EDJE Framework

CATEGORY A:  GOVERNANCE AND FINANCE

Priority Areas of
Work

Questions for
Assessing & Action Planning

Action Plan for 2019-20

1.
Centering Justice and
Equity in Our COE’s Strategic Planning and Implementation

a.    ASSUMPTIONS:¬† What do we typically say is ‚Äúsupposed‚Äù to
be in COE mission statements and strategic plans?  What are ways that such items, and the
processes to develop/implement such items, can impede justice and equity
goals?

b.    OUR GUIDING DOCUMENTS:¬† Do
our COE’s vision/mission statements, core values, program goals, and other
guiding documents explicitly and fully reflect our commitment to justice and
equity? Are these conceptualized and worded effectively?  To what extent does our COE advance these
effectively, and how do we know? 

c.    OUR STRATEGIC PLAN:¬† When
strategic plans include justice and equity goals, how and why do COEs
typically fail to meet such goals?  To
what extent does our COE’s strategic plan center on justice and equity goals,
and how could it be revised to better do so? 
Specifically: does our plan include measurable outcomes, clear activities
and timelines, adequate supports and resources, appropriate assessments and
opportunities to revise in the interim, and so on (see, for example, the elements
of the Action Plan in the section below this chart)?  Does our plan account for existing and
forthcoming challenges to implementation, including subsequent changes to
policies and budgets, competing perspectives of our provost/president, etc.?  Does our plan require that all significant
“new” undertakings (writing grant proposals, hiring new faculty, launching
new centers, etc.), as well as ongoing work, involve asking complex questions
about diversity, equity, and justice?

d.    RESOURCES: What are examples
of COE strategic plans (and accompanying tools to implement, track, and/or
assess the plans) that center justice and equity?

2.
Democratizing Our
Governance and Leadership

a.    GOVERNANCE MODELS:¬† What are common models (and less common but
more promising models) of higher-education governance, and how does each
model advance and/or hinder justice and equity goals?  Where does our COE fit, and how often are
we assessing and improving our governance structures, policies, and
procedures?

b.    DEFINITIONS OF LEADERSHIP:¬† What are common definitions of effective or
impactful leaders and leadership, and qualities of desirable emerging
leaders?  How might these definitions limit
the diversity of candidates for leadership positions and/or the capacity of
leaders to be transformative?

c.    WHO IS LEADING:¬† Who is the ‚Äúwe‚Äù that is governing and is being
governed?  What is the role of partners
outside of the COE in college governance?

d.    DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES:¬† What does it mean for decision-making
processes to be “democratic” and for leading to be a “collective”
responsibility, especially in very hierarchical environments?  For example, when is majority vote or
consensus helpful and not?  How
transparent do we make our decision-making processes, especially when the
process might differ from issue to issue? 
To what extent are these happening and not happening in our COE, and
why? 

e.    COLLECTIVITY: ¬†What conversations need to happen to build a
COE-wide consensus of and commitment to democratic governance and collective
leadership?  What areas of work would
be “low-hanging fruit” to begin to deepen the COE’s engagement in such forms
of governance and leadership?

f.
RESISTANCE
TO CHANGE:  What forms of passive
inertia or active resistance can we anticipate when leading
anti-oppressively, and what are examples inside and outside of our COE of
resistances to democratic governance and to collective leadership?  How could the COE raise awareness and
anticipation of, and self-reflection about, how leading for social justice
can spark resistance both inside and outside of the COE?  What are areas where such resistance is
currently strong, and what are strategies to address this?

g.    DIVERSITY:¬† How diverse (by race, gender, and other
dimensions of diversity) is our current and prospective pools of
leaders?  How can our COE improve and
expand its pipelines and pathways for a more diverse, inclusive, and
effective pool of emerging leaders?

h.    RESOURCES:¬† What trainings, supports, and resources can
the COE provide for the above areas of work to be successful? Where are
examples of how other COEs have done so, and what were the lessons learned?

