Recently, the Division A Newsletter Team asked the members of the EIA Committee to introduce themselves, share their research interests, and tell us what brings them joy. You can read about them here. 

Dear Colleagues,
The Division A Equity, Inclusion & Action (EIA) Committee welcomes you to join us at AERA for two committee-developed sessions featuring prominent invited scholars from Division A. Invited education leadership scholars will interrogate the criticality of engaging in social justice work, address the complex and complicated matters that surround doing this type of work in research, teaching, and practice, and discuss ways to move forward through critical scholarship, advocacy, and activism.

• Cultivating Critical Consciousness to Decolonize Educational Leadership, Research, and Praxis
  • Featuring: Drs. Judy Alston, Susan Faircloth, Muhammad Khalifa, Juan Manuel Nino, Angela Valenzuela
  • Fri, April 14 from 9:50 to 11:20 am CDT at Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk, Floor: Level 2, Ontario. 
  • For more information about the session: https://tinyurl.com/2zuqysxf
• Self-Care, Healing, & Social Justice Advocacy in a (Post)COVID Context
  • Featuring: Drs. Ain Grooms, Decoteau Irby, Van Lac, Kofi Lomotey, Melissa Martinez, Lolita Tabron
  • Sat, April 15 from 11:40am to 1:10pm CDT at Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: East Tower - Concourse Level, Michigan 1B.
  • For more information about the session: https://tinyurl.com/AERAment

The EIA Committee also invites you to the Division A Business meeting. We will share our findings from the equity audit of this year’s program and announce new members joining the committee for the next two-year term (2023-25). The business meeting is on Friday, April 14, 6:00 to 7:30pm CDT (7:00 to 8:30pm EDT), Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk, Floor: Level 4, Sheraton Ballroom I. For more information: https://tinyurl.com/2gwyy83p
 
Our 3rd Literature in Action (LIA) professional learning series was a great success. We extend much appreciation to Dr. Decoteau Irby for this learning opportunity that featured his book, Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership. Dr. Irby’s book focuses on developing and enacting leadership praxis for critical racial justice-oriented work and introduces the concept of organizational capacity for racial equity improvement. It addresses the complexity of racial equity reform--its shifting dynamics, progress, and challenges, and argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. The EIA committee is also very thankful to Division A’s VP Dr. Mariela Rodriguez for providing free copies of the book to members and for her dedicated support of this committee’s work. Thank you!
 
The EIA Committee Team
The EIA committee consists of dedicated scholars whose work engenders social justice commitments. To learn more about them and their work please click here.

Dear Colleagues,
The Division A Equity, Inclusion & Action (EIA) Committee has been working diligently on planning for AERA 2023 and on two important endeavors that center social justice and antiracism in educational leadership and administration: 1. the Literature in Action professional learning series, and 2. the Equity Audit of the Division A program annually.
 
With excitement, our committee announces two featured AERA 2023 sessions developed and organized to critically engage with equity, justice, and inclusion. Invited education leadership scholars will interrogate and explain the criticality of engaging in social justice work now, as it is more pronounced than ever in politics, policies, programs, and practice. Further, they address the complex and complicated matters that surround doing this type of work in research, teaching, and practice and ways to move forward through critical scholarship, advocacy, and activism. We hope that these sessions will provide a generative space for doctoral students, practitioners, scholars, and community members who are equity-minded to gather in solidarity, to build relationships to sustain this work, and to bridge knowledges and experiences that propel transformative future directions. A description of each session follows:
 
Vice Presidential Session: Cultivating Critical Consciousness to Decolonize Educational Leadership, Research, and Praxis
Abstract: Education scholars and leaders continually navigate the tensions and challenges posed by censorship and the delegitimization of critical theories in curricula, research, and practice. Thus, it is incumbent upon the educational leadership community to affirm philosophies, knowledges, and truths in learning, leading, and teaching to advance perspectives and experiences traditionally silenced in the canons of research and praxis. Such affirmations draw on a critical consciousness approach that harbors thinking, being, and doing to confront the challenges of consequential education research related to race and ethnicity, women, gender, dis/ability, indigeneity, immigration, and sexual orientation. This session features scholars in educational leadership who discuss enacting critical consciousness and decolonization in varied educational settings.
Invited Scholars: Judy Alston, Susan Faircloth, Muhammad Khalifa, Juan Manuel Nino, Angela Valenzuela
 
