Happy Holidays from NYKids! Our 2025 Year in Review

We hope you will join us in celebrating another inspiring year of research and meaningful collaboration! NYKids is thrilled to share our end-of-the-year blog, highlighting our team’s research, school improvement work, blogs, and presentations.

Diving deep into 2025 with new podcast conversations

In 2025, we officially released our podcast channel, NYKids Deep Dive, where we sat down with a diverse group of educational practitioners and researchers. Our conversations featured the latest on school improvement initiatives, education policy shifts, generative artificial intelligence impacts on teaching and learning, mindfulness in education, youth mental health, community schools and partnerships, and more. Tune in to our very first episode featuring guest Dave Little from the Rural Schools Association to learn about the challenges and opportunities facing rural school leaders and educators. And don’t stop there – each episode features important cutting edge research results and practical ideas to support child and youth development. A special shout out to all our podcast guests – and extra appreciation to our talented editor, NYKids’ Paul Guay!

Student voice, leadership, and compassion

In 2025, we did some reflecting on ways educators can best support children and youth as we collectively experience changes such as advancing technologies, political polarization, and daunting social media algorithms impacting youth well-being. Check out some of our blogs highlighting what research tells us about promoting student voice and leadership (and why it matters) and strategies educators are utilizing to promote compassion among youth.

What do parents in positive outlier schools value?

NYKids recently welcomed guest author and UAlbany School of Educational Policy and Leadership doctoral student, Oema Rambharose, to share her insights on our study data exploring positive outlier schools. Oema highlighted parents’ points of view about what they value in their children’s education and discussed why parent voice is so important. Check out our blog for more details.

Educational Improvement Science highlighted by NYKids collaborator, Dr. Maria I. Khan

What is Educational Improvement Science? How can adopting continuous improvement  lead to sustainable changes in education systems around the globe? NYKids research collaborator, Dr. Maria I. Khan, explores the ways educators in countries such as Canada, China, and Pakistan are integrating the principles of Improvement Science in schools. See highlights from her chapter “Educational Improvement Science as an Emerging Field: Global Perspectives” published in the Handbook on Comparative Education in her blog.

Latest publication highlights experiences of Special Education teachers

“Teaching has always been a demanding profession, but the COVID-19 pandemic amplified educators’ stress levels in new ways. In this unprecedented crisis, educators encountered a whirlwind of challenges including rapid shifts to remote learning and navigating health protocols.

While most of the research [on COVID-19 pandemic impacts on teachers] has focused on general education teachers, we wondered: What about those who teach students with special needs?”

Our newest publication, in partnership with NYKids collaborators and co-authors, is out now! Read about what NYKids’ research reveals about differences between general and special education teachers’ responses to the pandemic and what it teaches us about preparing for the next crisis.

NYKids presentations at the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Convention

NYKids Director, Kristen C. Wilcox, recently teamed up with colleagues at the UCEA annual convention to explore leader preparation program changes, leadership for collaborative continuous improvement in education, and use of practical tools like empathy and ecosystem mapping in research-practice partnerships.  Read a recent blog to learn details from each session focusing on building stronger professional learning opportunities, collaboration, and community.

NYKids’ 2026 study dropping in 5…4…3…2…1!

Follow along in the new year for updates on our study of promising practices in New York State’s positive outlier elementary schools. We look forward to sharing our work and collaborating with partners across the state. And remember, you can stay informed with all things NYKids via LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky, subscribe to our newsletter, and email us at nykids@albany.edu with any requests for support.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

– Dr. Kristen C. Wilcox, Dr. Aaron Leo, Jessie Tobin, Paul Guay, JoaquÍn Mateauda, Manaswi Kattoju, and Dr. Maria I. Khan