A Critical Participatory Action Research Study of Teacher Agency and Humanistic Learning in a Datafied Urban School

This critical participatory action research project emerges from the daily contradictions of teaching in a public school system caught between democratic ideals and neoliberal management. At Thorndike Academy High School in Chicago’s North Lawndale community, students navigate structures shaped by historic racial segregation, chronic underfunding, and the growing influence of corporate and philanthropic “reform” agendas. These forces have reframed educational purpose through the logics of efficiency, accountability, and technological innovation, logics that often reduce teaching to compliance and students to data points.

Yet within these constraints, educators continue to seek pedagogical approaches that honor students as thinkers, creators, and agents of their own learning. The central premise of this inquiry is that meaningful improvement in teaching does not arise from imposed reforms but from teachers’ collective capacity to design culturally and cognitively rich instruction responsive to their students’ lived realities. By engaging teachers as co-researchers, this study positions classroom practice as a site of both intellectual inquiry and social struggle.

The investigation focuses on how teachers perceive, adapt, and implement evidence-based and culturally sustaining instructional designs. Those integrating multiple forms of representation, collaboration, and reflection, to serve all learners, particularly students with disabilities (Moreno & Mayer, 2007). Rather than evaluating compliance with external standards, the study explores how educators negotiate autonomy, creativity, and critical engagement under the pressures of corporatized schooling.

In doing so, this project contributes to a broader movement to reclaim public education as a democratic, humanistic endeavor. It frames action research not as an instrument of managerial improvement, but as a process of professional and collective emancipation: teachers studying their own practice to better understand and transform the social conditions under which they teach.

The following are the major headings of this proposal: Problem Statement, Action Research Purpose, Literature Review Findings, Methodology, Data Collection Results, Recommendation, Conclusion, References, Appendices A, B, C.

Problem Statement

Thorndike Academy High School in North Lawndale operates under a convergence of structural disadvantage and ideological reform. Despite decades of reform rhetoric promising innovation and equity, this school remains shaped by racial segregation, economic dispossession, and neoliberal education policy. These forces manifest both materially and epistemically: through resource scarcity, punitive discipline, and the devaluation of teachers’ professional expertise in favor of technocratic control (Saltman, 2010; Au & Ferrare, 2015).

At Thorndike, such dynamics are evident in the required use of McGraw Hill’s ALEKS software, Verizon’s one-to-one laptop initiative, and philanthropic partnerships that position external actors as “whole-school” reformers (MSI, 2024). While promoted as modernization, these interventions advance privatization, surveillance, and algorithmic governance (Williamson, 2019; Selwyn, 2019). The ideology of “personalization” masks a managerial logic of standardization, narrowing teachers’ ability to enact authentic, inclusive pedagogy.

For students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), inequity is compounded by chronic underfunding, staffing shortages, and the misallocation of Special Education Classroom Assistants (SECAs), whose roles often deviate from their federally mandated instructional purpose. These conditions reproduce segregation and deficit-based assumptions, constraining both student potential and teacher agency (Connor et al., 2013; Artiles, 2011).

Within this context, the professional discourse of “multimodal” or “evidence-based” teaching is frequently appropriated by corporate and philanthropic interests. What began as research-informed frameworks for cognitive and cultural inclusion (Bruner, 1966; Mayer, 2009; Paris & Alim, 2017) is often redefined as a set of technical products or data dashboards. The result is a fundamental contradiction: teachers are expected to deliver innovative, multimodal learning experiences while operating within systems that restrict the autonomy, time, and trust such practices require.

This study addresses that contradiction directly. It examines how teachers at Thorndike conceptualize and experience multimodal instructional design amid institutional constraints, investigating whether the principles of culturally sustaining and cognitively rich pedagogy can be reclaimed from corporate managerialism and re-centered as tools of democratic, emancipatory education.

Research Purpose

The purpose of this critical participatory action research project is to examine how teachers at Thorndike Academy High School perceive, interpret, and implement multimodal instructional designs, defined here as pedagogical approaches employing multiple representations and means of expression (linguistic, visual, symbolic, collaborative, and experiential) to support diverse learners, particularly students with IEPs.