3.
Aligning Our Budgets and
Budgeting

a.    MODELS:¬† What are common models (and less common but
more promising models) for higher-education budgeting, and how does each
model advance and/or hinder justice and equity goals?  Which models does our COE (and larger
university) use, and how often are we assessing and improving our budgeting
structures, policies, and procedures? 

b.    NEOLIBERALISM:¬† As universities become increasingly
corporatized and neoliberal, what is happening to our COE budget? Sometimes
called “each tub on its own bottom,” these models often require units to
justify their continuation by demonstrating the ability to bring in new
revenue.  To what extent are we using
neoliberal framings in the arguments we make to expand funding and/or prevent
loss of funding (e.g., are we still thinking in terms of market demand,
entrepreneurship, etc.)? 

c.
MISSION
AND STRATEGIC-PLAN ALIGNMENT:  To what
extent are our decisions about budget allocations guided by our vision,
mission, and strategic plan (versus, say, relying on “legacy” budgets, or how
we historically have budgeted)?  To
what extent are our decisions about allocations guided by an action plan to
advance diversity, equity, and justice, including plans that support “reparations”?
 To what extent are our allocations
responsive to our accreditation and program-assessment processes?  How can our broader goals as a COE, as well
as the career goals of our faculty/staff, be advanced through creative
re-thinking about budgets?

d.
DECISION
MAKING:  Who makes decisions about
budgets?  How are elements of power and
privilege reproduced in the budgeting process?  How involved are faculty and staff in
reviewing and making recommendations? 
Are the budgeting process and budget statuses shared with faculty and
partners in an open and transparent way?

e.
PAY
EQUITY:  What contributes to pay
inequities (by gender, race, etc.) for faculty, staff, and student workers,
such as criteria for salary/wage determination and renegotiation, policies
for salary increases and compression over time, and so on?  How can our COE address these?

4.
Increasing Our Fundraising
& Development

a.    TRENDS:¬†
What contributes to the need for COEs to fundraise (e.g., higher
education as a commodity verses a public good; disinvestment by the public
sector; inadequacy of tuition revenue; rising costs and demands)?  How do our fundraising strategies reinforce
and/or challenge these ideologies and trends?

b.    CURRENT STRATEGIES:¬† How do COEs typically raise funds, and how
do our fundraising activities either advance or hinder our justice and equity
goals?  For example, are wealthy
individuals incentivizing certain work over justice-oriented work; are the
messages we use perpetuating deficit-based ideologies of the people we serve
and/or neoliberal framings of the “problem”; are the criteria we use to
identify prospects and evaluate offers centered on our justice and equity
goals; etc.?

c.    HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF FUNDRAISING:¬† Who has the social capital to raise funding
more easily (because of connection or cultural upbringing)?  Are we creating systems to teach this hidden
curriculum of fundraising?  What are the institutional norms that we have accepted
about individualism and competition that prevent us from sharing
relationships and resources, particular with scholars with less economic,
racial, gender privilege than us?  What
are barriers to working together to raise funds for our research and
programs?

d.    PROSPECTS AND PARTNERS:¬† Why, for whom, and with whom are we raising
funds (e.g., are we raising primarily to support our institution, or are we
raising in collaboration with partners to support the communities with the
least capacity to enroll)?  Who are the potential donors and funders that align with
our justice and equity goals?  Who are
the current or potential partners (such as partner schools and organizations,
public officials, etc.) that can assist with fundraising?  Who (e.g., is it the COE, or the larger university)
is the primary partner with donors?

e.    MESSAGING:¬† What is the messaging that can best animate
our justice and equity goals while also speaking to the priorities of our
potential funders?  How do we want to
define the problem/need, and what do we believe is the most impactful use of
funding to address these?  How do we
raise the awareness of our potential fundraising partners of our justice and
equity goals?  How might regional
differences require adapting our fundraising strategies? 

f.
RESOURCES:  What trainings,
supports, and resources can the COE provide for such work to be
successful?  Where are examples of
justice-oriented fundraising plans and communications at other COEs?

