Graduate Students Build Professional Skills and Networks with CALL-ECL

February 26, 2025   |   By WCER Communications

Graduate students at UW–Madison’s School of Education are honing their skills and advancing their careers by collaborating with seasoned researchers on the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership Learning/Equity-Centered Leadership (CALL-ECL) project. This $10.1 million research project, funded by the Wallace Foundation in 2021 and housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), involves the study of a five-year initiative around eight school districts funded to develop principal pipelines that can support more equity-centered school leadership. The research study brings together multiple academic partners and encompasses five interconnected strands of study.

Researchers on the CALL-ECL project document the development of the districts’ equity-centered principal pathways, monitor the growth of the districts’ professional networks during the study and work on developing a survey tool to support the practices of equity-centered leaders. “People in schools don’t need to be told that they’re good or bad by researchers,” said UW–Madison’s Rich Halverson, Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education in the School of Education and principal investigator of CALL-ECL. “What they need are tools that can support their practices so they can improve.”

The study brings together a team of 18 researchers and leadership/improvement science scholars from four universities – UW–Madison, Brown University, Teachers College at Columbia University, and UCLA – and three education research and development agencies: WestEd in San Francisco; the American Institutes for Research in Arlington, Virginia; and the Wisconsin Center for Education Products and Services. The eight school districts involved in the study are in Baltimore City, Maryland; Columbus, Ohio; Fresno, California; Jefferson County, Kentucky; Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina; and the District of Columbia.

The project is led by Halverson, Research Director Dani Molle, and Project Manager Deja Mason with the help of 22 graduate students, including nine from UW–Madison: Aziz Awaludin, Laura Davalos, Xinyu Guan, CJ Greer, Lisa Hennessey, Deonte Iverson, Emily Nott, Sarah Volk, and Mark White.

These grad students aren’t just coding and collecting data – they are active members of the research team, learning new research skills, gaining advanced knowledge in their fields, and making new contacts at partner institutions across the country that could help them later land jobs as researchers, faculty members or school principals.

The project also includes two graduate students from UCLA, eight from Teachers College at Columbia University, a postdoc and post-master’s student from Brown University, and a graduate student from Michigan State.

These students learn to use a range of research methods, including data analytics and social network analysis (quantitative) and thematic analysis (qualitative). They can also pursue topics of special interest, such as leader preparation, community engagement, and partnership development between districts and universities. Students also have the opportunity to generate data they can use in their dissertations and other research. “Students are centrally involved in all stages of the research process. They are part of the analysis that leads to writing and publication,” said Molle. “Importantly, the work may also mean connecting to the passion that brought them to grad school to begin with.”

The UW–Madison School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) is heavily represented in the project – two UW–Madison faculty on the research team are affiliated with the department, as are almost all the graduate students. That’s a point of pride for Halverson, who pursued the project in part so that ELPA graduate students could participate in a large, multi-disciplinary research project working with senior researchers and student peers from institutions across the country. “It’s important that graduate researchers know what it is to work on research at scale – something they might not have the opportunity to do otherwise,” said Halverson. “The project would not be possible without their insights, without their labor, without their organization, without their support, without their collegiality.”

Being on a team with other graduate students presented many opportunities. “I got to build collegial relationships, problem-solve together, and be part of a network of support,” said Lisa Hennessey, an ELPA doctoral student and former high school math teacher. For CALL-ECL, Hennessey coded data to align themes around leadership, a good fit with her research interest in math education leadership.

The project is now in its fourth of six years. Key project elements include:

• The Network Study, tracing the growth of professional networks within and across districts about the preparation and support of equity-centered school leaders;
• The District Theory of Action Study, mapping the development of the equity-centered leader pathways in each district from initial design through implementation;
• The School-Level Study that seeks to document what equity-centered leadership practices look like in schools;
• The Instrumentation Study, which is building survey tools to support equity-centered school leadership in schools through formative information and feedback; and
• The Mapping Equity Indicators Study is collecting and connecting publicly available data to provide information about the impact of districts’ equity-focused efforts on students, families, and staff.

“For historical reasons, writing a dissertation is something you do on your own,” said Molle. “This project provides a counterbalance to that.”

For doctoral students, gaining exposure to research projects before embarking on their dissertations is invaluable. “Working on CALL-ECL has provided me with significant experience and insight, which will undoubtedly serve me well in my future work,” said graduate student Deonte Iverson, a student leader on the project.

About CALL-ECL

The CALL-ECL research project is an effort to document district efforts to create equity-centered principal pipelines. Our nation is faced with the challenge of creating more equitable schools for students and families. In 2021, the Wallace Foundation launched the Equity-Centered Pipeline Initiative (ECPI) to support eight school districts in building comprehensive, aligned principal pipelines with the goal of developing principals who can advance each district’s vision of equity. School leadership matters for the improvement of student learning and growth, and the ECPI initiative focuses on how leaders can be prepared to create more schools that effectively serve all students.

About the Wisconsin Center for Education Research

The Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s #1 ranked public School of Education is one of the first and most productive education research centers in the world. It has assisted scholars and practitioners in developing, submitting, conducting and sharing grant-funded education research for 60 years.

WCER’s mission is to improve educational outcomes for diverse student populations, positively impact education practice and foster collaborations among academic disciplines and practitioners.