The study seeks to:

Identify how teachers understand and apply multimodal and culturally sustaining instructional strategies in practice;

Analyze how institutional structures, corporate programs, and philanthropic interventions affect teachers’ ability to enact these strategies authentically; and

Explore how teacher-led collaboration and reflection can strengthen culturally responsive, evidence-based instruction despite systemic constraints.

Grounded in cognitive science (Mayer, 2009; Moreno & Mayer, 2007; Bruner, 1966) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), this research rejects the false premise of fixed “learning styles” (Kirschner, 2017). Instead, it frames multimodality as the intentional use of diverse cognitive and cultural pathways to meaning-making. The inquiry is guided by a belief that professional autonomy, community knowledge, and human relationships, not algorithms or philanthropic management, are the true conditions for rigorous, equitable teaching.

Ultimately, this study aims to contribute actionable insights for educators and school leaders seeking to reconcile evidence-based practice with the moral and democratic imperatives of public education. It views teacher reflection not as compliance, but as a collective, intellectual act of reclaiming the purpose of schooling as a humanizing enterprise.

Literature Review Findings

This Literature Review synthesizes two intersecting streams of scholarship:

Critical theoretical literature (Apple, Giroux, Gramsci, Lipman, etc.), which problematizes the political economy shaping what counts as “evidence-based” instruction; and

Empirical and cognitive research on culturally and cognitively rich, cooperative, and inquiry-based learning (Bruner, Mayer, Durlak, Roseth, Furtak, Paris & Alim, etc.), which grounds what authentic multimodality looks like in practice.

The Political Economy of Pedagogical Reform

Critical education theorists have long argued that what counts as “best practice” in teaching is never ideologically neutral. Apple (2004) and Giroux (2011) identify how curriculum reforms and pedagogical innovations are routinely co-opted by dominant economic interests to reproduce existing relations of power. Under neoliberal regimes, schooling becomes a mechanism for workforce preparation and social discipline rather than intellectual emancipation (Gramsci, 1971; Lipman, 2011). Boyles (2005) and Saltman and Gabbard (2003) similarly demonstrate how privatization, militarization, and corporate philanthropy reshape schools as sites of ideological management.

Reckhow and Snyder (2014) and Tamrat and Tegegne (2021) show that philanthropy’s expanding role in U.S. education, via “innovation” programs and technology partnerships, serves to redirect public resources toward private governance structures. Within this logic, pedagogical frameworks such as “evidence-based” or “multimodal” become commodified: marketed as value-added products or software services rather than humanistic practices of teaching and learning (Kincheloe, 2008; Saltman, 2010). For educators at undervalued, segregated schools like Thorndike Academy, these forces narrow the scope of professional autonomy and redefine rigor as compliance with standardized, datafied models of instruction.

Reclaiming Culturally and Cognitively Rich Instructional Design: Cognitive, Cultural, and Collaborative Dimensions

Against this backdrop, the cognitive and sociocultural research traditions offer countervailing evidence that authentic culturally and cognitively rich teaching fosters deeper learning precisely because it integrates multiple representational systems: linguistic, visual, symbolic, and embodied into meaning-making (Bruner, 1966; Mayer, 2009; Moreno & Mayer, 2007). Rather than catering to imaginary “learning styles,” this tradition grounds culturally and cognitively rich instructional designs in cognitive flexibility and transfer of knowledge across contexts (Kirschner, 2017).

In mathematics and science education, guided inquiry and concept mapping have been shown to enhance conceptual understanding by prompting students to articulate relationships between ideas and to revise their reasoning collaboratively (Furtak et al., 2012; Nesbit & Adesope, 2006). Cooperative learning, when structured around positive interdependence and shared accountability, consistently produces gains in achievement, motivation, and social cohesion among diverse learners (Roseth, Johnson, & Johnson, 2008).

Similarly, social-emotional learning (SEL), when embedded as a practice of reflection and solidarity rather than behavioral control, has measurable impacts on engagement and academic performance (Durlak et al., 2011). And culturally sustaining pedagogy, as defined by Paris and Alim (2017), extends these principles by anchoring learning in the languages, identities, and community practices of students, especially those marginalized by systemic inequity.