CATEGORY B:  TEACHING AND LEARNING

Priority Areas of
Work

Questions for
Assessing & Action Planning

Action Plan for 2019-20

5.
Strengthening Our Programs
and Curriculum

a.
LEGACIES OF INJUSTICE: 
How historically have universities and education programs disproportionately
served the interests of the elite? How have they uncritically taught content
and ideas steeped in oppressive history and practices (colonialism, imperialism,
white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, and more recently neoliberalism,
marketization, and so on)?  Where and
how do such legacies continue to manifest today in our COE’s program designs,
curriculum content, instructional approaches, and assessment methods?  

b.
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY:  What
would it mean for our COE to situate its work in larger social movements for
justice and equity?  How would that
require that we do our work differently? 
Who in our communities would we reach out to and work with?  And how should we prepare our students to
approach their own work in education differently as well?

c.
EXTERNAL CHALLENGES FACING COEs: 
What historically have been the challenges facing COEs (that is, how
have COEs historically been under attack), and what is similar and different
about today’s challenges and attacks? 

d.
TEACHER-EDUCATION “REFORMS”: 
What are the dominant “reforms” today and how are they hindering
and/or supporting justice and equity goals? 
To what extent do the demands of current profession-led initiatives on
accreditation (like CAEP), assessment (like EdTPA), and curriculum (like Core
Practices Consortium) shape program design, curriculum content, and
instructional approaches?  What is the
impact of these on our students?  When
these and other reforms and regulations conflict with justice and equity
goals, what are strategies to stay true to our mission even while maintaining
compliance?

e.
TEACHING COLLECTIVELY:  To
what extent is our COE approaching the design, implementation, and assessment
of our programs and curriculum collectively (versus, say, allowing programs
to be run primarily by one faculty member)? 
Where, when, and how are faculty talking about the legacies of
injustice and the external challenges facing COEs, and what these mean for our
programs and curriculum?  (See also,
section 7D and section 10).

f.
DEEPLY ENGAGING IN OUR RESEARCH AND THEORY:  How can our faculty and staff more
substantively explore and draw on the scholarship and models developed by our
colleagues across the country and world about how to center justice and
equity in our programs and curriculum? 
That is, how can we engage even more deeply in the expansive
literatures about and models for education that is anti-oppressive,
asset-based, community-engaged, critical, culturally affirming and
responsive, feminist, inclusive, indigenous-centered, interdisciplinary,
intersectional, multicultural, non-normative, post-colonial and post-imperial,
queer, and so on?  

g.
RESOURCES:  What resources
and supports can our COE offer to support faculty and our teaching partners (e.g.,
field instructors) in such learning, reflecting, and implementing?  How can we make use of the resources and
connections of the EDJE network to facilitate this exchange and engagement
across institutions?

6.
Supporting Our Students

a.    ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT TARGET STUDENT
POPULATION:  What are the
characteristics of the individual student, and of the overall student
population, that we strive to have in our COE?  What makes a prospective student qualified
and desirable?  What do we hope our graduates
leave our programs with?  How might any
of these assumptions hinder and/or support our justice and equity goals?  To what extent is our COE regularly
assessing our assumptions and expectations about who our students are and
should be?  To what extent is the
diversity of our student population, as well as the capacity of our graduates
to advance justice and equity, a central part of our COE’s mission and
strategic plan?

b.    STAGES:¬†
What is the student experience through all stages of recruitment, admission,
orientation, academic engagement and success, retention, and graduation?  How are our students experiencing these
stages differently, depending on their race, gender, and other dimensions of
diversity, and how do we know this? 
Are the relevant faculty and staff receiving guidance, support, and
feedback as they engage in any of these stages? 

c.    PIPELINES AND PATHWAYS:¬† What are (and what should be) the pipelines
into the COE’s programs from our partner PK-12 schools, community colleges,
and undergraduate programs?  Who are
our target populations?  To what extent
are we partnering with school districts, teacher unions, community-based
organizations, and other stakeholders in strengthening these pipelines?  In this moment when concern over “teacher
shortages” has heightened nationwide, how is our COE working with other
stakeholders to address this problem? 
To what extent is our COE working collaboratively with other COEs to
approach pipelines strategically rather than competitively?

d.    FINANCIAL BURDENS AND SUPPORT:¬† Through any or all of the stages of the
student experience, what are the expenses placed on students that make our
COE’s program financially inaccessible, particularly for students of limited
income and resources?  Examples include
application fees, fees for various tests and assessments, expenses related to
field work and licensure, tuition and university fees and cost of course
materials, housing and transportation, health care, child care, and even
aspects that are not explicitly financial in nature but have economic
consequence, such as the inability to transfer course credits from previous
institutions, loss of actual or potential income when taking courses or doing
field work during school or business hours, limited availability of courses
and faculty/staff after work hours, etc. 
How is our COE addressing such financial burdens?

