Welcome! The purpose of the Leadership for School Improvement Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association is to examine how leadership of teachers, principals and superintendents influences instructional capacity resulting in improved student outcomes and how policy guides this collaborative effort. In addition, the Leadership for School Improvement SIG encourages discussion and development of the philosophical, theoretical and empirical tenets guiding school and system renewal. We invite you to join us as we seek to advance this purpose. If you have any questions or comments, please contact any of our officers.

Message from the LSI SIG Chair Fall 2025

On behalf of the LSI Executive Committee, welcome to the Fall 2025 newsletter issue and thank you for being part of our SIG community! We look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming 2025 UCEA Annual Convention in Puerto Rico and learning from one another’s scholarship around the theme “Fostering Leadership Resilience Through Collaboration and Community.” We hope you will join us for our annual LSI lunch event on Friday, November 21 from 12:00-1:30pm, which is a great opportunity to reconnect, build community, and make connections across scholarship and practice. We recognize that collaboration and community are more important than ever in the face of mounting political efforts to undermine equitable and socially just education, and that leaders across higher education and PK-12 have an important role to play in challenging unjust policies. To this end, we continue to prioritize our existing community-building initiatives while considering new ways to collaborate, learn from, and support the work of our higher ed and practitioner colleagues who are navigating heightened political challenges.

In addition to our annual LSI lunch event at UCEA, we will continue to focus on building community across SIGs by hosting a joint reception at AERA with the Educational Change, Systems Thinking, and Organizational Theory SIGs. We also hope to engage SIGs that share our interests, values, and commitments to expand our programming around current issues and challenges relevant to equitable and socially just school improvement work across teaching, scholarship, policy, and practice.

Our graduate student support network, led by the Researcher Development Program (RDP) team of graduate students and faculty advisors, continues to grow and provide impactful publication and presentation opportunities through a year-long mentorship model that matches faculty mentors with graduate student mentees. The RDP team has recently expanded their graduate student support initiatives by hosting webinars on important topics related to scholarship development. These initiatives, co-sponsored with the UCEA Graduate Student Council, serve as an important model highlighting the importance and potential of collaboration across organizations. 

Another initiative that highlights the influential work of our SIG community is the LSI book series, which recently moved publishers from IAP to Emerald. As the book series expands – with eight books published to date, one forthcoming, and several more under review or development – we are also expanding our editorial board. We hope you will engage with this growing body of scholarship, as it highlights the meaningful work being done within our SIG community, and consider developing a proposal to continue to diversify the scope of this work.

As we move through this academic year, we remain committed to expanding the perspectives and scope of leadership for school improvement, and welcome new and diverse voices to these efforts. If you have ideas or would like to be involved in this work, we would love to hear from you! Please reach out to any of the officers, join us at our upcoming in-person events, and bring colleagues and students who might be interested in this work as well. Finally, I’d like to close with a note of thanks. Thank you to our members for your participation and support, which keep these initiatives going. I would also like to thank the LSI Executive Committee for their hard work and dedication to keeping our SIG community active, growing, and committed to improvement towards equity and social justice.

Alison Wilson, Ph.D. 

LSI Chair, 2025-2026

Assistant Professor

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 

University of Houston

aswilso6@cougarnet.uh.edu

2025 - 2026 LSI SIG Executive Committee 

Chairperson: Alison Wilson, University of Houston

Immediate Past Chairperson: DeMarcus Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

Program Chairperson: Samantha Viano, George Mason University

Secretary/Treasurer: Elizabeth Zumpe , University of Oklahoma

 Dissertation Award Chairperson: Kristy Cooper Stein, Michigan State University

Book Series Editor: Khalid Arar, Texas State University

Newsletter Editor: Megan Rauch Griffard, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Researcher Development Program Faculty Advisor : Jennifer Watters, University of Texas at Tyler

Website Manager: Betsy Kim, Lehman College, CUNY  

The Researcher Development Program (RDP) seeks to expand access to academic networks that dually support graduate students’ personal and professional well-being and scholarly development.

