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Assessing readiness for antiracist leadership: Candidates reflect on new leadership preparation standards in Massachusetts, at Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA, Thursday, April 11, 2024:
aera_2024_charner-laird_noonan_ippolito.pdf
Though many states are moving to rapidly curtail discussions of race and LGBTQ+ rights in schools, Massachusetts stands in notable contrast, having just revised its standards for leadership preparation with a clear focus on preparing anti-racist school leaders. While this policy is critical to lay the intention for effective school leadership in the state, leadership preparation programs must attend carefully to the readiness of candidates to take on this work. Findings from this qualitative interview study with leadership candidates study reveal vast differences in candidates’ racial... Read more about Assessing readiness for antiracist leadership: Candidates reflect on new leadership preparation standards in Massachusetts
The developmental demands of leadership: From state standards to leadership preparation, at Annual Convention of the University Council on Educational Administration, Minneapolis, MN, Thursday, November 16, 2023:
ucea_2023_developmental_demands.pdf
In Massachusetts, revised standards for leadership emphasize anti-racism. This paper uses Kegan's (1994) constructive-developmental theory to consider the capacities needed to enact these standards and the extent to which leadership preparation programs support leaders' development. Analyzing interviews with eight graduates of a university-based leadership preparation program designed to foster adult development and equity leadership, we find a potentially lagging developmental capacity to undertake equity leadership. We further consider the implications of this for both policymakers and... Read more about The developmental demands of leadership: From state standards to leadership preparation
Leaders of learning: Adult development, teacher learning, and leadership, at International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), Bari, Italy, Wednesday, July 5, 2023:
isatt_23_leading_learning.pdf

The structures of many schools and school systems—schedules, accountability policies, organizational norms—fail to provide the “holding environment” necessary for teachers’ continuing professional growth and development (Buchanan, 2015; Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 155). As such, the work of supporting teachers’ development often falls to formal and informal leaders within schools (Breidenstein et al., 2012...

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Facilitating change in race-conscious professional learning: How leaders' (non-)enforcement of norms shape the quality of race talk, at University Council on Educational Administration (UCEA), Seattle, WA, Friday, November 18, 2022:
ucea22_facilitation.pdf
Antiracist professional development for teachers requires dialogue that can become anxiety-producing. Facilitators of race dialogue typically employ discussion norms to ease participants’ anxiety, encourage reflection about racist beliefs, and move toward action. However, just as important as the existence of race talk norms is whether and how norms are enforced. If a facilitator selectively or superficially enforces norms, the quality of race talk may be diminished. ... Read more about Facilitating change in race-conscious professional learning: How leaders' (non-)enforcement of norms shape the quality of race talk
Becoming a community of novices: How teacher agency bolstered professional learning in a pandemic context, at American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Diego, CA, Thursday, April 21, 2022:
aera_2022_becoming_a_community_of_novices.pdf

The COVID and #BlackLivesMatter pandemics elicited an unprecedented need for professional learning spaces wherein teachers could learn to deliver effective instruction in the midst of ever-evolving instructional contexts. Given the rarity of the circumstances, we used a convergent mixed methods design to survey 203 teachers and conduct...

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Accounting for student voice: Surveys, school quality, and state accountability systems, at American Educational Research Association, Thursday, April 8, 2021:
aera21_accounting_for_student_voice.pdf
For the past two decades, schools and districts have increasingly used student surveys as a means of expanding their data collection efforts. At the state level, however, “student voice” is still used sparingly. In this paper, we examine how student survey results might alter state accountability determinations. Reconstructing the accountability system in Massachusetts, we draw on a unique set of student survey data, which we add to the state’s formula in varying doses. As we find, such data shift accountability determinations in small but meaningful ways and appear to enhance functional... Read more about Accounting for student voice: Surveys, school quality, and state accountability systems
(Re-)learning to lead: Helping educators manage crises of professional identity and loss, at ICSEI Virtual Congress 2021, Tuesday, March 9, 2021:
re-learning_to_lead.pdf

The language of adaptive leadership has much in common with the language of a pandemic: diagnosis, loss, resistance (see Heifetz et al., 2009). Each are characterized by significant, hard-to-fathom changes to how we live, work, and walk through the world. In more ordinary times, the art of adaptive leadership involves helping members of an organization to interrogate often-tacit values and beliefs that are holding in place the status quo. Interrogating these beliefs can, over time, lead to transformations in organizational structures and practices. However, this deliberate process – a...

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"Taking care of our own": Parochialism, pride of place, and the drive to diversify teaching, at American Educational Research Association (AERA), Toronto, Ontario, Friday, April 5, 2019:
parochialism_aera19.pdf
As the student population in the U.S. becomes increasingly diverse, many district and school hiring personnel – especially those in districts with large numbers of students of color – have taken proactive approaches to hiring teachers of color (TOC). The drive to diversify the teaching force is supported by a broad range of promising academic and non-academic outcomes for students of color. And yet, many districts face struggle with the recruitment and retention of TOCs. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 65 participants in a small urban district and applying the analytic lens of... Read more about "Taking care of our own": Parochialism, pride of place, and the drive to diversify teaching
A technical problem, a just solution: School quality measurement as a tool for social justice and equity, at Association for Moral Education (AME), Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, November 10, 2018:
noonan_justsolution_v3.pdf
Over the last two decades, local education authorities in the United States have created systems for measuring school performance and student learning. Most of these systems rely heavily on student standardized test scores. Given that results from these tests consitently reveal more about student demographics than the schools they attend (Sirin, 2015), parents, policymakers, and others making decisions based on these data are using misleading and incomplete information (Schneider et al., 2018). The advancement of educational equity and justice, then, may rest in part upon what seems like a... Read more about A technical problem, a just solution: School quality measurement as a tool for social justice and equity
An affinity for learning: Teacher identity and powerful professional development, at International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), Salamanca, Spain, Wednesday, July 5, 2017:
noonan_isatt17.pdf
Professional development (PD) is seen by a broad cross-section of stakeholders as essential for instructional improvement and student learning. And yet, despite deep investments of time and money in its design and implementation, the return on investment remains low and teachers’ subjective assessments about PD in general are ambivalent at best. In this study, I asked 25 teachers to identify and reflect on their most powerful professional learning experiences and considered what these experiences might suggest toward improving PD design, policy, and research. Observing tremendous variation... Read more about An affinity for learning: Teacher identity and powerful professional development