e.    ACADEMIC SUPPORT:¬† To what extent does our COE support the
academic preparation and success of students who were not well-served by
their previous educational systems, as with support for passing high-stakes
assessments, support for developing academic skills needed to succeed in
coursework, etc.?

f.      ASSESSMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR
EDUCATION WORK:  How does our COE
assess that our students align with our mission?  What do we do (and what should we do) when
a student in our teacher-education program, for example, demonstrates a
likelihood of teaching post-graduation in ways that are deeply antithetical
to our mission of equity and justice (like, their biases would be harmful to
K-12 students)?

g.    POST-GRADUATION:¬† How is our COE supporting and re-engaging
our alumni to advance our justice and equity goals?  How is our COE supporting our partners
(like our mentor teachers, field supervisors, etc.) in their own professional
development, and to what extent are such offerings interconnected with our
degree and credential programs and our strategic plan?

h.    RESOURCES:¬† What are other COEs and organizations doing
to strengthen and diversify the pipeline into the teaching profession?

CATEGORY C:  FACULTY AND STAFF

Priority Areas of
Work

Questions for
Assessing & Action Planning

Action Plan for 2019-20

7.
Increasing the Racial
Diversity of Our Faculty

a.
IDEOLOGIES:  Why has the
K-12 teaching profession historically been so overwhelmingly white and female,
why is the teacher-education profession similar, and why has this been so
hard to change?  Why are so many of our
more highly compensated and elite positions (administrators, endowed chairs,
etc.) occupied by white males?  Which
of these elements/factors are present in our COE? 

b.
WHAT DO WE DESIRE:  What
are typical definitions of and assumptions about faculty “fit,” being
“qualified,” or exhibiting “success” or “excellence,” and how might these
reinforce white privilege or demand assimilation?  Are we searching for faculty who trouble
and expand what we do as a COE (versus, say, merely replicating or sustaining)?  To what extent are we searching for hires
who increase the racial diversity of our faculty, as well as hires who expand
the expertise of our faculty on issues of diversity, justice, and equity (recognizing
that these two groups are not always the same)?

c.
STAGES:  What are (and
what should be) our strategies for diversifying our faculty at each key
stage: recruitment, hiring, induction, retention, professional success, and
promotion?  Where are exemplars of
justice-oriented faculty-of-color recruitment & retention plans and
initiatives at other COEs?

d.
PIPELINES AND PATHWAYS: 
Similar to “grow your own” programs as a way to build pipelines for a
more diverse PK-12 teaching force that is from and committed to the
communities in which they will teach, what would it mean for COEs to “grow our
own” faculty?  Are there exemplars of
how to accomplish this while also honoring concerns about insularity?  Might there be opportunities for multiple
institutions to “cross-fertilize” grow-your-own programs?

e.
JOB POSTINGS AND OUTREACH: 
Do we ensure that our job postings and job descriptions include
expertise on diversity and equity?  How
do we involve our partners in our searches? 
Where are we recruiting?  Do we
require that there be racial diversity (as can be determined legally) in the
applicant pool and/or in the list of finalists before proceeding to
interviews?  Are we recruiting from
non-traditional career pathways, including higher-education staff and administrators
in student affairs, and PK-12 educators and administrators?

f.
SEARCH COMMITTEES:  How do
we constitute the membership of search committees?  Do we require participation from other
departments and/or the office of the chief diversity officer?  What happens during job interviews (i.e.,
what the schedule consists of) that might reinforce white or male
privilege?  Are search committees
required to explain why any/all qualified applicants of color were not
advanced to the next stage of review? 
How are the search committee and the larger COE held accountable for
checking their own biases throughout the search process?  What training is required of search
committees?

g.
HIRING:  What are
strategies that other COEs have used successfully to recruit faculty of
color?  Three examples include (a)
incentives for hiring two faculty members when one search culminates in
identifying two strong candidates that can meet various needs of the COE; (b)
partner hiring, and accommodating faculty needs; and (c) cluster hiring.

