Thinking Ecologically in Educational Policy and Research

Educational policy and politics have been dominated by school improvement initiatives that locate educational problems and solutions in schools themselves, rather than in the systemic and structural roots of those problems: segregation, poverty, and histories of compounding inequality (Anyon, 2014; Reardon et al., 2019). Market-based policies, accountability, teacher quality initiatives, and educational standards – some of the most popular U.S. education reforms over the past few decades – are organized around the assumption that improving schools is a matter of improving what goes on in them (Nation et al., 2020). Yet, these policies tend to ignore or marginalize the evidence that what goes on in schools represents a fraction of the experiences and context that matter for school and student success (Berliner, 2006, 2013). Youth outcomes that we associate with schools (e.g., achievement, attendance, graduation) are the consequences of systemic structural and environmental factors that interact with the lived experiences of students in their communities and schools (Bishop & Noguera, 2019; Whipple et al., 2010).

The purpose of this special issue is to catalyze a greater focus in educational policymaking, practice, and research on educational ecosystems – that is, understanding the ecological nature of educational problems and promoting a coordinated set of policy and practice solutions to address interrelated problems that manifest in school and student outcomes.

Why “ecologically”?

For us, thinking “ecologically” about educational issues started with our research on student attendance, using Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1976) ecological systems theory (Gottfried & Gee, 2017; Lenhoff & Pogodzinski, 2018; Singer et al., 2021). Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach to human development was motivated in part by a view that research should inform social and economic policies relevant to children and families (Rosa & Tudge, 2013).

In education, the application of an “ecological” perspective is still emergent. Bronfenbrenner’s theories have been significantly and directly applied to human development and psychology (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Rosa & Tudge, 2013). Some researchers have also explicitly drawn attention to the ecology of students’ lives to describe social and economic disadvantages that influence student achievement (Carter, 2016; Whipple et al., 2010). In addition, researchers have used the “ecology metaphor” to describe the complexity of the educational policy process (Weaver-Hightower, 2008); schools as organizations and schooling as an institution (Eisner, 1992; Schneider, 2014); parental engagement with schools and in relation to space and capital (Barton et al., 2004); determinants of teacher stress (Farley & Chamberlain, 2021); and combinations of formal schooling and out-of-school learning opportunities (Akiva et al., 2020).

As highlighted in these examples, and by the articles in this themed issue, thinking “ecologically” about education is useful because it draws attention to interconnectedness, context, complexity, and scale. Thinking about students and schools as part of an educational ecosystem draws attention to student characteristics and experiences, family circumstances, school factors, and out-of-school conditions that shape both school organization and behavior and student outcomes. Importantly, in some fields, the use of analogies from biology and ecology has also been accompanied by deterministic assumptions that certain outcomes or processes are inevitable, and that “for individuals and social groups to behave otherwise would be tantamount to defying a law of nature” (Rury & Mirel, 1997, p. 54). Thus, educational policy scholars must resist this kind of thinking and instead recognize human agency (circumscribed by social and material structures), historical contingency, and the role of power in existing social, political, economic, and spatial conditions (Coole, 2013; Rury & Mirel, 1997).

From educational systems to educational ecosystems

What will it take to shift school improvement efforts from educational systems to educational ecosystems? While the last two decades of education reform focused on the deficiencies within schools, scholars have increasingly turned attention to racism, geography, poverty, and other structural issues (e.g., Ewing, 2018; Fahle et al., 2020; Rothstein, 2008, 2016). These shifts in thinking about education and educational policy have been accelerated by the progress of social movements that have highlighted interconnected forms of injustice (e.g., Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, climate activism); backlash from across the political spectrum against the prevailing political-economic paradigm (Wong, 2020); and a growing acknowledgement of the prevalence of discrimination and harmful effects of economic inequality (Horowitz et al., 2020). More comprehensive perspectives on educational inequality demand a reimagining of what education policy can be, and suggest that policies typically viewed as separate from education should be more explicitly considered by education reformers and researchers (Anyon, 2014).

An ecological framing of educational politics and policy should push our field to consider how the organization of schools and the educational outcomes we study are influenced by processes and characteristics outside of schools, what it would take for policy to address school improvement more ecologically, and how we might organize our research production and dissemination and engage with leaders and policymakers to promote ecological approaches. Educational researchers have made progress in developing research-based approaches to school improvement, and the federal and state governments have increased their mandate for evidence-based programs and interventions (Slavin, 2002). Yet, the ecological nature of youth experiences means that research needs to be useful across the various systems that influence children, rather than in silos. The adoption of research evidence in any one domain within the educational ecosystem may make some small change, but to achieve systemic, sustainable improvement in conditions for children, social scientists need to work across and between institutional, practitioner, and political systems.

