Baby boomers that assumed leadership at all levels of education have now retired. Many pre-pandemic educational theories and practices proved to be ineffective and, in some cases, yielded negative results. Leaders at all levels are unable to resolve chronic issues such as race discrimination that has permeated throughout US campuses. Research methods in educational leadership have had no breakthroughs. In both educational leadership and research methods, U.S. universities have been surpassed by Asian rising economies including China and India. To combat these issues, this new publication addresses educational leadership issues and encourages innovative research methods at all levels of education.

Despite the many strides that have been made in diversity, equity, and inclusion, many educational systems across the world continue to struggle with equality in education for all students regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. This struggle within education inevitably negatively impacts society, as only select groups are given the opportunity to excel. It is essential for school systems to be proactive when dealing with student learning outcomes and student retention for all student populations. Using Self-Efficacy for Improving Retention and Success of Diverse Student Populations discusses the best practices in supporting students during their educational journey and examines the current efforts to improve student retention. Covering topics such as computing education, academic counseling, and student success prediction, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for faculty and administrators of both K-12 and higher education, pre-service teachers, teacher educators, school counselors, sociologists, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Educational inequalities between students begin early, as children enter kindergarten with vastly different sets of background knowledge and experiences that do (or in many cases do not) prepare them to learn successfully in school. Many children enter school with skills and prior knowledge so low that they are unable to overcome this lack during the kindergarten year, leaving them unprepared for first grade. Predictably, these deficits only widen as the children progress on to subsequent grades. Conversely, children who enter kindergarten prepared to learn, and leave kindergarten having mastered key competencies in literacy and numeracy, are more likely to succeed throughout their schooling and later in life. The recent pandemic has only exacerbated this problem of learner variability. Differences in school approaches to remote or hybrid learning and variability in family and home environments have all impacted the performance of children, many of whom are now nearly a year behind. The pandemic has forced us all to consider the ways in which traditional models of schooling have fallen short, and how we might better design programs that leverage all the inputs in a young child's life (the home, parents, school, community, technology, and more) to ensure that their learning needs are met. If we hope to solve this problem at scale, we must re-examine what we know about these formative early years and develop new ways to ensure that children enter kindergarten ready to learn and leave kindergarten with all the competencies they need succeed in later schooling and beyond. We must consider of all the factors that contribute to a child's school readiness, as well as the critical learning must take place during the kindergarten year. It requires the examination of factors that most influence children's development during the first five years, and their lasting effects on the rest of children's lives. More importantly, we must examine the ways that we, as stakeholders, can influence outcomes for young children by creating synergies between and among these various factors. With all this in mind, this book proposes to assemble the most current research and thought-leadership on the ways in which innovative education stakeholders are working together to impact what are perhaps the most critical years in a child's education - the years leading up to and including kindergarten. Ensuring that children enter kindergarten ready to learn and leave kindergarten with all the key competencies required for later success must be pursued with intensity, creativity, and purpose if we truly wish to address learner variability and its impact on achievement at scale. This book will Illuminate the problem of learner variability in early childhood education, its short and long-term effects on K-12 education and life beyond school, and the potential of technological innovations to address this problem at scale.

A major premise of the book is that teachers, school leaders, and school support staff are not taught how to create school and classroom environments to support the academic and social success of Black male students. The purpose of this book is to help champion a paradigmatic shift in educating Black males. This books aims to provide an asset and solution-based framework that connects the educational system with community cultural wealth and educational outcomes. The text will be a sourcebook for in-service and pre-service teachers, administrators, district leaders, and school support staff to utilize in their quest to increase academic and social success for their Black male students. Adopting a strengths-based epistemological stance, this book will provide concerned constituencies with a framework from which to engage and produce success.

This open access book brings together the disciplines of childhood studies, literary studies, and the environmental humanities to focus on the figure of the child as it appears in popular culture and theory. Drawing on theoretical works by Clare Colebrook, Elizabeth Povinelli, Kathryn Yusoff, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour the book offers creative readings of sci-fi novels, short stories and films including Frankenstein, Handmaid's Tale, The Girl with All the Gifts, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and The Broken Earth trilogy. Emily Ashton raises important questions about the theorization of child development, the ontology of children, racialization and parenting and care, and how those intersect with questions of colonialism, climate, and indigeneity. The book contributes to the growing scholarship within childhood studies that is reconceptualizing the child within the Anthropocene era and argues for child-climate futures that renounce white supremacy and support Black and Indigenous futurities. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.