Mentorship Session: Self-Care, Healing, & Social Justice Advocacy in a (Post)COVID Context
Abstract: Education scholars engaged in equity, inclusion, and action-focused work often experience challenges that have broad-reaching implications. The Division A EIA Committee invited scholars, at different stages in their careers, who engages in social justice and equity-focused leadership, to dialogue with participants around the following questions: How can scholars, at different points in their careers, sustain themselves in their commitment to social justice and equity-focused leadership? What are strategies for conflict resolution and personal healing? What can we learn from scholars in the field who are actively engaged in equity-focused and justice-oriented work? Our mentoring session is intentionally structured to create intimacy among scholars because mentoring relationships are more likely to develop from small groups and individual conversations. Thus, we seek to create space where invited scholars and attendees can discuss challenges and strategies for social justice advocacy with transparency and honesty. 
Invited Scholars: Ain Grooms, Decoteau Irby, Van Lac, Kofi Lomotey, Melissa Martinez, Lolita Tabron
 
EIA Committee’s Initiatives

1. Our committee will be featuring our 3rd Literature in Action (LIA) in the Spring of 2023. A free copy of the featured book, Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership, by Dr. Decoteau Irby, will be provided to fifty Division A members, who previously signed up. Dr. Irby’s book focuses on developing and enacting leadership praxis for critical racial justice-oriented work and introduces the concept of organizational capacity for racial equity improvement. It addresses the complexity of racial equity reform--its shifting dynamics, progress, and challenges, and argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. If you are interested in participating, please email Dr. Karen Ramlackhan, EIA Chair, at [email protected]. Additional information will be providing in upcoming communications.
2. Our committee will continue and expand on the work engaged in the last year under the leadership of previous Chair Dr. Katherine Rodela in revising the Equity Audit process and address issues that emerge through intentional efforts and advocacy. Specifically, one such issue is in relation to highlighting underrepresented areas in scholarship in the programming. Several topics have been consistently underrepresented including disability and inclusion, LGBTQIA+ issues, immigration, religion, and studies centering Asian, Asian American, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern students and people, among others. Further information will be provided in forthcoming communications about this committee’s continued work in examination of the equity audit process and making the necessary improvements.  

 
The Equity, Inclusion & Action Committee Team
 
The EIA committee consists of dedicated scholars whose work engenders social justice commitments. To learn more about them and their work please click here.
 

The Division A Equity, Inclusion & Action (EIA) Committee has been busy planning for AERA 2022 and engaging in two critical initiatives focused on equity, inclusion, and social justice: (1) Literature in Action professional learning series, and (2) the revision of the Equity Audit of the Division A Program. 

Our EIA Committee will be featuring our 2nd Literature in Action (LIA), in the Spring of 2022. Specifically, this upcoming event will be focused on mentorship for early career scholars of color who are current faculty members in academia. We will be sharing the Call for Proposals in January for authors of recent books that center race and racism within research, practice, and policy on leadership for social justice. Author(s) of the book chosen for LIA will be asked to consider how learning sessions will include mentoring of early career scholars of color to build capacity for critical racial justice-oriented work. Special thank you to Division A VP Dr. Mariela Rodriguez for her full support in continuing this important professional development opportunity for our division members!

