that can be adapted in schools and systems with space for reflection and planning. Designed for use by teachers, principals, and system level leaders, Cultivating Belonging by Design: The Q10 Way of Being can anchor professional learning book studies and leadership retreats. The book provides common language, frameworks, and stories that help communities transition from inspiration to implementation. More than a collection of best practices, Cultivating Belonging by Design: The Q10 Way of Being is a call to reimagine what schools can be. For anyone who believes education can be a vehicle for healing liberation and generational transformation, this book offers both a vision and a roadmap inviting readers to build communities of true belonging: one inquiry, one action, and one courageous step at a time.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Teaching; Foundations of Education; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) in Education; Human Development and Learning in the Classroom; Educational Leadership and Change; Equity-Centered School Leadership; Organizational Culture and School Improvement; Alternative Education and Student Reengagement; Leading Culturally Responsive Schools; School-Community Relations and Family Engagement; Creating Inclusive Campus Climates and Belonging

Teaching Through Generational Traumas: Adaptive Practices to Combat Dissociation While Addressing the Impacts of Respectability offers a powerful and timely exploration of what it means to teach, learn, and thrive in higher education while navigating the weight of generational wounds. Written by historian and educator Detrice L. Roberts, this book blends personal reflection, scholarly research, and experience-based classroom practice to uncover how trauma, identity, and resilience shape today’s student experience. At its core, this book challenges the idea that education is only about transmitting knowledge. Instead, Roberts presents the classroom as a space of transformation where students must be equipped not only with intellectual tools but also the social and emotional skills necessary to face the complexities of modern life. Drawing on frameworks including Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), the VARK learning model, and culturally relevant pedagogy, Roberts simultaneously offers instructors and students pathways to recognize identity, manage emotions, and build meaningful and productive connections between past and present. There exists a culture of dissociation among students today, but they are more adaptive to learning that incorporates real world engagement that allows for them to actively participate in the learning process. Being able to differentiate instruction relies on our understanding of the types of learners that we have in our classroom and exploring the factors associated with why students are disconnected academically. These very factors can then be addressed and used to enhance student experiences and ability to learn through learner-defined curriculum development. Teaching Through Generational Traumas moves through layered themes reflecting Roberts’s dual perspective as both teacher and learner. Part I situates the conversation historically, acknowledging how generational traumas rooted in slavery, segregation, and systemic racism, continue to impact Black students in higher education. Part II explores the lived experience of respectability politics, dissociation, and the subtle pressures students face to perform identities that do not always align with their authentic selves. Part III shifts to pedagogical innovation, highlighting Roberts’s seven classroom practices: Socratic questioning, storytelling, critical pedagogy, SEL, opening rituals, culturally relevant teaching, and digital humanities. Each practice is illustrated through vivid classroom narratives, emphasizing how teaching strategies can nurture critical thinking while affirming student identity. In the final section, Roberts invites students, educators, and readers alike to consider methods of perpetual growth that extend beyond the classroom. She frames education not as a temporary pursuit, but as a lifelong journey of reflection, resilience, and meaning-making. The book closes with an Ode to the HBCU, honoring the historic and ongoing role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities as sites of cultural affirmation, intergenerational pride, and transformative education. Teaching Through Generational Traumas is a call to reimagine what education can be when it is rooted in empathy, awareness, and liberation. It speaks directly to faculty, administrators, and students at HBCUs and beyond, while also offering insights for those interested in the intersections of history, identity, and pedagogy. This book will resonate with readers who believe that classrooms should be communities of growth, reflection, and belonging. By weaving together scholarship, lived experience, and practical strategies, Roberts demonstrates how we can confront the challenges of dissociation, respectability, and trauma, and instead cultivate spaces where students and instructors learn, heal, and transform together.Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Teaching and Learning in Higher Education; Culturally Relevant Pedagogy / Multicultural Education; Trauma-Informed Teaching Practices (or Social and Emotional Learning in Schools); African American Educational History; African American History / African Diaspora Studies; Educational Leadership & Policy Studies; Sociology of Education / Education and Society