Researchers can play an active role in shaping the central problem definition and composition of policy coalitions to promote coordinated and ecosystems-level policymaking. They can reframe outcomes typically viewed as within the control of schools as in fact the product of complex processes embedded in multiple contexts, to broaden how policymakers define the sources of problems and the potential solutions and shift the balance of knowledge regimes that have dominated the U.S. education landscape for several decades (Aasen et al., 2014; Mehta, 2013; Powers et al., 2016). They can also help organize and study the effectiveness of cross-sector collaboration among government agencies and in partnerships between governments, schools, and community groups. The emerging evidence on research-practice partnerships (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Farrell et al., 2019) and collective impact initiatives (Henig et al., 2015) may provide a starting point. Partnerships across academic and social sector disciplines may create stronger support for policy enactment and provide the necessary political infrastructure to respond to challenges that arise in implementation.

Overview of the themed issue

Understanding educational issues ecologically

Students’ educational experiences at home, in school, and in out-of-school learning contexts are structured by political and economic circumstances and shaped by factors that are beyond the direct influence of families and schools. An ecological framing of educational issues also has implications for the politics of education, including how we conceive of educational policy success, what outcomes educational policy should be focused on, and how we organize policies across students’ contexts.

Emily Germain starts the issue with a conceptual framework for education policy that draws on the ecological frame to critique market-oriented education reform and offer new ways to consider how policy decisions can challenge inequity. This alternative framework (including domains such as agency, trust, and mobility and opportunity), calls for cross-sector collaboration to design policies that allow individuals, communities, and schools to flourish.

Jacob Kirksey, Michael Gottfried, and Jen Freeman apply Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to quantitatively analyze the extent to which involvement changes for parents of students with disabilities following the assignment of the child’s individualized education program (IEP). Their findings illustrate how a school-based strategy for serving students with disabilities operates within and may influence students through multiple contexts.

Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj and Jennifer L. Jennings analyze the school-choosing experiences of families living in shelters in New York City, in the context of an interagency initiative aimed at removing barriers to school choice. Their findings show how challenges throughout a family’s ecosystem can create obstacles to engaging in school choice and reveal the need for a more ecological approach to design and delivery of interagency initiatives like this one.

Megan Hopkins, Hayley Weddle, Peter Bjorklund, Jr, Leslie Gautch, Ilana M. Umansky, and Dafney Blanca Dabach describe the provision of English language development in two California school districts, accounting for state, district, and school-level factors and applying a structure-culture-agency framework. Their findings show how structural conditions, cultural factors, and individual agency in districts can result in different responses to the same policies.

Carrie Sampson, David Garcia, Matthew Hom, and Melanie Bertrand consider the consequences of interdistrict open enrollment for democratic representation and racial justice through the lens of critical policy analysis. The authors conclude that interdistrict choice merits greater attention because of the ways that it disrupts the political ecology of public education.

Partnering across contexts to address educational issues ecologically

The second section presents promising research that illuminates the new political and organizational arrangements for advancing educational policy ecologically – addressing multiple contexts inside and outside of school to influence student outcomes.

Joshua Childs and Christina L. Scanlon describe the Be There Campaign in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which brought together a number of organizations in an effort to address chronic absenteeism in the city. They highlight how these organizations coordinated with each other to provide microsystem- and mesosystem-level supports to students and families.

Sarah W. Lenhoff and Jeremy Singer explore how district and community leaders come to understand the problem of student absenteeism as ecological, and the barriers they face in activating that knowledge toward systemic change. Their study sheds light on the organizational and political challenges and negotiations required in approaching school improvement from an ecological perspective.

Sarah Zuckerman describes two cross-sector partnerships in micropolitan communities seeking to improve youth outcomes by influencing out-of-school time. Framed by civic capacity theory, the study identifies opportunities and challenges presented by cross-sector partnerships seeking to address inequities throughout a student’s ecosystem.

Stephen MacGregor, Joel R. Malin, and Elizabeth N. Farley-Ripple analyze the gap between research production and research use in policy and practice from a social-ecological perspective. The authors frame evidence-informed improvement not as a problem with schools, but with a larger evidence-use ecosystem, which warrants much deeper exploration in order to build and strengthen multidirectional paths between research and practice.