Our second major initiative this year is work on revising the Equity Audit Process that Division A uses to examine equity-focused topics in our AERA program sessions. Historically, the process required that Section Chairs from the Program Planning Committee examine and code each paper and symposia for specific equity topics. These topics include: Race, Gender, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Disability, Language, Geographic Diversity, Immigrant/refugee, Diversity/equity methods or other, Diversity/equity framework, and General equity/equality. After this process, the EIA Chair would examine the codings, summarize these results and provide a report at the Division A Business meeting at AERA. Over time and particularly between 2016-2021, several patterns have emerged from these analyses:

• Between 40-60% of accepted Division A papers and symposia have some connection to “equity” between 2016 and 2021.
• The EIA topic areas from 2016-2021 with the most representation in accepted Division A papers are: race, general equity/equality, geographic diversity, and diversity/equity in theoretical frameworks.
• The EIA topic areas with the least representation in accepted Division A papers include: religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and immigrant/refugee issues.
  
  

These trends raise several questions and considerations for Division A as we continue to support and foster work related to equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice in the Division:

• Race and representation: Several patterns have emerged in terms of representation of diverse racial groups and experiences of racism. A majority of papers and symposia discuss “People of Color” broadly. When particular racial or ethnic groups are mentioned, we see most scholarship focused on Black, African American, and Latinx/o/a (Hispanic) students and communities. There are fewer papers and in some years none that center the experiences of Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous communities. 
• Counting geographic diversity as an “equity topic”: Currently, geographic diversity can be coded if a paper mentions a specific geographic context, including rural, suburban, urban, and international contexts. How is this category understood and defined?
• Growth of “general equity/equality” papers: A growing trend is the number of accepted papers that adopt a “general equity/equality” focus. This means that the paper could get counted as an “equity paper” by having mentioned the term “equity” or discussing reform or improvement for equity. What does “general equity/equality” mean within the process? Are we seeing this trend as a result of the specific AERA conference theme for a given year? Does this trend reflect the growing cachet of equity work? Does it reflect commitment to addressing educational inequities related to systemic racism, classism, heteronormativity, ableism and other forms of oppression?
  

Inspired by these questions and the leadership of former EIA Chair Dr. Daniel Liou, who raised questions about the Equity Audit process last year, the EIA Committee is working to examine how we can revise our process to make it more user-friendly and helpful in our continued planning and work as a Division. We plan to collaborate with Division A Vice President Dr. Mariela Rodriguez, Program Planning Chair Dr. Virginia Rangel and Co-Chair Dr. Decoteau Irby, as we engage in this work this year. 
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As committee chair and co-chair, we are excited for this upcoming year and the equity and justice-focused work the Division A Equity, Inclusion, and Action Committee will engage in. 

These times are crucial. There are critical justice issues facing humanity. The inequitable impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are disproportionately affecting minoritized communities, particularly Indigenous, Black and Brown populations. Politically-driven governmental responses in the U.S. and across the globe have sparked protests against scientifically-based public health safety recommendations for basic protections such as masking in PK-12 schools and in higher education. The enforcement of punitive measures on districts not in compliance with state mandates on face mask policy is detrimental to work of educational leaders, youth, family and community members, educators, and scholars who work in these educational systems to support and protect our most vulnerable, namely children, youth, and immunocompromised people.

The continued racial violence and systemic racial injustices impacting Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Middle Eastern, Asian and Asian American, Pacific Islander, and other marginalized communities persists. Many witness or experience continual homophobia, transphobia, cissexism, heteronormativity, and intersectional oppression impacting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Gender Fluid people, particularly in areas where local state governments seek to undermine protections for Transgender students in schools. Further, the backlash via state legislation against antiracism, Critical Race Theory, and equity-focused teaching and scholarship across the U.S., including states where many Division A members (including EIA committee members), our students, colleagues, and educational partners live and work, is harmful to equity and social justice efforts in schools and districts.

As the incoming chair and co-chair, these continued injustices strengthen our unyielding stance and staunch commitment to equity, justice, and inclusion, particularly for communities facing oppression and marginalization due to racism, classism, sexism, ableism, cissexism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious oppression, and other forms of systemic injustice. It is our role as a collective Division A community to work together and support each other in our endeavors to promote justice and equity in the schools, communities, and in higher education institutions. We expressly stand in solidarity with our colleagues and educational leaders in states and regions where equity-focused work is under attack. 

