Professional development communities (PDCs) are professional learning communities for teacher development in schools. Israeli educational reforms made principals responsible for staff professional development and introduced a teacher-led, PDC-based program called Hashkafa for teacher development. The current study examined principals' views…

During the spring and fall semesters of 2016 and the spring semester of 2017, Kingsborough Community College, part of the City University of New York, launched an initiative to loan over 5,000 books for the entire semester to students in its Learning Communities and other special programs. This paper is a case study that describes the challenges…

This paper relates how leaders of a higher education program, the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network, sparked and managed innovation across communities of scholarship, research, and practice. This paper uses a "design narrative" method to describe how leaders orchestrated organizational change by bringing diverse…

This study examined the promising practices employed by the West Coast Diocese that were perceived to build the leadership capacity of future Catholic school principals. Additionally, this study sought to ascertain the challenges to building leadership capacity in the principal residency program. One diocesan program, the principal residency…

This chapter will introduce Action Research Communities for Language Teachers (ARC), a project funded by the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) of the Council of Europe (2015-2018). The project aims to make action research techniques widely available to language teachers across Europe and to provide them with development opportunities…

Many studies illustrate the positive influences of undergraduate research experiences on student learning, attitudes, and retention in the sciences. At our institution, over 90% of the biology majors surveyed reported a desire to participate in undergraduate research, but only 3% per year have the opportunity to work in a traditional…

This article evaluates a peer mentoring experience for school-based practitioners and its effect on collaborative consultation practices. Best practice and public school policy promote the use of collaborative consultation services but school-based practitioners report significant barriers in achieving effective collaborative consultation…

In order to create a greater abundance of effective and affordable pathways for low-income learners, the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) created Minds That Move Us (MTMU). MTMU challenges the bright minds of communities around the country to design innovative education and training models that create social equity and economic mobility…

One World Education (OWEd) is a college-ready writing instruction program with the goal to ultimately have students participate in their own discourse communities. This qualitative analysis of One World Education reports on student and teacher impressions of the program by analyzing the results of surveys, informal interviews, and focus groups the…

As trained leaders for whom accountability and a strong work ethic are second nature, Chicagoland veterans are uniquely equipped to meet the demands of today's jobs. That veterans typically possess the skills and character needed to excel in the civilian workplace makes reports on the state of veteran unemployment more troubling. Through the…

This paper examines the concept of learning communities as defined in the literature. An existing case study is described, and the issues that facilitated and constrained the development of this learning community are considered and discussed. Strategies to address threats to the ongoing viability and usefulness of a learning community to support…

Lab components of undergraduate science courses typically have students complete highly directed cookbook-like laboratory activities. These experiences rarely engage students in a meaningful manner and do not accurately convey what the work of science entails. With funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), we have created more…

School failure and early school dropout particularly affect members of certain minority groups such as the gypsy population. The obstacles that must be overcome for the members of these groups appear to be related to the discontinuities between the values and goals of community family life and those of the school. This article presents an analysis…

In this paper, we describe the second year of a multi-year project that we developed to foster collaboration between high school teachers and university undergraduates. The project incorporates specific tools that help partners find an approach to collaboration that is right for them, allowing it to offer more flexibility than traditional…

Research suggests that professional development that engages teachers in instructional inquiry over an extended time through collaborative professional learning communities (PLCs) is effective in improving instruction and student achievement. Still, most professional development is offered as short-duration workshops that are not effective in…