As educational systems worldwide grapple with complex challenges requiring sustained, evidence-informed solutions, collaborative continuous improvement in education (CCIE) has emerged as a transformative approach to systemic change. Yet a critical gap remains: how do we effectively teach and learn these powerful improvement methods across the diverse landscape of educational institutions and professionals who work in them? This groundbreaking book addresses this vital question with practical wisdom and research-backed strategies. Teaching and Learning for Collaborative Continuous Improvement in Education: Challenges and Possibilities Across the Educational System tackles the pressing need to build CCIE capacity among higher education faculty, professional developers, state education department associates, and the broader network of professionals driving educational improvement initiatives. As policymakers increasingly turn to CCIE to inform system-wide reforms, this book provides the roadmap for spreading and deepening expertise across organizational boundaries and professional contexts. The authors examine three fundamental challenges facing the field: bridging knowledge gaps across diverse professional roles and organizations; balancing scholarly and practical applications of CCIE learning; and navigating the spectrum of delivery modalities from fully asynchronous to synchronous, and in-person to remote formats. Through real-world examples, chapter authors reveal both challenges and promising practices that transcend traditional silos and create meaningful learning communities. What sets this book apart is its collaborative approach to knowledge sharing. Rather than prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions, the editors and authors position themselves as colleagues and peers, sharing hard-won lessons from their own improvement journeys. Each chapter follows a systematic structure that includes contextual background, theoretical foundations, learning objectives and approaches, documented results, and honest reflections on lingering questions. The book's organization reflects its commitment to addressing real-world complexity. Following an introductory chapter that maps the current terrain of CCIE teaching and learning, subsequent sections dive deep into specific challenges: designing CCIE learning experiences for different audiences, adapting approaches for varying purposes, and leveraging different modalities effectively. Rich case studies and illustrative examples demonstrate how theory translates into practice across diverse educational contexts. Higher education faculty will find research-based approaches to curriculum design and pedagogy. Professional developers will discover strategies for building organizational capacity using theoretically-grounded and tested approaches. State education leaders will gain insights into system-wide implementation approaches. Most importantly, all readers will find concrete tools for learning with and from each other―breaking down the isolation that too often hampers improvement efforts. The book concludes with a look to the future―highlighting emerging trends and future opportunities in CCIE teaching and learning, while supplementary materials provide readers with immediately usable resources. It represents an essential contribution to the growing field of improvement science in education―and a vital resource for the professionals working to make that science accessible, applicable, and impactful across the entire educational ecosystem.Perfect for courses such as: Continuous Quality Improvement in Education and Human Services; Networked Improvement Communities; Improvement Science Capstone; Leadership for Continuous Improvement; Leadership Experiences, Application and Development; Leadership for Equity for Equity and Improvement; Instructional Leadership; Doctoral Seminar: Dynamics of Improving Schools and Districts; and Supervision of Instruction

Learning to See School Systems: Power, Practice, and Improvement in Public Education is a volume dedicated to the goal of improving school systems. In 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince to help rulers understand the realities of power. Five hundred years later, Dr. Michael R. L. Odell — educator, researcher, and amused observer of Texas school systems — offers a modern reflection for those who lead the nation’s classrooms and districts. Learning to See School Systems is both satire and system map: a handbook for anyone attempting to lead improvement in institutions designed to resist it gracefully. Across twelve chapters, it reveals how public education mirrors the politics of Florence—ambition, reform, accountability, and fortune disguised as data. Each chapter blends humor with hard truth: board relations as diplomacy, improvement plans as rituals, dashboards as illusion, crises as curriculum. Beneath the wit lies a serious purpose—to help educators see their districts as living systems, governed by patterns that Improvement Science now names but Machiavelli already understood. For teachers, principals, superintendents, and school board members alike, Learning to See School Systems is a mirror of modern schooling—ironic, affectionate, and uncomfortably accurate. Read it for laughter. Keep it for survival. Share it with anyone about to lead their first staff meeting. “He who governs schools must learn to rule hearts that believe themselves ungoverned.” — from Learning to See School SystemsPerfect for courses such as: School Improvement and Reform; School Policy; Organizational Leadership and Change

