The chapters in Urban Educational Leadership for Social Justice: International Perspectives constitute a collection of works that explore dynamics related to equity in multiple contexts. Authors examined these issues in Turkey, Egypt the United States, Thailand and at a global level by comparing and contrasting school leadership practice across borders. Considered as a whole, these papers explore various topics that will be at the forefront of educational research for years to come. Increasingly, educationalleadership understand that there are important lessons to be learned internationally and globally. This book includes important research conceived from these perspectives. Our hope is that individually and collectively, they might contribute to our understanding of international and global issues in educational leadership and that they will extend, challenge and deepen extant lines of inquiry and begin others.

Recommender systems have shown to be successful in many domains where information overload exists. This success has motivated research on how to deploy recommender systems in educational scenarios to facilitate access to a wide spectrum of information. Tackling open issues in their deployment is gaining importance as lifelong learning becomes a necessity of the current knowledge-based society. Although Educational Recommender Systems (ERS) share the same key objectives as recommenders for e-commerce applications, there are some particularities that should be considered before directly applying existing solutions from those applications. Educational Recommender Systems and Technologies: Practices and Challenges aims to provide a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art practices for ERS, as well as the challenges to achieve their actual deployment. Discussing such topics as the state-of-the-art of ERS, methodologies to develop ERS, and architectures to support the recommendation process, this book covers researchers interested in recommendation strategies for educational scenarios and in evaluating the impact of recommendations in learning, as well as academics and practitioners in the area of technology enhanced learning.

Education is a contested terrain. The symmetry of education reform among the seven countries examined in this volume is remarkable. There is much commonality in the issues they raise, in the competing groups battling over education policy, their policy choices, and the implementation of such policies. Also, all seven countries address the same issues: equity, global competition, the performance of their students. There are at least six important traits characterizing these battles: the context, the combatants, the issues, the process, and the policies. To begin with, history, culture, and governance regime set the context for education policy and reform. Second, there is the process of how these battles are waged--is compromise an outcome or is it a zero sum contest? Third, there appear to be four groups of combatants each with its own ideology representing a particular social class in society and their views about education and its uses: Conservatives, Socialists, Neo-Liberals, and Elites. Education is an important and valued resource that each status group tries to control and shape to its own views. Fourth, there are key issues that drive education reform: how education can best flatten a social system, how education train students for work, and how education socializes students to be functioning citizens. In recent years, fifth issue has emerged: student performance on international standardized tests. Not only is a society's international reputation based on their students' performance, but nations see such performance as an indicator of the quality of their educational system and if it is good enough to secure its economic future. Finally, there are the policies themselves--do they reduce or increase inequality, who benefits and how? The chapters in this volume clearly point out that education reform is not a homogeneous process as some scholars have conjectured. Rather, education reform involves heated battles over the control of the educational system because education is seen as a key factor in maintaining a society's vision and social structure.

Higher education has seen better days. Harsh budget cuts, the precarious nature of employment in colleague teaching, and political hostility to the entire enterprise of education have made for an increasingly fraught landscape. Radical Hope is an ambitious response to this state of affairs, at once political and practice - the work of an activist, teacher, and public intellectual grappling with some of the most pressing topics at the intersection of higher education and social justice. Kevin Gannon asks that the contemporary university's manifold problems be approached as opportunities for critical engagement, arguing that, when done effectively, teaching is by definition emancipatory and hopeful. Considering individual pedagogical practice, the students who are the primary audience and beneficiaries of teaching, and the institutions and systems within which teaching occurs, Radical Hope surveys the field, tackling everything from impostor syndrome to cell phones in class to allegations of a campus 'free speech crisis'. Throughout, Gannon translates ideals into tangible strategies and practices (including key takeaways at the conclusion of each chapter), with the goal of reclaiming teachers' essential role in the discourse of higher education.

Top leadership and management of educational institutions and in the industry are often tasked with leading institutions through times of institutional crisis. However, some institutional heads have come through the ranks with training to execute their roles during times of crisis, but often not with enough to assist them in helping their team members to do the same. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the traditional modes of leading crisis management and resolution and preparation is needed for future crises within the context of the global pandemic and beyond. This book provides supervisory and implementation frames for innovative strategies and activities to effectively empower their supervisees to lead and manage crisis. It gives leaders access to a multi-pronged framework for building middle leaders' crisis response efficacies from a wide range of researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians. This book has a wide reach of multisectoral interests in the field of educational leadership and the business community.

