Attrition rates among school leaders have risen in recent years, and scholars cite a lack of meaningful connections and responsive professional learning as leading reasons why they are leaving the field. School leaders are called to navigate unfamiliar and complex challenges, often working in isolation with limited opportunities for collaboration and professional growth. Social media forums, like Twitter, have potential to support a Community of Practice to facilitate learning around school leadership; however, there is a lack of scholarship exploring how school leaders use social media to support their needs. This mixed-methods study used sentiment and content analysis along with a phronetic iterative approach to explore how school leaders use Twitter to connect with others in the field. The umbrella categories of efficacy, agency, and resiliency emerged from the analysis, offering a glimpse into potential connections made through social media. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that principals are seeking connection, encouragement, and professional learning, yet further development in this area could help inform more formal practices to fill the gap in access to informal professional learning.
This chapter explores systems thinking through the lens of open systems within the national teacher crisis in post-pandemic schools. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated a long-standing, significant teacher shortage, and there have been several federal, state, and local initiatives to address the challenges educators are facing. Through an exploration of the literature, this chapter provides insight to the historical context of teacher shortages and provides recent measures across the nation that have been introduced to encourage teacher recruitment and retention. Additionally, this chapter presents practitioners—school leaders and teacher leaders—as voices from the field to contextualize experiences of the five federal recommendations in mitigating the teacher crisis, providing insight to the daily challenges in meeting the needs of their schools. As a concluding reflection, the authors propose a potential solution through the open systems lens to build collective capacity in addressing the post-pandemic teacher shortage crisis.
This chapter explores artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to revolutionize the field of education by enhancing teaching and learning. It further highlights ways in which AI technologies can support educators and students, including content creation encompassing voice and video, task automation, and the provision of personalized learning through adaptive learning platforms. Potential benefits to leveraging AI technology include improved learner engagement, automated administrative processes, and more robust data-driven insights. As AI advances, a unique opportunity emerges for schools to prepare educators to use AI in the classroom and for educators to redefine traditional teaching methodologies. Nonetheless, balancing AI innovation with ethical considerations includes considering issues in transparency and privacy in AI algorithms as well as mitigating biases in the data.
School leadership is a fast-paced job where stakeholder feedback is frequent, and decision-making requires quick thinking and strong organization. When school leaders transition from practitioner to scholar, they face a dramatic change in pace and responsibility. Unlike their peers who come from academia, practitioner-scholars experience a unique context and career shift that requires navigating unfamiliar organizational structures and translating existing skills into new contexts. This collaborative autoethnography explores the lived experiences of two junior faculty who recently transitioned from the campus principalship to the tenure track professoriate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a process of individual writing, group reflection, and shared analysis, common themes emerged from the data, including expectations, relationships, and identity. The research discusses processing unfamiliar experiences in academia, negotiating the re-identification of self, and developing new attachments during the shift from doing the work to supporting and advancing the field.
We have utilized x-ray photoelectron and variable energy positron beam spectroscopies for depth profiling excess arsenic, arsenic precipitates, and vacancy-type defects in GaAs grown by molecular beam epitaxy at low temperatures (LT-GaAs). XPS results show about 1.3% excess arsenic in as-grown LT-GaAs and a non-uniform depth profile of arsenic concentration in annealed LT-GaAs. Doppler broadening of the positron-electron annihilation radiation (S parameter) reveals a non-uniform depth profile of defects in annealed LT-GaAs. We observe a clear correlation between the depth profile of the S parameter and As in annealed LT-GaAs.
This chapter explores the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and sexuality within the identities of marginalized school leaders. It emphasizes the significance of authenticity in leadership and the social justice implications of navigating and redefining one's space. Drawing from a collaborative autoethnography of four participant-researchers, this inquiry applies a decolonizing framework to critically examine and reconstruct leadership identity. By sharing their stories, the participants contribute to a broader understanding of the realities faced by marginalized school leaders and the impact of identity on authenticity, vulnerability, and influence within their roles. This inquiry highlights the need for leaders to engage in a practice of storying and re-storying, enabling them to lead with truth and authenticity.