More than a century after William James published his provocative critique The PhD Octopus in 1903, his warnings about the corrupting entanglements between institutions and graduate students remain strikingly relevant. Doctoral Studies as Educational Industrial Complex revisits James’ concerns through a contemporary lens, offering a critical examination of doctoral education in the field of education in what feels like perennial crisis. Throughout the volume, contributors grapple with the tensions James identified: the obsession with credentials over genuine intellectual work, the “tyrannical machine” of institutional demands, and the misalignment between doctoral preparation and actual career paths. These tensions are particularly acute in practitioner-oriented EdD programs designed to produce scholar-practitioners who often remain in their local communities rather than entering the academy. Yet research-oriented PhD programs face their own crisis, as they continue to prepare scholars for a tenure-track job market that has dramatically contracted. With only 32% of faculty holding tenured or tenure-track positions in 2023—down from 53% in 1987—the traditional pathway to academic careers has fundamentally eroded. The book speaks to multiple audiences: faculty who supervise doctoral students and seek to understand the challenges they face; doctoral students navigating alternative program formats and uncertain career prospects; administrators responsible for program design and accreditation; and scholars interested in the future of higher education and professional preparation. By centering faculty expertise and critical analysis rather than external market demands, this volume offers a necessary counter-narrative to prevailing trends in doctoral education reform. Ultimately, this book argues for a reconsideration of what doctoral education should accomplish and for whom, grounding these questions in both historical perspective and contemporary realities.

John Dewey (1859–1952), one of the most prominent American intellectuals for the first half of the twentieth century, is considered by many to be the father of public education, advocating for the concept that the purpose of public education was to develop an informed citizenry that prepared them for active participation in public life. He was highly regarded for his lectures on the power of pedagogy, best documented in his seminal volume, Democracy and Education, a book that remains as relevant today as when it first published more than 100 years ago. He was famous for other lectures as well. Among them are the Bridgewater Lectures of 1922, represented here for the first time as a freestanding volume. Dewey gave these lectures at the Bridgewater Normal School in Bridgewater, MA, an institution founded by Horace Mann. The lectures touch on three themes: Social Purposes in Education Individuality in Education The Classroom Teacher They appear as full-length speeches, unaltered from their original form. Additionally, the volume contains three interpretive essays by recognized experts in the philosophy and pedagogy of Dewey: The Course and Its Occurrences Individuality, Sociality, and Temporality: Reflections on Dewey’s Bridgewater Lectures of 1922 Dewey’s Bridgewater Lectures and the Emergence of the Aesthetic in His Later Works This is a book that all Dewey scholars will want to have in their library. In addition, the themes in the volume make it an appropriate adoption for such classes as History of Education, Philosophy of Education and other foundation courses.