Few constitutional issues have been as contentious in modern times as those concerning school prayer and the public funding of religious schools. But as Steven K. Green surprisingly reveals in The Bible, the School, and the Constitution, the apogee of this debate was probably reached about one hundred and forty years ago, in the years between 1863 and 1876. As Green shows, the controversy over Bible reading in public schools captured national attention to an unprecedented degree, providing Americans with the opportunity to engage in a grand-and sometimes not so grand-public debate over the meaning of separation of church and state. Rarely in the nation's history have people from such various walks of life-Protestants and Catholics, skeptics and theocrats, nativists and immigrants, educators and politicians-been able to participate in a national discussion over the meaning of a constitutional principle. The debates of this period, Green shows, laid the foundation for constitutional arguments that still rage today.

Education policy and policy making is shaped through the activities of a complex network of educators, educational leaders, researchers, community members, as well as government and non-government officials and organizations. Educational researchers are a critical player in this complex network and their investigations of various educational phenomena can answer questions relevant to the design and implementation of education policy for school improvement. Educational research, however, often has limited influence in larger policy conversations and decisions (Orland, 2009), and this is due to many factors. Educational researchers can provide an evidence-based starting place for discussions about school improvement with the complex network of stakeholders engaged in policy development and implementation, but they must be more intentionally and systematically thoughtful about the connections of their work to policy and policy making. Furthermore, researchers can increase the relevance of their work for policy through the careful design and framing of research in collaboration with end-users, and an awareness of its implications. In so doing, researchers can spur the interest and dissemination of their findings to wider audiences. This book offers resources for education researchers, faculty, and advanced graduate students interested in maximizing the relevance of their research on policy for school improvement. In achieving this purpose, the book is organized into three sections: 1) A primer for education policy making in the United States; 2) Designing research to maximize education policy relevance; and 3) Engaging users of research to communicate its relevance to policymakers. This book is primarily for education researchers, faculty, and advanced graduate students seeking to improve the visibility and impact of their research on school improvement, particularly in the realm of educational policy and policy making. While this book is a volume in the book series for the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group, Leadership for School Improvement, the importance and usefulness of the topics covered span education research more broadly. Further, the content of this book serves as a comprehensive guide for how education researchers, in general, can better situate their work to influence policy. The book is intended to be utilized by university scholars, graduate students in research or policy courses, post-doctoral fellows, as well as research associates or directors in various organizations relevant to education such as research consulting groups, non-profits which serve education causes, teacher unions, state agencies or state-level educator organizations/ associations, and think tanks. Emerging or established researchers in any of these organizations who want to increase the relevance, significance and dissemination of their work into education policy will hopefully find this book useful.

Higher education provision is an essential component (socially as well as economically) of modern social structures. The British Labour Party and Higher Education focuses on the development of the Labour Party's policy on higher education from 1945 to 2000. It analyses the rapid expansion and series of fundamental transformations in higher education and Labour's part in both shaping and reacting to them. The authors explore the historical evolution and Labour's varying policy initiatives in the period, and question the place higher education has occupied in the various strands of Labour ideology. As always with Labourism', perspectives are contentious and contested, spanning the centralist Fabians', the liberal moralists, and the socialist left. How far, if at all, have Labour's policy stances in this area confronted the elite social reproduction functions of universities or the instrumentalist needs of corporate capitalism? Has this policy evolution given concrete evidence to support (Ralph) Miliband's pessimistic assessment of Labourism' as a political formation structurally unable to confront capitalist social structures, or to see a viable Third Way', as advocated by New Labour?

A volume in International Research on School Leadership Series Editors Alan R. Shoho and Bruce G. Barnett, University of Texas at San Antonio Our fourth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on school leadership in an era of high stakes accountability. Fueled by sweeping federal education accountability reforms, such as the United States' No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (R2T) and Australia's Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce, school systems around the world are being forced to increase academic standards, participate in high-stakes testing, and raise evaluation standards for teachers and principals. These results-driven reforms are intended to hold educators "accountable for student learning and accountable to the public" (Anderson, 2005, p. 2, emphasis in original). While policymakers and the public debate the merits of student achievement accountability measures, P-12 educational leaders do not have the luxury to wait for clear guidance and resources to improve their schools and operating systems. Instead, successful leaders must balance the need to create learning communities, manage the organizational climate, and encourage community involvement with the consequences testing has on teacher morale and public scrutiny. The chapters in this volume clearly indicate that as school leaders attend to these potentially competing forces, this affects their problem-solving strategies, ability to facilitate change, and encourage community involvement. We were delighted with the responses from colleagues around the world who were eager to share their research dealing with how leaders are functioning effectively within a high-accountability environment. The nine chapters in this volume provide empirical evidence of the strategies school leaders use to cope with problems and negotiate external demands while improving student performance. In particular, the voices and actions of principals, superintendents, and school board members are captured in a blend of quantitative and qualitative studies. The breadth of studies is impressive, ranging from case studies of individual principals to cross-district comparisons to national data from the National Center for Education Statistics. To highlight important findings, we have organized the book into five sections. The first section (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) highlights the problem-solving strategies used by principals and superintendents when pressured to turn around low-performing schools. In the second section (Chapters 5 and 6), attention is devoted to ways in which school leaders act as "buffers" by reducing the impact of external demands within their local school contexts. Next, Chapters 7 and 8 explore creative ways in which financial analyses can be used to assess the cost effectiveness of programs and services. Chapters 9 and 10 examine how principals enact their instructional leadership roles in managing curriculum reforms and evaluating teachers. Finally, in the last section (Chapter 11), Kenneth Leithwood synthesizes the major themes and ideas emerging across these chapters, paying particular attention to practical issues influencing school leaders in this era of school reform and accountability as well as promising areas for future research.

