Critical Perspectives on the Contexts of Improvement-Focused Educational Research

• In Event: Politics, History, and Systems Improvement in 21st Century School Reforms

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes: Educators have focused on improving academic outcomes and opportunities for students. These efforts have yielded new modes of designing and implementing education policies and practices. Some have centered system-level reforms, such as school choice (e.g., charter schools and vouchers), whereas others have targeted practices within schools. We conceive of improvement-focused research in education broadly, encompassing both much of the school reform literature and research in improvement science and collaborative approaches to improving education.

This paper examines how the field of improvement-focused educational research has or has not explored issues related to structural inequality in our society by race, class, and gender. We synthesized the key takeaways from the research that has been done to bring critical perspectives to the improvement field; we also identified key perspectives or approaches that are missing or not fully developed in the field.

Perspective, Data, and Methods: We explore several promising directions for research that bring critical perspectives to improvement-focused research. We define critical broadly, including research and perspectives that center issues of race, class, gender, and disability, as well as those that examine power and politics, disconnects between policy rhetoric and reality, the role of policy in reproducing inequality, and the modes of resistance to systems of oppression (Diem et al., 2014). In this review/essay, we review existing scholarship and present new possible directions for research.

Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions or Warrants for Arguments/Point of View: We begin with improvement efforts at the classroom level and then examine organizational level dynamics before turning to community and broader policy environments. We compare traditional and critical perspectives on school improvement, and share cases of what can be gleaned and how critical perspectives advance our understanding of improvement in education, drawing especially on the case of New Orleans education reform. We identify other ways in which this field could interact with a critical perspective, with an aspirational discussion of what the improvement field could look like if critical perspectives on race, class, gender, and inequality were fully integrated. We describe questions and promising directions for future researchers conducting research on classrooms, organizations/schools, communities, or policies.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance of the Study or Work: We encourage scholars in the field of improvement-focused education research to think more critically about equity and inclusion, and we propose new questions and approaches, drawing from the emerging critical work in the improvement and other educational subfields to do so. Indeed, when done well, improvement efforts in education can include and amplify the voices of marginalized groups toward more equitable practice (Valdez et al., 2020). Core considerations for the field are the makeup of those who are “at the table” and those who have power in improvement efforts, network-based approaches to school improvement, or other reform efforts in schools—both in terms of the policies and programs that improve education and of the researchers who study such programs, and the frameworks from which they draw.

Authors

• Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California

• Joshua Childs, University of Texas at Austin