Culturally and Cognitively Rich Instructional Design as Critical Praxis

When reframed through the critical lens of Apple (2004) and Giroux (2014), these culturally and cognitively rich instructional designs become more than instructional techniques. They become acts of pedagogical resistance. Genuine culturally and cognitively rich teaching requires teacher agency, relational trust, and local relevance: conditions often undermined by algorithmic learning platforms and philanthropic mandates. Drawing on Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon’s (2014) conception of critical participatory action research, the present study treats culturally and cognitively rich design as a practice of democratic inquiry: teachers and students collaboratively creating knowledge that challenges existing hierarchies of power.

This synthesis thus positions culturally and cognitively rich instructional strategies as both cognitive and political acts, integrating multiple pathways of representation to support deep understanding while also reasserting education’s emancipatory purpose. For students with IEPs and those subject to racialized structural oppression, such practices may represent one of the few remaining avenues toward meaningful intellectual and social empowerment.

Methodology

Research Design

This action research study employed a mixed-methods design (Creswell & Clark, 2017) to investigate how teachers at Thorndike Academy High School conceptualized and enacted evidence-based, culturally and cognitively rich instructional designs within the context of a corporatized and under-resourced public school. The study was guided by a critical participatory framework (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 2007), positioning teachers as reflective agents whose insights could reveal the conditions constraining or enabling pedagogical innovation.

The research combined quantitative survey data (Likert-scale items) with qualitative open-ended responses to illuminate both patterns of perception and the contextualized experiences of individual educators. This dual approach allowed for triangulation between numeric tendencies (e.g., perceived autonomy or institutional support) and thematic meanings (Saldaña, 2014).

Participants and Context

Three teachers representing different roles and levels of experience participated in the study:

Teacher A, a first-year diverse learner teacher with prior suburban experience, navigating extensive IEP paperwork and administrative noncompliance.

Teacher B, a 25-year veteran mathematics teacher skeptical of privatization but resigned to district mandates.

Teacher C, a fourth-year English teacher committed to justice-oriented instruction and reflective inquiry.

All participants worked at Thorndike Academy High School in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, a CPS site serving an entirely African American student body. Participants’ identities were anonymized through pseudonyms and the school identified only by type and neighborhood to protect confidentiality, following ethical guidance for practitioner research (Anderson et al., 2007).

Instrumentation

Data were collected through a Teacher Perception Survey designed by the researcher (see Appendix A). The instrument consisted of:

Demographic items (role, years of experience, grade level);

Fifteen Likert-type statements on instructional autonomy, access to resources, collaboration, and leadership support (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree); and

Four open-ended prompts eliciting reflection on supports, barriers, successful practices, and desired policy changes.

The survey definitions clarified terms such as teacher autonomy, multimodal instruction, and culturally responsive teaching to ensure conceptual consistency. The instrument was informed by cognitive and sociocultural learning research (Bruner, 1966; Mayer, 2009; Paris & Alim, 2017) and pilot-tested informally with two nonparticipants for clarity.

Data Collection Procedures

Surveys were distributed electronically using Google Forms and completed voluntarily. Participants were reminded that responses would remain anonymous and used solely for professional reflection and improvement. After submission, participants were invited to a member-check conversation (Anderson et al., 2007) to verify that the researcher’s initial interpretations accurately reflected their perspectives. This process served both as a validity check and as an act of collaborative inquiry central to action research.

Data Analysis

Quantitative Analysis

Likert responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics to identify trends in teacher perceptions. Mean scores were computed for thematic clusters: Instructional Autonomy, Professional Support, and Leadership and Collaboration, to reveal overall sentiment. For example, all three teachers reported low autonomy (M = 2.7) and challenging institutional conditions (M = 2.3), but strong agreement that culturally responsive teaching improved engagement (M = 4.7). These descriptive results established the structural constraints shaping instructional design.

Although inferential statistics were not applicable due to the small sample, the quantitative trends informed qualitative coding by highlighting dimensions of shared concern (Creswell & Clark, 2017).