The RDP fulfills its mission by:

• Striving to create accessible, inclusive, and humanizing professional development spaces
• Promoting sustained, professionally enriching collaboration between faculty members and graduate students
• Providing research, writing, presentation, and publication opportunities aligned with participants’ academic and professional goals
• Promoting opportunities for faculty members to hone their mentorship skills.

RDP Call for Mentors: The UCEA Graduate Student Council (GSC), in conjunction with the AERA Leadership for School Improvement Special Interest Group (LSI SIG), is seeking mentors for the Researcher Development Program (RDP) 2025-26 cohort. The Researcher Development Program is an initiative aimed at providing graduate students with research-focused mentorship and networking opportunities with faculty members outside their institution. The deadline is October 15th! Sign up HERE.

Dissertation of Year Recipients

2024: Latrice Marianno, "I Don't Think We Can Co-Exist": A Critical Policy Analysis of the Relationship between Equity and School Improvement Planning, Ph.D., University of Delaware, Advisor, Elizabeth Farley-Ripple

2023: Meagan Richard, Emancipatory School Leadership in Educational Market Contexts. Ph.D., University of Illinois Chicago, Advisor, Shelby Cosner

2022: Megan Griffard, Principal Leadership as a Moderator of Teacher Turnover Following Natural Hazard Exposure, Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Advisor, Lora Cohen-Vogel.

2021: Joonkil Ahn, Leadership for Learning and Teacher Self-Efficacy as the Antecedents of Teacher Collaboration, Instructional Quality, Intended Turnover, and Equitable Teaching Practice, Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Advisor, Anjalé D. Welton. 

 2020: Maxwell Yurkofsky, When Reason Confronts Uncertainty: Continuous Improvement, Technical Ceremonies, and the Changing Structure of American Schools, Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, Advisor, Jal Mehta. 

2019: Bryan VanGronigen, An Examination of the Structures, Functions, and Perceived Effectiveness of School Leadership Teams in Underperforming High Schools, Ph.D., University of Virginia, Advisor, Dan Duke

2018: Mary Bussman, Peer Equity Coaching to Increase Cultural Responsiveness in Teaching and Leading, Ph.D., University of Minnesota- Twin Cities, Advisor, Karen Seashore Louis

2017: Kathryn Wiley, Unfulfilled Promises: Equity & School Discipline Practices in an Innovation School, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder, Advisor, Michele Moses 

2016: Romy DeCristofaro, A Multi-Case Study Reflection within Collaborative Teacher Inquiry, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago, Advisor, Shelby Cosner

2015:Elizabeth Leisy Stosich, Learning to Teach to the Common Core State Standards: Examining the Role of Teachers’ Collaboration, Principals’ Leadership, and Professional Development, Ed.D., Harvard University, Advisor, Susan Moore Johnson

2014: Doug Wieczorek, A Repeated, Cross-sectional Analysis of Principals' Professional Development and Instructional Leadership Behaviors in the First Decade of the Educational Accountability Era, Ph.D., Syracuse University, Advisor, George Theoharis

2013: Emily Palmer, Talking about Race: Overcoming fear in the process of change, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Advisor, Karen Seashore Louis

2012: Angela Urick, To what extent do typologies of school leaders across the U.S. predict teacher attrition? A multilevel latent class analysis of principals and teachers, Ed.D., University of Texas at San Antonio, Advisor, Alex Bowers

2011: Kerri J. Tobin, Identifying Best Practices for Homeless Students, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, Advisor, Joseph Murphy

2010: Hans W. Klar, Laying the groundwork for distributed instructional leadership in urban high schools: How principals foster department chair instructional leadership capacity, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Advisor, Paul V. Bredeson

2009: Jennifer K. Clayton, Changing diversity in U.S. schools: The impact on elementary student performance and achievement, Ph.D., Old Dominion University, Advisor, William Owings