h.
INDUCTION:  What is the climate for new faculty, particularly
faculty of color?  How are new faculty
welcomed, onboarded, oriented, mentored, etc.?  When can good intentions (particularly of
white faculty) be counterproductive?

i.
WORKLOAD:  Are newly hired faculty given a workload
that sets them up for success?  Are
faculty of color being asked to do more work because of their identities
and/or areas of expertise (as when asked to work on diversity-related
initiatives, or when approached by students of color for mentoring), and how
is this work supported and credited?

j.
RETENTION:  What patterns
are discernable for why faculty of color do not stay at our COE?  Are we using intersectional lenses
(intersections of race with gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) to
understand the problems and the patterns? 
What resources is the COE allocating for faculty retention and
success?

8.
Supporting Our Faculty

a.    IDEOLOGIES:¬† How do we commonly talk about what ‚Äúcounts‚Äù
as research, teaching, and service?  What
are current controversies surrounding the work of faculty, and how do they
operate in contradictory ways?  For
example, “academic freedom” can protect those who speak out against
injustice, but also can protect those who do not wish to self-examine, so how
do we protect academic freedom even as we challenge each of us to critically
self-reflect?

b.    POLICIES:¬† How have such ideologies been normalized in
our profession and institutionalized in our T&P policies, and to what
extent do these norms and policies inhibit and/or support work by faculty
that explicitly names justice and equity?  How does (and how should) our COE define and
operationalize justice and equity? 
(See, for example, Step 2 in the Recommendations below this chart.)  Where and when are our faculty asked to
assess the extent to which all significant aspects of their work advance
justice and equity goals?

c.    RESEARCH:¬† To what extent does the increasing corporatization of higher
education hinder and/or facilitate justice-oriented scholarship?  To what extent does the increasing reliance
on certain forms of evaluation and ranking (like impact factors and citation
indices) hinder and/or facilitate justice-oriented scholarship?  To
what extent does our COE support activist or impact-oriented scholarship (including
scholarship that is community-engaged, public-facing, practitioner-focused,
open-access, and/or in collaboration with partner schools) in its T&P
guidelines, IRB guidelines, fundraising and funding opportunities,
infrastructure supports, and professional development and mentoring?

d.    TEACHING:¬† To what extent does our COE approach
teaching as a collective act, such as by talking about the goals, content,
and approaches of our courses and our advising of students (versus, say, each
professor teaching as a solo act with no sharing or oversight)?  To what extent is a collective approach to
teaching inclusive of all faculty, including clinical and adjunct/contingent
faculty?

e.    SERVICE:¬†
To what extent does our COE address workload inequities and differentiated
service within the COE, including service toward accreditation?  To what extent does “service” include
service to historically marginalized communities and underserved
schools?  To what extent is research
(such as engaged research) a form of service, and vice versa, and how should
our COE address such overlap?

f.      CONTRACTS AND GRANTS: ¬†How are researchers differently able to
acquire contracts and grants because of their fields or disciplines, as well
as because of their topic (i.e., a focus on justice and equity)?  How can fundraising and discretionary funds
ease the burdens on less privileged faculty? 
To what extent are university processes and procedures designed
primarily for large federal research grants, and how can the COE lower the
burden (cost, time, effort) for smaller grants (especially smaller
justice-focused grants) to work with the university?

g.    PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT:¬† To what extent is the PD for faculty offered
by our COE aligned with its justice and equity goals, and are other supports
for faculty (including funding and mentoring) similarly aligned?  Does our COE support affinity groups around
marginalized identities and/or activist topics?  Does our COE acknowledge and challenge
discrimination based on discipline, research methods, viewpoint, and so
on?  To what extent does our COE
recognize the long-term and emotionally taxing nature of justice work, and
work-life balance in general, and then support faculty in doing justice work?