Qualitative Analysis

Open-ended responses were analyzed through first- and second-cycle coding (Saldaña, 2014). Initial descriptive codes (e.g., paperwork overload, tech mandate resistance, collaborative solidarity) captured surface meaning, followed by pattern coding that clustered them into broader analytic categories such as institutional constraint, quiet resistance, and pedagogical hope.

Themes were cross-validated through member checking: participants reviewed the emergent categories and confirmed their accuracy. This reflexive process ensured interpretive validity while positioning teacher voices as central rather than illustrative (Saldaña, 2018).

Integration of Data

Following Creswell and Clark’s (2017) convergent parallel mixed-methods model, quantitative and qualitative findings were integrated during interpretation. Quantitative indicators of low autonomy and high belief in culturally relevant pedagogy were illuminated by qualitative testimony describing systemic obstacles and acts of everyday resistance. This synthesis linked individual perceptions to institutional structures.

Trustworthiness and Ethics

The study adhered to the principles of trustworthiness outlined by Anderson et al. (2007):

Credibility was enhanced through member checking and reflexive journaling.

Transferability was supported by rich contextual description of Thorndike Academy and its neighborhood.

Dependability was achieved by maintaining an audit trail of coding and analytic decisions.

Confirmability derived from triangulating survey data with reflective field notes.

Participants’ privacy was protected by pseudonyms, secure storage of data, and omission of any identifying references to administrators or colleagues.

Summary

This methodology allowed the researcher to generate a nuanced portrait of teaching under conditions of constraint. Quantitative data identified broad patterns of disempowerment and belief in culturally grounded pedagogy, while qualitative analysis amplified the teachers’ voices as both subjects and agents of change. By integrating these strands, the study illuminated how educators at Thorndike Academy negotiate their professional identities amid structural inequity and privatized reform, aligning with action research’s emancipatory aims (Anderson et al., 2007).

Data Collection Results

Overview of Research Questions

This study sought to answer the following research questions:

1. How do teachers at Thorndike Academy High School perceive their autonomy and support in implementing evidence-based and culturally rich instructional practices?

2. What institutional conditions enable or constrain multimodal, inclusive teaching for diverse learners, particularly students with IEPs?

3. How can the insights of teachers themselves inform a more humanistic, collaborative model of curriculum design that resists corporatized, standardized control?

The results of the teacher survey and qualitative analysis addressed these questions by revealing patterns of constraint, resilience, and grassroots innovation among three educators working within a shared institutional context.

Quantitative Findings

Descriptive Trends

Table 1 summarizes the Likert responses of the three participants: A, B and C. Descriptive statistics were calculated for each of the four major clusters: Instructional Autonomy and Support, Institutional Conditions, Professional Climate and Reflection, and Belief in Culturally Rich Pedagogy.

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics and Interpretation

Cluster	Mean (M)	Range	Interpretation
Instructional Autonomy and Support	2.7	2–5	Low–moderate autonomy; teachers lack flexibility to adapt curriculum but retain confidence in instructional skills.
Institutional Conditions (Mandates, Resources, Testing)	2.3	1–4	Negative perceptions of corporate programs (ALEKS, PLTW, Verizon); limited PD and constrained inquiry time.
Professional Climate and Reflection	3.6	2–5	Moderate to strong peer collaboration; administrative support weak but collegial trust high.
Belief in Culturally Rich Pedagogy	4.7	4–5	High consensus that culturally sustaining instruction enhances engagement and equity.

Across items, the pattern was consistent: teachers rated external mandates lowest and peer collaboration and culturally rich pedagogy highest. These findings suggest that teacher motivation and innovation persist despite structural impediments, an important formative insight for guiding improvement efforts.

Formative and Criterion-Referenced Interpretation

From a formative assessment perspective, these data functioned as diagnostic evidence of current instructional conditions (Black & Wiliam, 1998). The low autonomy and resource ratings indicated clear developmental needs for professional learning communities and policy revision.

