Volume 18, Issue 2 (2023) The ‘Doing’ of Equity Work: Understandings and Actions

Our general issue continues the NWJTE Aims and Scope to focus on bridging the space between theory and practice in the forwarding of liberating educational mindsets and practices. Equity work must focus on large systemic issues, while also focusing on the small, granular aspects of the work educators do on a daily basis. The manuscripts included in The ‘Doing’ of Equity Work: Understandings and Actions, bridge that space between.

Foregrounding the issue, Narayanan focuses in on the reasons people choose to enter Principal Preparation Programs and whether a vision of equity contributes to their decision-making. Next, Mari and Hayden focus on the preparation of teachers who work with multilingual students—an ever-growing population in American schools—and how that preparation influences student learning. Preparation is also an important theme in the third manuscript; Farrelly, Maulbeck, and Scheiber present their research on an equity framework to support their preservice teachers in the development of Black liberatory practices. In “Aporias, Transcendence and a Curriculum of Hospitality”, Wang and Ness suggest a curriculum of hospitality as means of democratization of the educational system and process. And in the final manuscript, Oh takes us into the daily work of two early childhood educators and the challenges they face in providing children with opportunities for outdoor play, reminding us that systemic equity issues can even be found in the smallness of a preschool playground.