While in graduate school at UCLA, I was introduced to a multi-disciplinary, theoretical approach that I ultimately expanded to inform my own research interest. (I continue to use this theoretical approach in my current research efforts.) This theoretical orientation employed the use of conceptual lenses. By employing conceptual lenses as an analytical tool, I was better able to understand the multifaceted dimensions involved in changing school cultures steeped in tradition, cultural values, and community norms. Four conceptual lenses were particularly helpful in my line of research: the technical, the normative, the political, and the socio-cultural. As a result of my interest in these four dimensions of the schooling process, my research evolved over time into understanding three overlapping strands:

• Norms that guide school policy and practice
    Understanding the norms that guide school policy and practice is a strand that extends both the theoretical and methodological work of my dissertation. My dissertation, which was honored with the 1997 AERA Division G Outstanding Dissertation Award, documents one school community’s attempt to operationalize their commitment to excellence and equity by fundamentally changing the organization, curriculum, and pedagogy that historically had led to unequal learning opportunities within their high school, placing a disproportionately large percentage of African-American and Hispanic students at risk of school failure. The bold restructuring plan created by the school consists of a variety of educational change strategies that centered on addressing the high attrition rate of students of color, increasing access to high-status knowledge for all students, and creating a climate of racial harmony and acceptance.

• Implementation and replication of equity-minded reform
    The call for the total restructuring of schools has resounded loudly for the last several decades. In response to this call, an unprecedented number of school-wide reform models developed by organizations external to the schools have emerged and have successfully translated the call for change into practice. My research in this area contributes to the growing body of knowledge in the field about what it takes to replicate effective school-wide reform models. My work represents one of the first comprehensive studies using a mixed method analysis to explore the contextual factors that contribute to the successful replication and scaling-up efforts of a school-wide change model.
    The intervention model designed and implemented by my colleagues and I at UCLA was piloted in the summer of 2002. The intervention model was an intensive one week- summer bridge program targeting 8th graders transitioning into the 9th grade. It was a program designed to re-enforce some basic skills and introduce students to the realities of what it take to get prepared for college. The intervention model engaged graduate student researchers, university faculty members, local stakeholders, and practitioners in the co-construction of activities and instructional approaches that broaden the range of success indicators to include college entry, critical thinking, creative problem solving, affective and social outcomes, as well as basic skills.
    The model proved significant for the students in two very important ways. It challenged students to hold college aspirations and connect them to the realistic information, academic prerequisites, and processes of financial aid and admissions for realizing their postsecondary goals. It explicitly focused on “over-determining” success. Over-determining success involves creating (and in the case of many 9th graders, exposing them to) opportunities to participate in multiple evidence-based activities and programs that enhance achievement.

• Politics of education
    My current research in this area entails a grant to study the micro-political context of technology integration in UCLA partnership high schools. A focus of this investigation is understanding the ways in which computer technology affects the educational experiences, outcomes, and successes of students who attend educationally disadvantaged schools. With the ever increasing and pervasive role computer technology has in our society and its potential to affect academic achievement, it becomes increasingly imperative to examine how computer technology in high schools, particularly urban schools serving large numbers of educationally disadvantaged students, better prepares this nation’s youth for success in higher education and an advanced workforce in the information age.