From a criterion-referenced standpoint, performance on each cluster was evaluated against the established criteria of effective culturally sustaining teaching (Paris & Alim, 2017) and Universal Design for Learning principles (CAST, 2018). The data revealed partial alignment: while teachers demonstrate philosophical and pedagogical commitment to equity-centered practices, the institutional environment fails to meet minimal conditions (e.g., time, autonomy, and PD access) necessary for implementation fidelity.

Qualitative Findings

Coding and Thematic Development

Open-ended responses were coded using Saldaña’s (2014) descriptive and pattern coding procedures. The first cycle identified 19 initial codes, later condensed into five overarching categories: bureaucratic constraint, inequitable resource distribution, peer solidarity, resistance through creativity, and hopeful persistence.

These themes were cross-checked with participants through member validation conversations to ensure credibility and interpretive accuracy (Anderson et al., 2007). Participants affirmed that the themes reflected their experiences and emphasized the accuracy of the portrayal of “quiet resistance.”

Theme 1: Bureaucratic Constraint and Datafication

All teachers described feeling constrained by administrative demands, algorithmic learning tools, and excessive paperwork .Teacher A wrote, “The paperwork for IEPs eats half my planning time,” highlighting structural violations of individualized instruction mandates. Teacher B echoed this sentiment, referring to the “top-down” approach that “kills creativity.” These narratives illustrate what Williamson (2019) terms the datafication of teaching, a shift in professional accountability from human judgment to managerial data systems.

Theme 2: Peer Solidarity and Collective Adaptation

Despite institutional barriers, collaboration among teachers was the most consistent positive theme. Teacher C described professional collaboration as “intellectual oxygen,” emphasizing the role of reflective dialogue in countering isolation. This aligns with Anderson, Herr, and Nihlen’s (2007) observation that practitioner inquiry thrives through community-based knowledge construction.

Theme 3: Resistance through Creativity

Teachers often exercised “pedagogical subversion.” That is, bending rules to meet student needs. Teacher B stated, “You learn when to bend the rules quietly to make room for real teaching.” Teacher A and Teacher C offered similar accounts of multimodal practices that connected learning to lived experience, such as art-based projects and digital storytelling. These examples exemplify culturally sustaining pedagogy as resistance (Paris & Alim, 2017), asserting professional agency in constrained environments.

Theme 4: Hopeful Persistence and Professional Purpose

Even amid frustration, all three participants expressed optimism grounded in relationships with students. This aligns with Saldaña’s (2018) discussion of “narratives of persistence,” where teacher identity becomes both a moral stance and an act of defiance against dehumanizing systems.

Ethnographic Insights from Teacher Narratives

To interpret the open-ended data, an ethnographic interviewing lens was employed (Spradley, 1979; Seidman, 2013). Rather than treating responses as abstract data points, they were analyzed as situated narratives reflecting the lived experience of teaching under neoliberal constraint. This approach illuminated the emic perspective: teachers’ insider understanding of their own professional worlds (Beals et al., 2019).

Teacher A’s frustration over IEP noncompliance, for instance, is not merely individual grievance but part of a broader institutional culture that marginalizes special education. Teacher B’s “quiet compliance” and Teacher C’s intellectual critique each represent adaptive strategies within that ecology. Together, they demonstrate what Seidman (2013) describes as meaning-making through storytelling: teachers asserting agency by interpreting and reframing their professional realities (Table 2).

Table 2

Integration with Research Questions

Research Question	Findings Summary	Implications for Practice
RQ1: How do teachers perceive autonomy and support?	Teachers perceive low autonomy and poor administrative support, but retain high intrinsic motivation and belief in culturally rich teaching.	Revisions to leadership practice should prioritize teacher-driven decision-making and protected time for design and reflection.
RQ2: What conditions enable or constrain multimodal teaching?	Constraints: paperwork, pacing, corporate software mandates. Supports: peer collaboration, creativity, student relationships.	Professional development should focus on collaboration and teacher inquiry, not compliance with software or standardized programs.
RQ3: How can teachers’ insights inform curricular design?	Teachers emphasize that authentic innovation arises from trust, flexibility, and relevance to students’ cultural and community lives.	Curricular design improvements should embed co-design structures and allocate time for reflective collaboration, aligning with participatory action research principles.

