University students can become overwhelmed and hopeless as they pursue their final capstone writing projects. They are also navigating trying times of overlapping crises such as poverty, environmental decay, and war. To address these challenges, our Capstone Writing Groups (CWG) are designed to develop students' writerly competence and enhance…

Writing and publishing are critical components of an academic career. For many years however, my idealized notions of scholarly writing were demolished by painful and traumatic attempts to publish. The significant time and effort poured into crafting an academic article yielded desk rejection after desk rejection, at times unkind and unhelpful…

Special educators who work with students with significant behavior support needs require professional development opportunities that provide practice-based professional development and create the social support inherent in communities of practice. We outline a practice-based professional development model with follow-up sessions using the U.S.…

Course coordination implies coordination in the design, structure, and teaching of a course to the extent that multiple instructors within a multi-section course have come to a common agreement. The course coordination model within our college's Department of Mathematics is described and discussed. The outcomes experienced as the department moved…

Although online discourses about dissertation writing (i.e., You Should be Writing memes) offer students levity, they function in stark contrast to how dissertation writing is treated in real life. Canadian education scholars with PhDs have examined the student-supervisor relationship (McAlpine & Weis, 2000), collaborative writing spaces…

We describe a lecture-free problem-solving Mathematical Communication and Reasoning (MCR) course that helps students succeed in the Introduction to Advanced Mathematics course. The MCR course integrates elements from Uri Treisman's Emerging Scholars workshop model and Math Circles. In it students solve challenging problems and form a supportive…

Amy Yarborough, a veteran teacher and curriculum resource leader in a rural district in Virginia, facilitates a professional learning community focused on social justice and equity-oriented instructional practices. When allegations of teaching critical race theory are reported via the state's email tip line and community social media groups, Amy…

Appraisal Centers provide authentic experienced-based communities of practice for preservice teachers (PSTs) to show application of theory into practice at critical gateways throughout their elementary education program while fulfilling School of Education dispositions, course objectives, and state standards. A goal is to provide formative…

This article explores where and how to re-value research in theological education. Robert Banks, an Australian biblical scholar and practical theologian, appealed for a re-envisioning of theological education including refocusing research with 'missional' application, not primarily serving academia, but also church and society. Excellent…

Research supports the contention that professional learning communities (PLCs) are a "path to change in the classroom" (DuFour, 1997). Teachers treading this path, however, can encounter obstacles or plateau as a result of five common challenges: incoherence, insularity, unequal participation, congeniality, and privacy. Fortunately,…

With the growing understanding of the importance of early childhood, leaders in many communities are looking for concrete ideas about how to improve the lives of young children and their families in their communities. They are looking for information and guidance about where to put their resources and energy, how to implement effective programs…

The author successfully implemented the "House" system in a university social studies methods class and reports on the positive results that ensued. Students reported a sense of unity, camaraderie, identity, and closeness that was missing in many of their other classes. The House assignments and competitions are described, as well as…

This article posits that the restorative practice of community circles offers middle school students a safe, empowering space where moments of social and emotional strife can be addressed and possibly prevented. It also recognizes that by creating a safe and empowering classroom community, students who have or are experiencing trauma can find…

The authors present an example of a social constructivist framework and a backward design approach to enhance an underutilized peer mentoring program for teaching assistants. Following a needs assessment for quality improvement, the authors designed a mentoring workshop and revised guidelines: Mentoring pairs now use a four-step process to frame…

A prominent goal of colleges and universities today is to enact data-driven teaching and learning. Faculty clearly play a key role, and yet they tend to have limited time, a lack of training in assessment or education research, and few incentives for engaging in this work. We describe a framework designed to address the practical and cultural…