Writing as Artistry: EdD Students Learning to Write as Scholarly Practitioners is a timely guidebook that supports EdD students’ scholarly writing development while honoring and amplifying their rich practitioner knowledge and wisdom. EdD students are educational leaders and working professionals transitioning from expert-practitioners to scholarly practitioners who aim to positively transform the lives of students and communities. This resource addresses the significant need for mastering scholarly writing skills required for EdD students’ successful degree completion and real-life impact.The book’s conceptual approach frames scholarly writing as artistry. This perspective recognizes the work of practitioners as a deeply human and experiential process of solving problems of practice by drawing on prior knowledge and exploring new methods to improve practice. This view champions the idea that practitioners’ professional knowledge and rich prior experience are essential assets and that their insider knowledge is a necessary and key condition for rigorous practitioner inquiry. The authors adopt a critical stance that rejects the dominant notion of technical rationality, which historically views researchers as scholars and practitioners as mere “doers,” arguing instead that building successful experiences for EdD students requires and respects practitioners’ professional knowledge.The guidebook offers a scaffolded, practical approach to scholarly writing, aiming to guide the reader toward a practice-focused lens, provides practical tools for fostering scholarly writing, and builds students’ confidence as writers. It is centrally focused on developing practice-centered dissertations and culminating projects that align with professional-practice degrees.To support students throughout the process, the book provides a robust repertoire of writing approaches and strategies. It offers guidance on prewriting techniques for capturing initial ideas and helps students in effectively connecting their ideas with others. Critical to this artistic approach is the development of a unique writer’s voice and positionality, often through the use of reflexivity. The book includes comprehensive practical tools for navigating the often-challenging mechanics of scholarly work, detailing writing feedback and revision strategies, and including a range of templates and clear examples of student work. Furthermore, the guide provides essential advice for leveraging support structures, such as engaging with multiple mentors and critical friends. The guide also prepares students for diverse project types, including individual, collaborative, and alternative dissertation projects.Ultimately, mastering these skills is a critical way to support students in their work beyond graduation. The ability to write clear, scholarly reports is essential, as the skills learned must transfer from the Dissertation-in-Practice experience to the student's world of practice, thus ensuring real-world impact by enhancing leaders’ capacity to implement evidence-based solutions to complex problems.

In these times, decisions large and small can have important consequences for educators. Everything from daily curricular choices and interpersonal encounters to long-term educational aims and approaches to educator-client relations is up for careful decision-making. While not every professional decision requires careful preparation and defense, more than ever, in our increasingly polarized, distrustful, and argumentative world, many more than we might anticipate do. How should educators prepare to make careful, defensible public decisions affecting their students and themselves? An important part of that preparation involves training in a range of logical and interpersonal abilities that come before and help to make good educational decisions. A Preface to Educational Decision-Making is aimed at describing those abilities, illustrating their professional uses, and providing a starting point for increasing educators’ practical skills in applying them. What are these abilities? For the most part, they involve common-sense attention to the ways that educators can become clearer about the nature of actual decisions they are asked to make, and aware of what must be done to make those decisions ones that all concerned can recognize as reasonable and as logically presented, even if not universally agreeable. In short, these are factors that provide, for decision-makers and their audiences, a preface to decisions that matter to those who make them and to those affected by them. A most important, though widely ignored set of those abilities center on making the nature of particular decisions clear to all concerned. Those abilities involve becoming sensitive to the ways such decisions can become or can be made to be unclear. In the give and take of public educational decision-making processes, bad decisions are often, even usually begin with confusion over what is to be decided and over what is proposed as the decision to make. The ability to get clarification, and the habit of clarifying before committing are crucial to good decision-making. A second set of preparatory abilities involve recognizing what must be done to actually decide what is true and/or advisable, as part of a decision at hand. Making what is recognized as a reasonable and well-reasoned decision depends in large part on applying those abilities clearly and often publicly. These two large sets of abilities are crucially connected. Making clear to oneself and to others what is to be decided is part and parcel of becoming aware of how to decide an issue at hand. This book works to explain the connections and to describe the order of their application. While most of these abilities have been described in other texts on what is usually called “informal logic,” A Preface to Educational Decision-Making is especially concerned with the sorts of decision that educators are called on to make in their professional lives. Moreover, this book widens the range of abilities to clarify and support professional decisions beyond what is usually discussed. The sections on educational speech acts and on deciding what to call true or advisable provide useful additions to educators’ repertoire of decision-making abilities. Finally, the discussion of interpersonal factors in public decision-making offers useful guides to reaching decisions with other educators and with clients.Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Philosophy; Social Foundations, Methods Courses in Education; Pre-student Teaching; and most Graduate courses in Educational Theory, Curriculum, Social Issues