Mapping Power in K-12 US Educational Research

• In Event: Power as Resource, Tool, and Constraint: Examining Power in Educational Organizations

Abstract

We conduct a systematic, scoping literature review of 135 peer-reviewed papers on power in US K-12 school districts published from 2005-2025 (Alexander, 2020). Our review maps trends in the field, analyzes differences in how power is conceptualized (Collien, 2021), and suggests future directions for policy and practice.

Preliminary results show that articles more frequently rely on certain conceptualizations of power (e.g., power as a resource coupled with formal roles; power as domination shaped by societal power relations) and not others (e.g. power as empowerment; power as emancipation). In doing so, the literature offers more insight into individual and structural dynamics that constrain staff and community efforts to influence policy, and less on how to disrupt and reimagine these broader structural systems to support emancipatory goals.

The results also show variation in power dynamics across levels, highlighting the ways that oppressive social systems perpetuate unequal power dynamics across multiple contexts. At the state/societal level, papers consider the impact of formal entities (school board, state, and federal) and social schema (racism, settler colonialism, ableism, adultism) on educational systems, and the ways that formal systems reinforce and perpetuate power dynamics rooted in racism (e.g., Kramarczuk Voulgarides et al., 2024) and settler colonialism. At the organizational level, discourse centers on the relationships between school district central office policy on schools and individuals, as well as the way that intermediary organizations may shape powerful networks (e.g., Jani, 2024). These papers often highlight how individual identities and formal roles shape the ability of organizational agents to influence policy implementation. At the individual level, there are papers that discuss the power of students, teachers, school administrators, parents, and community members to influence policy and equitable schooling routines (e.g., Hu & Tuten, 2024). While literature on school administrators often centers on their positional authority, there is also some research on how students, teachers, parents, and community members use emancipatory power to resist and transform relationships in which formal leadership sidelines community needs.


Further, the results show wide variation in the methodological approaches used to study different levels of organizational analysis. Though many micro-level papers use qualitative methods to highlight complex interpersonal and organizational dynamics, macro-level papers often take advantage of large data sets to conduct quantitative or policy analysis. At the intermediate level, meso-level papers employ both methodological approaches. Given that they are amenable to addressing broad social issues, many conceptual papers address macro-level concerns.


We suggest that the field of educational research has opportunities to: consider broader conceptualizations of power; illuminate opportunities for transforming–rather than just documenting–power dynamics that perpetuate inequality; subvert disciplinary norms by using quantitative methods to study interpersonal analysis or qualitative methods to explore state-level policy formation; engage research participants in their reflections on power in education (in contrast to indirect interpretation); consider how out-of-school experiences mediate the impacts of school district policy; and study settings traditionally underrepresented in the educational literature (e.g., rural, Indigenous, minoritized religious communities).

Authors

• Kemi A. Oyewole, University of Pennsylvania

• Angel Xiao Bohannon, NORC at the University of Chicago

• Kate Kennedy, University of Cincinnati