The idea of transformative and troublesome "threshold concepts" has been popular and influential in higher education. This article reports how teachers with different disciplinary affiliations responded to the "concept of thresholds" in the course of a cross-disciplinary research project. It describes how the idea was territorialised and enacted…

The paper suggests that the idea of quality in higher education is ideologically constructed and conducted. In a spiral of mutual reinforcements, quality regimes naturalise experience, while the theories of that practice legitimise the naturalness of "quality". I shall suggest that quality regimes provide too narrow readings of higher education.…

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have been growing in popularity with educational researchers, instructors, and learners in online environments. Online discussions are as important in MOOCs as in other online courses. Online discussions that occur in MOOCs are influenced by additional factors resulting from their volatile and voluntary…

Recent research has emphasized the close connections between writing and the construction of an author's identity. While academic contexts privilege certain ways of making meanings and so restrict what resources participants can bring from their past experiences, we can also see these writing conventions as a repertoire of options that allow…

Public rhetoric pedagogy can benefit from an ecological perspective that sees change as advocated not through a single document but through multiple mundane and monumental texts. This article summarizes various approaches to rhetorical ecology, offers an ecological read of the Montgomery bus boycotts, and concludes with pedagogical insights on a…

This paper reports on a collaborative project aimed at addressing the learning challenges faced by non-traditional students at the interface of TAFE and Higher Education. Our pedagogy is informed by engagement with a critique of competency-based education that espouses "bringing knowledge back into" the curriculum (Wheelahan, 2010a) and a critique…

In a school with a transparent data culture, frequent, low-stakes Data Conversations happen all the time. Although most schools engage in Data Conversations at times, there are some specific strategies and "listen-fors" that can assist educators in making these conversations more productive, such as developing a low-stakes set of…

In this discussion of professional learning communities (PLCs) in North American public schools, we examine three theoretical frames--leadership, organization, and culture. Issues related to learning are infused throughout our presentation of the frames. Based on our analysis of the current literature on this topic, PLCs offer a promising tool for…

This paper considers the "policy work" of teacher actors in schools. It focuses on the "problem of meaning" and offers a typology of roles and positions through which teachers engage with policy and with which policies get "enacted". It argues that "policy work" is made up of a set of complex and…

Meaningful discussion helps students develop new knowledge about the world around them. "Progressive discourse" is talk that encourages people to develop a new understanding together. In this article, the author discusses how she used student collaboration to foster progressive discourse and describes assignments that engage her students in group…

Research has become a key element in the knowledge-based society with its role of producing and disseminating results. In this context, scientific publishing becomes the means by which research activity and knowledge production are circulated to the scientific community and society at large. However, there are factors influencing the system of…

Collaborative inquiry groups, such as professional learning communities and lesson study groups, are proliferating in schools across the United States. In whatever form, the potential for impacting student learning through this collaborative work is expanded or limited by the nature of teachers' conversations. Polite, congenial conversations…

A household name synonymous with modern telecommunications, Verizon's performance management innovations in 2010 kept pace with the growth of its brand. Many people probably are customers of the company's services. What's less known to the public is the consistent quality of Verizon's learning and development programs. A regular on the "Training"…

Just as in the United States, political changes in the United Kingdom and other nations affect education policy. Louise Stoll, professor at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education, University of London, offers a different view on policy in these excerpts from a conversation with Tracy Crow, Learning Forward's associate…

Founded in the 1850s to promote an informed citizenry, public libraries advanced both adult learning and citizenship education in the first half of the 20th century, thus becoming cornerstones of democracy. But with a more recent decline in public engagement in libraries and beyond, librarians question whether democracy requires more than an…