9.
Supporting Our Staff

a.    SUPERVISION:¬† What are common models for organizing staff
work and reporting lines, as well as for supervising and managing staff, and
taking “disciplinary” action?  How do
these hinder and/or support our justice and equity goals?  How often are we assessing our supervision
policies and procedures?  How can our
COE better train and support staff supervisors to “supervise” in ways that
align with our mission and strategic plan?

b.    HIERARCHIES:¬† What hierarchical structures and related
cultures of elitism (especially between faculty and staff, and between
different racial/gender/etc. groups) typically pervade COEs?  How do these institutional structures/cultures
connect to issues of diversity, justice, and equity?  How do these institutional structures/cultures
affect staff and their work, and how do we know this (e.g., are we gathering
data from staff)?  When are reporting
lines and divisions of duties needed, and when are they
counterproductive? 

c.    INTEGRATION:¬† What are alternative models for structuring
the work and groupings of staff to be more egalitarian, democratic, and
collective?  How can staff be more
connected with the COE (as with frequent all-COE meetings that substantively
include staff) and more involved in COE governance (as with committees and task
forces that include staff, and other ways for staff to interact directly with
COE leaders)?  How do staff unions and
collective bargaining processes affect staff relations and integration; on
what aspects of the union structure can we build to improve staff
integration; and what aspects should be revised in order to better support our
justice and equity goals?

d.    RELATIONS WITH FACULTY:¬† To what extent are faculty-staff divisions
existing in our COE, and what are strategies to change them to better reflect
our mission and values?  What are
strategies for faculty and staff to get to know one another better on a
personal and professional level (i.e., both who we are and what exactly we
do)?  How can our COE better draw on
community-organizing and movement-building strategies by making relationship
building and community building a more central and intentional part of what
we do and who we are?  How do we
benefit from having colleagues with PhDs who are not faculty?  Beyond tenure what distinction do we make
between these two categories and why?

e.    DIVERSITY:¬† What are the knowledge, skills, and
dispositions that we look for in our staff, and to what extent do these align
with our COE mission and values?  How
diverse (by race, gender, social class, etc.) is the staff, and how can the
COE increase and support this diversity?  How are we tracking conflicts and other problems
related to diversity in the workplace, and how are we addressing both
individual incidents and larger patterns? 
What does it mean for our COE to be a place where staff of all
backgrounds feel welcomed, valued, seen and heard, connected, a sense of
belonging, a sense of ownership and responsibility, and an ability to thrive?  What are the different job categories of
staff that exist in our COE?  What
kinds of different expertise and training do each bring?  Why do we need a staff population that is
diverse in a number of ways (by race, professional expertise, etc.)?

f.
PERFORMANCE REVIEWS:  To
what extent does our COE take into account the diverse backgrounds of staff in
their evaluation processes?  To what
extent do we engage staff in performance reviews that explicitly address our
COE mission, and that involve them in collaboratively establishing goals for
themselves and reflecting on their progress? 
To what extent are performance reviews actually formalized and
transparent so people can grow and learn, and in contrast, to what extent are
informal processes allowing people with privilege to become more privileged?  What are the mechanisms for staff to learn
and grow and receive feedback?

g.    PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND
SUPPORT:  To what extent are staff
receiving opportunities for professional development that parallel those of
faculty, including funding, PD offerings, mentoring, retreats, incentives and
rewards, promotions or advances, time for such activities, and so on, in
order to increase staff capacity to advance our justice and equity goals?

10. Improving the Institutional Climate within Our COE

a.    RELATION TO DIVERSITY:¬† In what ways is institutional climate
related to or affected by diversity? 
How well does everyone in the COE understand the nature of and
difference between microaggressions, harassment, bullying, and
discrimination?  In what ways is
climate experienced differently by different groups in our COE?

b.    ADDRESSING CLIMATE
COLLECTIVELY:  How does the COE’s
mission and strategic plan address institutional climate?  To what extent does our COE engage in
college-wide conversations about what we mean by institutional “climate,”
what research has shown to positively and negatively impact climate, how to
assess climate, and how college-wide or unit-wide (e.g., department-level)
climate affects well-being, productivity, and feelings of belonging at the
level of individual faculty, staff, and students?

c.    POLICIES AND PROCEDURES:¬† What policies and procedures are in place
to document problems (safety, exclusion, harassment, discrimination, etc.)
and seek support, protection, and justice? 
How do we know that these policies and procedures are working
effectively?

d.    RESOURCES:¬† What trainings, supports, and resources can
the COE allocate to improve institutional climate and the factors that impact
it?