A volume in Issues in Urban Education Series Editors Denise E. Armstrong, Brock University and Brenda J. McMahon, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Large, comprehensive urban high schools were designed and constructed with the belief that they could meet the needs of all its students, academic and otherwise. By and large, however, these schools have only done a good job of sorting students for specific jobs in a society based on capitalism and White supremacy. Consequently, students schooled in these large institutions are often sorted depending on how they are situated and/or perceived by institutional agents (i.e. teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, and other staff) along racial/ethnic, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability lines. The overall result of such structurally and culturally-based discriminatory practices has led to astronomically horrendous dropout/pushout rates among urban youth, particularly those of color who live in poverty. However, in such a sea of despair, there exist islands of hope and miracles. These islands of hope and miracles are constituted of small high schools that have become sanctuaries for their students, their families, and communities of color. Moreover, not only do these school sanctuaries exist, but they have the potential to serve as inspirations to communities that are looking to the small schools initiative as a possible solution to the widespread failure of large, comprehensive high schools to serve their needs. Although much recent small schools research discusses the benefits of smallness, very little of this research demonstrates or acknowledges the various ways in which communities have created small schools that have established the necessary conditions to make them sustainable, culturally relevant, and linked to social justice while greatly impacting the improved academic achievement of their students. Therefore, the focus of this book is to advance the school as radical sanctuary concept as described through the history, curricula, and experiences of urban youth and their teachers in two small urban high schools. This book is important for those educationists who wish to deepen their understanding of small school reform and its implications for urban education.

Contributors to this comprehensive volume argue that the Arab educational system is dull, outdated, and stagnant and needs to adopt vibrant, innovative, and collaborative changes. This situation poses a financial, social, political, and professional challenge for most countries in the region. Information Systems Applications in the Arab Education Sector is a rich source of knowledge about educational reforms through the adoption of information systems applications and technologies in the Arab region. It provides a comprehensive account of current initiatives, approaches, issues, and challenges in the Arab education sector as it develops more viable and effective educational models with the help of technology and information systems, and reflects on the investigations and research findings of academics and the experiences of prominent practitioners.

As the sixth volume in the International Research on School Leadership series, the contributing authors in this volume consider the history, challenges, and opportunities of the field of research and practice in educational leadership and administration in schools and districts. Ten years after the work of Firestone and Riehl (2005) and their contributing authors, our aim with the present volume was to summarize and update the work of the field, and provide a space to consider the multiple futures of educationalleadership in schools and districts, as both challenges and opportunities. The first decade of the twenty?first century brought significant critiques, challenges, and competition to the research and practice of training leaders and administrators of schools and districts around the world. Congruently, the field experienced significant growth and change, as multiple new sub?domains flourished and were founded. Thus, in this volume we were delighted to included excellent chapters from multiple authors that considered the duality of the challenges and opportunities of: The work of the field of educational leadership and administration research to date. The opportunities and challenges of new visions of leadership in traditional and non?traditional schools. The evolving state of research evidence in educational leadership and the increasing sophistication of multiple methodologies, including qualitative research, quantitative modeling, the ability to test theory, and the increasing opportunities brought on by the intersection of data, research, and practice. The preparation of educational leaders. And the emerging trends in the professional development of school leaders. The authors of the nine chapters in the present book volume took on this challenge of confronting the duality of not only including the past as we look to the future, but also the duality of the critique of the field in the midst of exciting and significant progress in our knowledge and understanding of leadership in schools. In the first section of the book (Chapters 2, 3 and 4), the authors examine the interplay of educational leadership research and theory as it relates to reform in schools, especially as it relates to serving historically underserved populations globally. In section 2 (Chapters 5 and 6), the authors highlight the importance of methodological considerations in school leadership research as a means to understand theory and practice as well as providing interesting avenues that point to multiple exciting future possibilities through relying on current innovations noted within the chapters. Section 3, (Chapters 7 and 8) examine the research and practice of school leadership preparation, especially as it relates to university?district partnerships and non?traditional school settings. And in the final chapter,(Chapter 9), our capstone contributor provides a means to link the present volume with the past writings on these topics, while also providing a lens to view the exciting possibilities and promises of the multiple futures of the field of educational leadership research and practice.