2022 Summer Journal of Scholarship and Practice

This summer volume features Ken Mitchell’s editorial, “Reflections on Being a Well-informed Leader in 2022,” along with two research articles and a commentary. In structuring this volume, Mitchell lays the groundwork:

On occasion we receive pieces with significant ideas or revelations that do not fit into the identified themes for the year. Rather than contriving a connection, we sometimes find a place for them in our summer issues, which have focused on general reflections about leadership and learning, assuming that for district leaders this is a time of respite—not reprieve—from the intensity, complexity, and chaos of the regular school year.

It is hoped that our Summer 2022 volume will spark such reflection but on the importance of staying current and becoming better-informed about best practice, and for using such evidence and knowledge to navigate a morass of politically rooted disinformation about how and how well America’s public schools are educating children.

The first research article, written by Matt Townsley and Benterah Morton, looks at what journals school superintendents read. Their research produced some interesting results.

The second article is a commentary by James Lipuma and Cristo Leon about Future Ready Schools, a voluntary, school-level program addressing shifts to digital schools.

The third article is research-based and addresses “Politics, Polarization, and Politicization of Social Emotional Learning and School Boards” and is written by Rachel Roegman, Kevin Tan, Patrick Rice, and Jenna Mahoney. As seated superintendents and school boards will likely agree, “social emotional learning” is a phrase currently being tossed about in and at school districts around the country. This study by a team of researchers explored how local school boards have become battlegrounds for our nation’s culture wars.

Mitchell concludes that “educating with evidence that is deep, current, and responsive to disinformation or misinterpretation positions school leaders to own and rely upon the truth. From there, truth should be able to stand on its own, but not unless we pursue it, again and again.”