For this year, we seek to continue and expand the important work the EIA Committee engaged in last year under the leadership of Chair Dr. Daniel Liou. During 2020-2021, several issues emerged in discussions with the EIA Committee that we plan to proceed with in conversation, our advocacy, and programming this year. These included the need to:

• Increase visibility and support for research and continued Division A sessions related to intersectional LGBTQIA+ issues. The committee’s AERA 2021 Invited Speaker Session “Queering at the Crossroads: Researching, Teaching, and Liberation at the Intersections of LGBTQIA Identities in Education'' organized and facilitated by Dr. Hilary Lustick was an important start to this work. We are excited to continue to build on this momentum and the critical conversations that surfaced during this session.
• Advocate for greater inclusion and accessibility for persons with disabilities at the AERA conference and within AERA communication. We recognized--particularly through the leadership and advocacy of Dr. Catherine O’Brien--continued issues in AERA’s communication, online conference platform, and providing equitable access to members with disabilities. We are also deeply concerned about continued deficit-framing and ableist language that mark communication around inclusion and disability in the organization. We plan to work with the committee and Division A Leadership to address these issues this year.
• Examine our Division A conference program and the broader educational leadership field for topics and areas of study related to equity, diversity, and inclusion that remain missing or underrepresented in our Division A AERA Program. We know that several topics remain underrepresented in our program, including: disability and inclusion, LGBTQIA+ issues, immigration, religion, and studies centering Asian, Asian American, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern students and peoples, among others. We are committed to pursuing this conversation by working in partnership with the Program Committee to ensure equitable access and representation of the various topics Division A members’ research and the diverse communities we engage in.

Another important initiative launched last year was the Literature in Action Session, organized and led by our EIA Committee Co-Chair Dr. Karen Ramlackhan. Our inaugural Equity, Inclusion, Action Committee's Literature in Action event was a great success. A free copy of the featured book, Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership, by Sharon I. Radd, Gretchen Givens Generett, Mark Anthony Gooden, & George Theoharis, was provided to 50 Division A members consisting of graduate students, all levels of the professoriate, practicing school and district leaders, and community leaders. Over 120 people from around the world signed up to participate in 3 one-hour virtual sessions with the authors this summer. These interactive sessions critically engaged participants in focused discussions around anti-racism where the authors assisted participants in developing actionable anti-racist leadership practices. Several participants remarked on the impact of the sessions:

• “The second session was extremely valuable. Putting together the timeline on Padlet showed a concrete, and extremely strong way that critical reflexivity can occur. It is something that I can readily do with faculty and staff at the middle school I work at and with undergrad students in the diversity course that I adjunct.”
• “In my dissertation research I will be working with principals and teacher leaders to support more critical approaches to elementary science education and we might get this book for them to support the critical self-reflection needed to better see white normativity, especially in fields seen as ‘traditionally objective’ like science and to think about how to expand the work beyond their leadership team.”
• “I love the authenticity. The reflections are great. I will use it in principal prep courses and the Ed.D. program. I will also write a glowing book review to be included in the school leadership review journal—hopefully other professors of Ed Ad will adopt.”

Working with Division A VP Dr. Mariela Rodriguez, we hope to organize another LIA session this year to continue to build community around equity and action in the division.
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Finally, we are excited to welcome four new members of our EIA Committee this year: Dr. Bryan Duarte, Dr. Kendra Lowery, Dr. Maritza Lozano, and Dr. Courtney Mauldin. Each of these new members brings critical insights, experience, and leadership to our committee. We look forward to working with them and the members of the EIA committee who will be entering their second year: Dr. Joshua Bornstein, Dr. Catherine O’Brien, Dr. James Martinez, and Doctoral Candidate Tanishia Williams.

Thank you for your commitment to Division A,​

Katherine Rodela (chair) and Karen Ramlackhan (co-chair)