Joint Paper by Dr. Rachel Garver and Dr. Tanya Maloney Receives ‘Article of the Year’ by the University Council for Educational Administration

A joint article by Dr. Rachel Garver, Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership, and Dr. Tanya Maloney, Assistant Professor in Teacher and Learning, was recently named ‘Article of the Year’ by the University Council for Educational Administration.

Their paper, “Redefining Supervision: A Joint Inquiry Into Preparing School-Based Leaders to Supervise for Equity” published in the Journal of Research on Leadership Education (JRLE), was highlighted by the award committee since it had compelling “contributions both to new knowledge development and practitioner capacity building.” The award was announced publicly at the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Conference on November 11, 2021.

The JRLE Best Article award Award is given annually to the author(s) of the most outstanding article published in the Journal of Research on Leadership Education during the preceding volume year. The article selection is made by a member panel chosen from the JRLE Editorial Board members who have not published in the volume being reviewed.

Unfortunately, neither Dr. Garver nor Dr. Maloney was able to attend the conference to accept the award, but the authors sent the following statement of gratitude to be read at the awards ceremony in their absence:

“Thank you so much to the University Council for Educational Administration for this award and for the work and time that went into reviewing all of the published research from this year. This project emerged from weekly meetings over lunch in the student center dining hall at Montclair State University during which we shared experiences and practices from our classrooms. Our paper is a study of a lesson about how to prepare future leaders to be attuned to racial and social justice while supervising teachers. Our intention was to broaden what supervision entails and to provide a model for other university faculty to reflect systematically and critically about their own practices. Preparing school leaders to interrupt practices that perpetuate racial inequities continues to be vital, especially at a time when critical race theory is being misunderstood and politicized to normalize whiteness in schools, misrepresent our historical context, and diminish the ongoing impact of racism in the United States. The recognition of our work reflects the values and commitments of UCEA and makes us hopeful that scholarship dedicated to racial and social justice and to critically examining our own practices as educators will continue to be supported and valued in the field. We hope that our fellow educational leadership scholars will continue to work with us and join us in conversation because it will take our entire community to end educational inequity in schools. We regret that we were not able to join you all in person today, but we look forward to engaging with your scholarship and to meeting you in the future.”