Jal Mehta
Biographic Data
| ID | 3685501 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jal Mehta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jal |
| FAMILY NAME | Mehta |
| SIGNATURE | MEHTA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3663-3948 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 91 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Reimagining American Education: Possible Futures
If the future of preK-12 education is going to be better than the past, then we need to rethink our fundamental assumptions about what we want from our schools and what we expect those schools to look like. Educators should embrace three core commitments in particular: 1) to treat students as learners whose agency is respected, whose diversity is embraced, whose selves are deeply known, whose joy is cultivated, and whose holistic growth is the pa…
Humans in Hierarchies: Intergroup Relations in Education Reform
Purpose: Existing research on loosely coupled educational systems has largely ignored the social and affective dimensions of such systems. Drawing on literature from organizational behavior, this study examines how “human” factors, including role identity dynamics, power dynamics, and stereotyping, shape the implementation of state-led education reforms. Research Method/Approach: This study draws on interviews and focus groups with 77 actors from…
Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change
As a result of the frustration with the dominant “What Works” paradigm of large-scale research-based improvement, practitioners, researchers, foundations, and policymakers are increasingly embracing a set of ideas and practices that can be collectively labeled continuous improvement (CI) methods. This chapter provides a comparative review of these methods, paying particular attention to CI methods’ intellectual influences, theories of action, and…
Changing the Grammar of Schooling: An Appraisal and a Research Agenda
In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School
An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America’s most innovative classrooms to show what is working—and what isn’t. In a world where test scores have been king, this boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be at its best.
Why Reform Sometimes Succeeds: Understanding the Conditions That Produce Reforms That Last
Counter to narratives of persistently failed school reform, we argue that reforms sometimes succeed and seek to understand why. Drawing on examples from the founding of public schools to the present, we find that successful system-wide reforms addressed problems that teachers thought they had by being consistent with prevailing norms and values, mobilizing a significant public constituency, and building the needed educational infrastructure. We d…
Schooling, Childhood, and Bureaucracy: Bureaucratizing the Child
The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush agreed on little, but united behind the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Passed in late 2001, it was hailed as a dramatic new departure in school reform. It would make the states set high standards, measure student progress, and hold failing schools accountable. A decade later, NCLB has been repudiated on both sides of the aisle. According to Jal Mehta, we should have seen it coming. Far from new, it was the same ap…
How Paradigms Create Politics: The Transformation of American Educational Policy, 1980–2001
American educational policy was rapidly transformed between 1980 and 2001. Accountability was introduced into a sphere that had long been loosely coupled, both major political parties reevaluated longstanding positions, and significant institutional control over the schooling shifted to the federal government for the first time in the nation’s history. These changes cannot be explained by conventional theories such as interest groups, rational ch…
Moral Power
The Varied Roles of Ideas in Politics
Beyond the Laboratory: Evaluating the Survey Evidence for the Disidentification Explanation of Black-White Differences in Achievement
The black-white gap in achievement, as measured by performance on standardized tests, has received considerable attention from researchers in the past five years. Claude Steele's stereotype threat and disidentification mechanism is perhaps the most heralded of the new explanations for residual racial differences that persist after adjustments for social background are performed. Analyzing data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, we fo…
Studying Rare Events Through Qualitative Case Studies: Lessons from a Study of Rampage School Shootings
This article considers five methodological challenges in studying rare events such as school shootings. Drawing on the literature on causal analysis in macro-historical and other small-N research, it outlines strategies for studying school shootings using qualitative case studies and illustrates these strategies using data from case studies of two rampage school shootings: Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Westside Middle School ou…
The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches in the Analysis of Contested Events
Positivist and interpretivist analytical approaches are frequently believed to be incompatible as research strategies and ways of understanding the world. This article argues that not only may versions of positivism and interpretivism be combined in the analysis of contested events, but this combination can further the goals of both approaches by contributing information that may have been missed by adopting only one perspective. The authors illu…
How Paradigms Create Politics: The Transformation of American Educational Policy, 1980–2001
American educational policy was rapidly transformed between 1980 and 2001. Accountability was introduced into a sphere that had long been loosely coupled, both major political parties reevaluated longstanding positions, and significant institutional control over the schooling shifted to the federal government for the first time in the nation’s history. These changes cannot be explained by conventional theories such as interest groups, rational ch…
Why Reform Sometimes Succeeds: Understanding the Conditions That Produce Reforms That Last
Counter to narratives of persistently failed school reform, we argue that reforms sometimes succeed and seek to understand why. Drawing on examples from the founding of public schools to the present, we find that successful system-wide reforms addressed problems that teachers thought they had by being consistent with prevailing norms and values, mobilizing a significant public constituency, and building the needed educational infrastructure. We d…
The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches in the Analysis of Contested Events
