About

Joonkil Ahn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies & Practice at the University of Arizona. With a background as a high school teacher and teacher leader for 17 years, his research centers around leadership as an organizational quality and its impact on teachers and students. He problematizes educators’ deficit-based perspectives about students and is interested in revealing specific practices where these perspectives manifest in teaching and leadership practices. He also examines deficit perspectives about teachers and explores leadership roles that facilitate teacher agency and collaboration with colleagues to maximize organizational capacity for enhancing equity.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Pedagogy
• Data Mining
• Political Science
• Developmental psychology
• Public relations
• Medical education

Selected publications

• Researching Race: A Review of Principal Preparation Literature Through the Lens of Critical Race Methodology

  Education Sciences · 2026-01-03

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The purpose of this systematic review was to synthesize the literature to better understand how the field researched principal preparation in relation to race and racism. Using a critical race theory methodological lens (CRM), we analyzed 36 studies of current candidates or recent graduates with an emphasis on the research design and methods. The research chosen for inclusion was (1) empirical, (2) focused on principal preparation programs in the U.S., (3) focused on preparing candidates around issues related to race and racism, and (4) published between 2012 and 2024. Literature was drawn from three major databases that include journals in the field of educational leadership, ERIC, ProQuest, and Education Full Text, in the summer of 2025. It is important to note that our literature search focusing on peer-reviewed articles poses a limitation in terms of the comprehensiveness of the sampled literature, thus excluding potentially important information sources. To analyze the studies, we created a scoring rubric to assess the degree to which each article addressed each CRM tenet. To assess risk of bias, each article was scored by two authors, and the third author also scored the article if the first two disagreed. Our findings show that focus on race and racism was present in most studies reviewed, and almost half centered on the experiences of candidates of color. However, most of the studies reviewed conformed to traditional research paradigms and methods, as illustrated by choices related to frameworks, methods, and data sources. We offer recommendations for researchers of principal preparation who are interested in more critical work related to race and racism, and we argue for increased opportunities for scholars to meet, discuss, and collaborate across institutions around how they are studying leadership preparation for racial equity. The review is registered through Open Science Framework.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Equity audits and school resource allocation: Applying critical resource theory to increase equal opportunity in schools

  Journal of Education Policy · 2025-12-15

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Monolingual Teachers’ Perceptions of Teaching Emergent Bilingual Students in the Rural and Suburban Contexts in a Midwestern State

  Journal of Language Identity & Education · 2025-09-03

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Fair Across the Board? Relating Teacher Commitment to Teachers’ Perceptions of Principal Versus Assistant Principal Leadership

  Educational Administration Quarterly · 2024-11-22 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Purpose: Little is known about how teachers view the leadership of assistant principals in comparison to that of principals, especially in relationship to teachers’ work outcomes. We examine whether a gap exists between teachers’ perceptions of fairness from principals and assistant principals, and whether this gap is associated with teachers’ commitment to their school. Research Methods: We employ mixed methods with a converging evidence model to understand the relationship between teachers’ perception gaps and commitment outcomes. We analyze interview data from 98 teachers across five high schools in one metropolitan area in the U.S. South to describe these gaps, and analyze survey data from 354 teachers from these same schools using structural equation modeling. Findings: Our qualitative analysis uses a typology to show examples of typical work scenarios where a teacher perceives a gap or no gap in fairness. Results from our quantitative data analysis suggest teachers express more commitment when they assess as fair (i.e., unbiased) the performance feedback from assistant principals rather than head principals. Yet, teacher commitment hinges on greater considerate interpersonal treatment from principals than from assistant principals. Overall, gaps in administrator fairness are associated with lower average teacher commitment. Implications for Research and Practice: Our investigation advances understandings of school leadership by clarifying role distinctions between principals and assistant principals that go beyond task types and considering expectations teachers hold of different school administrators. These perception differences matter as they appear associated with levels of teacher commitment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Challenges in sustaining professional learning communities focused on equity

  Journal of Educational Change · 2024-07-17 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Leadership on School Organizations: Network Analysis Approach to Systematic Review of Literature on Teaching and Learning International Survey

  European Journal of Educational Management · 2024-03-15

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <p style="text-align: justify;">The purpose of this study is to review the literature on the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) for the past 10 years to identify multiple paths through which school leadership exerted influences on school organizations and organizational outcomes. Our analysis of a network, consisting of 83 nodes (variables) and 242 variable ties from 29 reviewed studies identified four emergent themes. Reviewed studies (1) overwhelmingly framed the principal as the driver and teachers as the target of change; (2) suggested nine core variables (e.g., instructional leadership) to play central roles within the reviewed studies; (3) depicted student academic achievement as a function of the principal’s instructional leadership and their job satisfaction influenced by school context, principal qualification, and organizational conditions (e.g., respect for others); and (4) suggested teacher self-efficacy as the potential bridging variable between multiple change processes. The discussion includes implications for school leadership and future research.</p>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Association Between Educator Growth Mindset and Racially Minoritized Students’ Science Identity: A Multiple-Group Growth Curve Approach

  2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A District’s Case Study to Sustain Collaborative Learning Dynamics Across Schools: An Organizational Learning Perspective

  2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “Kids Have Taught Me. I Listen to Them”: Principals Legitimizing Student Voice in Their Leadership

  AERA Open · 2024-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Few studies have shared insights on how principals invite student voice to enact equitable leadership practice. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which principals demonstrated their commitment to equity via advocating for student voice using in-depth interview data from six school principals in the United States. We present three findings that contribute to the field of leadership and student voice: (a) motivation for student voice, (b) desires and concerns for student future, and (c) student voice for authentic learning. This study advances how school leaders develop student democratic agency and critical consciousness through pursuing and welcoming student voice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interplay between leadership and school-level conditions: A review of literature on the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

  Educational Management Administration & Leadership · 2023-05-29 · 6 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding

  We combined network analysis and meta-analysis to systematically review the literature on the Teaching and Learning International Survey, focusing on the interplay between leadership practices and school-level conditions. Our initial network analysis utilized 83 nodes (variables in the reviewed studies) and 214 ties (variable associations), whereas our subsequent meta-analysis employed 21 selected variable associations. Results suggested that leadership practices interplayed with school-level conditions through multiple, interconnected variable associations with a range of effect sizes. First, variables concerning teacher working conditions and teacher qualifications indicated relatively smaller effects than teacher self-efficacy. Second, the association between teacher self-efficacy and teacher collaboration indicated the strongest effect among other variable associations, followed by the relationship between collective teacher perceptions of distributed leadership and teacher job satisfaction. Third, variables regarding teacher perceptions of the principal's leadership effectiveness had larger effect sizes than the principal's self-assessment of their leadership practices. Results further suggested teacher self-efficacy and teacher collaboration as the two most prominent variables that would potentially play a bridging role between leadership practices and school-level conditions. We provide implications for educational leadership practices and research.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Yinying Wang

  University of Arizona

  6 shared

• Anjalé D. Welton

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

• Emilie Mitescu Reagan

  Claremont Graduate University

  2 shared

• Alex J. Bowers

  2 shared

• A. Lin Goodwin

  Boston College

  2 shared

• Osly J. Flores

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  2 shared

• Donald G. Hackmann

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  2 shared

• Laura Vernikoff

  2 shared