CATEGORY D:  PARTNERSHIPS AND PUBLIC IMPACT

Priority Areas of
Work

Questions for
Assessing & Action Planning

Action Plan for 2019-20

11. Deepening Our External Partnerships

a.    REPUTATIONS AND MODELS:¬† What is the reputation of COEs regarding
our partnerships with schools and school districts?  What typically are the benefits and burdens
for each side of the partnership, and how are both parties assessing these?  What are different models and/or frameworks
(regarding different purposes, different levels of interaction and
investment, different outcomes, etc.) for what our external partnerships can
and should look like?  How can a
holistic and strategic approach to partnerships help us to meet our range of
needs and goals?  What are (and who
should be) the types of partnerships that best align with our justice and
equity goals?

b.    PARTNERS:¬† Who are our external partners, and why are
they our partners?  Who else should we
partnering with, and why?  Examples of
partners include schools and school districts, community-based organizations,
professional associations, service providers, businesses, foundations,
allies, public officials, other colleges at our university, other COEs
outside of our university, networks like EDJE (!), and so on.  Examples of purposes include research,
teaching, service, advocacy, and so on.

c.    BARRIERS:¬† What external issues (like the pressure
around high-stakes testing in K-12 schools) and internal issues (like our
COE’s graduation requirements) are making it difficult to find common ground
with partners and/or to find creative solutions to problems or needs that we
all agree exist?

d.    CURRICULUM THAT IS DEEPLY
EMBEDDED IN OUR COMMUNITIES:  Where and
with whom are students doing their field work, research and service projects,
etc.?  To what extent is our COE
identifying and cultivating community partnerships, field sites, and
field-based instructors that explicitly align with our mission and strategic
plan?  Is the impact of our
relationship with these partners/sites/staff helping to build their (i.e.,
not only our) capacity to do justice and equity work?  While at their placement sites and while
working with field staff, are our students building their (students’) own
capacity to advance justice and equity goals during their time as students
and after they graduate as well?

e.    RESEARCH THAT IS ACCOUNTABLE TO OUR
COMMUNITIES:  In what ways do we
intentionally seek out feedback from community members about what research
would be most helpful in advancing justice and equity in education, or how
best to leverage our scholarship to meet their needs?

12. Managing Crises within and Beyond Our COE

a.    MACRO-LEVEL:¬† What are the macro-level crises facing
education and COEs today?  Which of
these are “manufactured,” and from what other problems are these manufactured
crises meant to distract?

b.    MICRO-LEVEL:¬† What are the micro-level crises typically
confronting deans in our day-to-day work? 
What characterizes a crisis at the individual level vs. institutional
level vs. ideological level?  In what
ways could our responses to crises detract from our justice and equity goals?

c.    POLICIES AND
PROCEDURES:  What are (and what should
be) our policies and procedures for: (a) assessing the nature of any crisis
as macro/micro, as “manufactured,” as individual/institutional/ideological,
etc.; (b) responding to crises and communicating during and after to all
involved or impacted; and (c) assessing how our responses might be
exacerbating and/or challenging injustices and inequities?

13. Developing Our Public Voice

a.
IDEOLOGICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS:  What historically has been the role of COEs
in influencing public debates and public policies related to justice and equity
in education, especially in our region? 
What are we telling ourselves is “supposed” to be the work of COEs, of
education scholars/leaders, and of scholarship itself regarding public
debates?  What policies (from the
state; within our institutions), professional and cultural norms, and other
constraints are in place to prohibit, regulate, censor, and/or discourage
inserting scholarship and scholars into the public debate?

b.
COLLEGE MISSION AND STRATEGIC PLAN:  Do our COE’s mission statement and
strategic plan prioritize having a public voice both collectively as a COE
and individually as individual scholars and as individual COE leaders? 

c.
REFRAMING THE DEBATE: 
What is the public policy that we wish to tackle right now, and what
is the underlying ideology that we need to reframe? What would be our
intended outcome of speaking publicly?

d.
STRATEGIES:  Whom should
we prioritize as our target audiences right now?  What are the venues for doing so (e.g.,
media; social media; lobby days)?  Who
are potential partners for such educational efforts (e.g., advocacy groups;
media)?

e.
RESOURCES:  What training,
supports, and resources can our COE provide for such work to be
successful?  Where are examples of
other COEs speaking publicly and/or of collectives of scholars/leaders
speaking publicly?