Summary

The data revealed a consistent contradiction between teachers’ professional aspirations and the structural realities of privatized public schooling. Quantitatively, autonomy and support ranked lowest; qualitatively, narratives highlighted bureaucratic strain, creative subversion, and solidarity. Ethnographically, teacher voices emerged not as complaints but as expressions of collective struggle for professional dignity and public education itself.

Formatively, the results suggest that meaningful improvement requires systemic, not individual, change: more autonomy, authentic professional development, and genuine teacher leadership. Criterion-referenced against the ideals of culturally sustaining and cognitively rich pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017; Bruner, 1966), Thorndike Academy’s teachers are not deficient; they are professionally constrained agents of care whose insights are essential to rehumanizing curriculum and instruction.

Final Conclusion and Reflection

This action research project began as an inquiry into how teachers at Thorndike Academy High School perceive and implement evidence-based and culturally rich instructional practices for diverse learners. It evolved into a broader confrontation with the structural contradictions of urban public schooling under neoliberal reform. The study’s findings make one truth unavoidable: no amount of “innovation,” “multimodality,” or “data-driven decision-making” can substitute for democratic control, material investment, and respect for teachers as intellectual workers.

Teachers at Thorndike expressed a deep commitment to their students, to justice, and to the creative act of teaching itself. Yet they are asked to perform miracles within a system designed to constrain them. Mandated software, philanthropic interventions, and relentless paperwork reduce teaching to compliance. Meanwhile, the same corporate forces that underfund schools sell the “solutions” back at a profit. These contradictions are not accidental. They are structural, reflecting the broader political economy of education that treats public schools as laboratories for market logic rather than as pillars of democracy (Apple, 2004; Giroux, 2011; Saltman, 2010).

Despite this, the data show that teacher agency endures. Within these conditions, resistance takes form in the small and the everyday: reinterpreting mandates to serve students’ needs, subverting pacing guides to allow inquiry, building solidarity in shared frustration, and asserting professional ethics in the face of managerial absurdity. As Gramsci (1971) observed, the work of educators in such times is an act of pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will—clear-eyed about the system’s realities, yet unwavering in their belief in collective human potential.

The Meaning of Culturally and Cognitively Rich Instruction

What this research reaffirms is that truly multimodal, evidence-based teaching is not a technical procedure but a human relationship. It is the practice of connecting the mind and the world, of creating meaning across experience, culture, and cognition (Bruner, 1966; Paris & Alim, 2017). To teach in this way requires freedom: freedom to design, to improvise, to reflect, and to dissent. These are not luxuries. They are the necessary conditions for rigor, equity, and authenticity in learning.

If the purpose of education is to prepare students to understand and transform the conditions of their lives, then teachers must be afforded that same purpose. To plan lessons without autonomy is to train students for obedience; to teach critically is to teach for liberation. This project demonstrates that the obstacles to such teaching are not intellectual but political—and therefore, they can be changed.

Researcher Reflection: Positionality and Praxis

As both a teacher and researcher within this system, the author’s position is inescapably dialectical. The study author is both subject and analyst, participant and critic. Conducting this action research among colleagues was itself a process of reclaiming scholarly and professional voice from within a structure that seeks to fragment it. Each conversation, each coded theme, reaffirmed that inquiry is not merely a research method but a form of collective consciousness-raising.

This project also reaffirmed that practitioner research is a site of solidarity, not compliance. It transforms reflection into resistance, an insistence that those who teach every day possess the knowledge most vital to reform. In a context where “data” is used to discipline teachers, the act of gathering our own data about our own practice becomes a political act of reclamation.

Implications for Future Action

The findings of this study should not remain in isolation. They point toward the next stage of action: building teacher-led research collectives across CPS that document, analyze, and challenge the conditions of teaching and learning under corporate reform. Future inquiry should expand participation to include students and families, making action research itself a tool of democratic school governance.