Positivist and interpretivist analytical approaches are frequently believed to be incompatible as research strategies and ways of understanding the world. This article argues that not only may versions of positivism and interpretivism be combined in the analysis of contested events, but this combination can further the goals of both approaches by contributing information that may have been missed by adopting only one perspective. The authors illu…
Studying Rare Events Through Qualitative Case Studies: Lessons from a Study of Rampage School Shootings
This article considers five methodological challenges in studying rare events such as school shootings. Drawing on the literature on causal analysis in macro-historical and other small-N research, it outlines strategies for studying school shootings using qualitative case studies and illustrates these strategies using data from case studies of two rampage school shootings: Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Westside Middle School ou…
Beyond the Laboratory: Evaluating the Survey Evidence for the Disidentification Explanation of Black-White Differences in Achievement
The black-white gap in achievement, as measured by performance on standardized tests, has received considerable attention from researchers in the past five years. Claude Steele's stereotype threat and disidentification mechanism is perhaps the most heralded of the new explanations for residual racial differences that persist after adjustments for social background are performed. Analyzing data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, we fo…
Changing the Grammar of Schooling: An Appraisal and a Research Agenda
Studying Rare Events Through Qualitative Case Studies: Lessons from a Study of Rampage School Shootings
This article considers five methodological challenges in studying rare events such as school shootings. Drawing on the literature on causal analysis in macro-historical and other small-N research, it outlines strategies for studying school shootings using qualitative case studies and illustrates these strategies using data from case studies of two rampage school shootings: Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Westside Middle School ou…
The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches in the Analysis of Contested Events
Positivist and interpretivist analytical approaches are frequently believed to be incompatible as research strategies and ways of understanding the world. This article argues that not only may versions of positivism and interpretivism be combined in the analysis of contested events, but this combination can further the goals of both approaches by contributing information that may have been missed by adopting only one perspective. The authors illu…
Beyond the Laboratory: Evaluating the Survey Evidence for the Disidentification Explanation of Black-White Differences in Achievement
The black-white gap in achievement, as measured by performance on standardized tests, has received considerable attention from researchers in the past five years. Claude Steele's stereotype threat and disidentification mechanism is perhaps the most heralded of the new explanations for residual racial differences that persist after adjustments for social background are performed. Analyzing data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, we fo…
Moral Power
The Varied Roles of Ideas in Politics
The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush agreed on little, but united behind the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Passed in late 2001, it was hailed as a dramatic new departure in school reform. It would make the states set high standards, measure student progress, and hold failing schools accountable. A decade later, NCLB has been repudiated on both sides of the aisle. According to Jal Mehta, we should have seen it coming. Far from new, it was the same ap…
How Paradigms Create Politics: The Transformation of American Educational Policy, 1980–2001
American educational policy was rapidly transformed between 1980 and 2001. Accountability was introduced into a sphere that had long been loosely coupled, both major political parties reevaluated longstanding positions, and significant institutional control over the schooling shifted to the federal government for the first time in the nation’s history. These changes cannot be explained by conventional theories such as interest groups, rational ch…
Schooling, Childhood, and Bureaucracy: Bureaucratizing the Child
Why Reform Sometimes Succeeds: Understanding the Conditions That Produce Reforms That Last
Counter to narratives of persistently failed school reform, we argue that reforms sometimes succeed and seek to understand why. Drawing on examples from the founding of public schools to the present, we find that successful system-wide reforms addressed problems that teachers thought they had by being consistent with prevailing norms and values, mobilizing a significant public constituency, and building the needed educational infrastructure. We d…
In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School
An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America’s most innovative classrooms to show what is working—and what isn’t. In a world where test scores have been king, this boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be at its best.
Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change
As a result of the frustration with the dominant “What Works” paradigm of large-scale research-based improvement, practitioners, researchers, foundations, and policymakers are increasingly embracing a set of ideas and practices that can be collectively labeled continuous improvement (CI) methods. This chapter provides a comparative review of these methods, paying particular attention to CI methods’ intellectual influences, theories of action, and…
Changing the Grammar of Schooling: An Appraisal and a Research Agenda
Reimagining American Education: Possible Futures
If the future of preK-12 education is going to be better than the past, then we need to rethink our fundamental assumptions about what we want from our schools and what we expect those schools to look like. Educators should embrace three core commitments in particular: 1) to treat students as learners whose agency is respected, whose diversity is embraced, whose selves are deeply known, whose joy is cultivated, and whose holistic growth is the pa…
Humans in Hierarchies: Intergroup Relations in Education Reform
Purpose: Existing research on loosely coupled educational systems has largely ignored the social and affective dimensions of such systems. Drawing on literature from organizational behavior, this study examines how “human” factors, including role identity dynamics, power dynamics, and stereotyping, shape the implementation of state-led education reforms. Research Method/Approach: This study draws on interviews and focus groups with 77 actors from…
Sociology (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (5 works) · Educational Assessment and Improvement (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Pedagogy (3 works) · Public Administration (3 works)