The 10 most-cited articles in American Educational Research Journal, 2017

Translanguaging is a new term in bilingual education; it supports a heteroglossic language ideology, which views bilingualism as valuable in its own right. Some translanguaging scholars have questioned the existence of discrete languages, further concluding that multilingualism does not exist. I argue that the political use of language names can and should be distinguished from the social and structural idealizations used to study linguistic diversity, favoring what I call an integrated multilingual model of individual bilingualism, contrasted with the unitary model and dual competence model. I further distinguish grammars from linguistic repertoires, arguing that bilinguals, like monolinguals, have a single linguistic repertoire but a richly diverse mental grammar. I call the viewpoint developed here a multilingual perspective on translanguaging.

Guided by research on gendered organizations and faculty careers, we examined gender differences in how research university faculty spend their work time. We used time-diary methods to understand faculty work activities at a microlevel of detail, as recorded by faculty themselves over 4 weeks. We also explored workplace interactions that shape faculty workload. Similar to past studies, we found women faculty spending more time on campus service, student advising, and teaching-related activities and men spending more time on research. We also found that women received more new work requests than men and that men and women received different kinds of work requests. We consider implications for future research and the career advancement of women faculty in research universities.

Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion programs on students’ test scores in reading, mathematics, and science and on English learners’ (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intent-to-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in fifth and eighth grades, ranging from 13% to 22% of a standard deviation, reflecting 7 to 9 months of learning. We find little benefit in terms of mathematics and science performance but also no detriment. By sixth and seventh grade, lottery winners’ probabilities of remaining classified as EL are 3 to 4 percentage points lower than those of their counterparts. This effect is stronger for ELs whose native language matches the partner language.

Counter to narratives of persistently failed school reform, we argue that reforms sometimes succeed and seek to understand why. Drawing on examples from the founding of public schools to the present, we find that successful system-wide reforms addressed problems that teachers thought they had by being consistent with prevailing norms and values, mobilizing a significant public constituency, and building the needed educational infrastructure. We distinguish between system-wide and niche reforms, suggesting that some—particularly those seeking ambitious instruction—failed system-wide but succeeded by creating protected educational niches. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for the Common Core.

While Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) enroll at least 25% Latinx students, the perennial question facing HSIs is, “What does it mean for postsecondary institutions to be Latinx-serving”—essentially an organizational identity question. Guided by the extant literature on organizational identity, culture, and institutionalism and using an in-depth case study of a federally designated, four-year HSI, this study focused on the way members construct an organizational identity for serving Latinxs. Findings suggest that while members constructed an ideal Latinx-serving identity based on legitimized outcomes (i.e., graduation), they constructed their current identity from environmental cues about cultural practices. Using two theoretical lenses, I present a typology that considers outcomes and culture in a Latinx-serving identity. Future research should explore the construction of a Latinx-serving identity in a nuanced way.

In this article, we argue that co-constructing knowledge, co-creating relationships, and exchanging stories are central to educational research. Relying on humanizing and Indigenous research methods to locate relational interactions in educational research allows us to engage in transformative praxis and storying, or Projects in Humanization (PiH). We contend that PiH focus on the creation and sustenance of relationships; the human capacity to listen to, story with, and care about each other; and the establishment of more inclusive, interconnected, and decolonizing methodologies that disrupt systemic inequalities found in Western constructs of educational research. More specifically, in this article, we rely on research vignettes to argue for a necessary commitment that researchers must have to sustain, extend, and revitalize the richness of the languages, literacies, histories, cultures, and stories of and by those with whom they work.

This study identifies pathways to educational success among refugees. Data are from an original online survey of Somali diaspora and in-depth qualitative interviews with Somali refugee students educated in the Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya. This research builds on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to consider both the locally and globally situated nature of resources across refugees’ ecosystems. Analysis examines the nature and content of student-identified supports and their perceived influence on access to and persistence in school as well as the mediating role of technology. The findings suggest consideration of both locally situated relationships and globally situated relationships as critical educational supports. Implications include leveraging naturally occurring virtual relationships to support educational success of refugees and other young people who are physically isolated from access to needed supports in their local region.

Women are underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and in some non-STEM majors (e.g., philosophy). Combining newly gathered data on students’ perceptions of college major traits with data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we find that perceived gender bias against women emerges as the dominant predictor of the gender balance in college majors. The perception of the major being math or science oriented is less important. We replicate these findings using a separate sample to measure college major traits. Results suggest the need to incorporate major-level traits in research on gender gaps in college major choices and the need to recognize the impact of perceptions of potential gender discrimination on college major choices.

The present study examined the effectiveness of the oral history approach with respect to students’ historical competence. A total of 35 ninth-grade classes ( N = 900) in Germany were randomly assigned to one of four conditions—live, video, text, or a (nontreated) control group—in a pretest, posttest, and follow-up design. Comparing the three intervention groups with the control group, the intervention groups scored better on four of the five achievement tests. Comparing the live group with the video and text groups, students in the live condition were more convinced of their learning progress at both measurement points. However, they scored lower than the video/text group on two achievement measures and higher on one at the posttest.

This study examines between-country differences in the degree to which teachers’ working conditions, salaries, and societal evaluations about desirable job characteristics are associated with students’ teaching career expectations. Three-level hierarchical generalized linear models are employed to analyze cross-national data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Results reveal that teacher salaries and societal evaluations about the importance of job responsibility and respect are positively associated with teaching career expectations, while working hours are negatively associated with teaching career expectations. Analyses further reveal that the association between salaries and career expectations and societal evaluations and career expectations differ among students with different mathematics skills. We conclude by discussing policy initiatives that can encourage students with strong quantitative abilities to consider a career in teaching.