Teacher collaboration is often assumed to support school's ongoing improvement, but it is unclear how formal learning opportunities in teacher workgroups shape informal ones. In this mixed methods study, we examined 77 teacher collaborative meetings from 24 schools representing 116 teacher pairs. We coupled qualitative analysis of the learning…

Given prior research indicating that teachers can learn through their social network interactions with colleagues, it is important to understand more about the choices teachers make about whom to go to for advice. In this study, we investigated the degree to which middle school mathematics teachers change from whom they seek advice when…

This article presents an analysis showing how collegial interactions can augment the mechanism of teachers' learning from professional development. The analysis relies on social network data and self-reports of writing instructional practices from teachers in 20 different schools that were part of a longitudinal study of the National Writing…

This study examines how high-quality professional development can promote the diffusion of effective teaching strategies among teachers through collaboration. Drawing on longitudinal and sociometric data from a study of writing professional development in 39 schools, this study shows that teachers' participation in professional development is…

Background/Context: Researchers have proposed a number of lenses for analyzing teacher professional communities in recent years. These lenses have been useful in describing key dynamics of professional communities; however, none provides a compelling approach to how to integrate data from the school as a whole with case study data on individual…