Practically, Thorndike Academy, and schools like it, can begin by creating professional learning structures that privilege reflective collaboration over compliance, by advocating for full funding and staffing in special education, and by publicly challenging the philanthropic and corporate agendas that shape school policy without accountability.

Final Word

In the end, this study is less about multimodal instruction than about reclaiming the mode of being a teacher. It is a call to see ourselves not as technicians but as intellectuals and community organizers, entrusted with a social mission far greater than test scores or pacing guides. The teachers who participated in this study embody that mission every day, often invisibly, often against the current, but always in defense of their students’ humanity.

The question that remains for educators, policymakers, and scholars alike is simple but profound: will we continue to measure teaching by compliance with the systems that constrain it, or by its capacity to liberate?

If the latter, then the work begins, and continues, with us.

References 

Anderson, G. L., Herr, K., & Nihlen, A. S. (2007). Studying your own school: An educator’s guide to practitioner action research. Corwin Press.  

Apple, M.W. (2004). Ideology and Curriculum (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203487563 

Artiles, A. J. (2011). Toward an interdisciplinary understanding of educational equity and difference: The case of the racialization of ability. Educational Researcher, 40(9), 431–445. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X11429391 

Au, W., & Ferrare, J. J. (2015). Mapping corporate education reform: Power and policy networks in the neoliberal state. Routledge. 

Boyles, D. (Ed.). (2005). Schools or markets? Commercialism, privatization, and schooling. Taylor & Francis. 

Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Harvard University Press. 

CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning guidelines (Version 2.2). http://udlguidelines.cast.org 

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage. 

Connor, D.J., Ferri, B.A., & Annamma, S. A. (Eds.). (2013). DisCrit: Disability studies and critical race theory in education. Teachers College Record, 115(7), 1–22.  

Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x 

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed., M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Bloomsbury Academic. (Original work published 1970) 

Furtak, E. M., Seidel, T., Iverson, H., & Briggs, D. C. (2012). Experimental and quasi-experimental studies of inquiry-based science teaching: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 82(3), 300–329. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654312457206 

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.  

Giroux, H. A. (2011). On critical pedagogy. Bloomsbury. 

Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Haymarket Books. 

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, Eds.). International Publishers. 

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge. 

Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Springer. 

Kincheloe, J. L. (2008). Knowledge and critical pedagogy: An introduction. Springer. 

Kirschner, P. A. (2017). Stop propagating the learning styles myth. Computers & Education, 106, 166–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.12.006 

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge.  

Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. Routledge. 

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. ASCD.  

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. E. (2007). Interactive multimodal learning environments. Educational Psychology Review, 19(3), 309–326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-007-9047-2  

Museum of Science and Industry. (2024). School support tool workbook: Science Leadership School Partners Program [Unpublished internal document]. Science Leadership Initiative, Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. 

Nesbit, J. C., & Adesope, O. O. (2006). Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 76(3), 413–448. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076003413  

Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.  

Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (4th ed.). Sage.   

Reckhow, S., & Snyder, J. W. (2014). The expanding role of philanthropy in education politics. Educational Researcher, 43(4), 186–195. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X14536607  

Roseth, C. J., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2008). Promoting early adolescents’ achievement and peer relationships: The effects of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic goal structures. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 223–246. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.223   

Saltman, K. J. (2010). The gift of education: Public education and venture philanthropy. Palgrave Macmillan.  

Saltman, K.J. & Gabbard, D.A. (Eds.). (2003). Education as enforcement: The militarization and corporatization of schools. RoutledgeFalmer.  

Sampson, R. J. (2012). Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. University of Chicago Press.  

Selwyn, N. (2019). Should robots replace teachers? AI and the future of education. Polity Press. 

Tamrat, H., & Tegegne, J. (2021). Neoliberalism, corporate interests, and philanthropy in U.S. education reform: A case study of a faux grassroots education reform organization. The Cutting Edge, 3(2), 1–15.  

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners (2nd ed.). ASCD.   

Williamson, B. (2019). Datafication of education: A critical approach to emerging analytics technologies and practices. In H. Beetham & R. Sharpe (Eds.), Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age (3rd ed., pp. 268–282). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351252805-14