Contingent, VITAL faculty make up the majority of faculty positions in the United States, and their role is primarily instruction. Yet they often face numerous barriers to participating in professional development and engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), activities that can support their instructional effectiveness. This…

This report analyzes the design process that campus teams use to create sustained professional development (SPD) programs such as faculty learning communities for VITAL faculty. The authors begin with a description of the larger research project that this report contributes to, including an overview of earlier research and methodology for the…

As American teacher educators and teachers are being roiled by restrictive legislation around critical race theory and divisive concepts in some states, our investigation explored the impact of critical communities of practice (CoP) on redesigning and teaching introduction to education courses with a transformative lens. This manuscript details…

Discussing the topic of special education teacher shortages across the United States has become commonplace. Although more widespread, special education teacher shortages in rural areas have gained less attention. Teachers in these areas face unique challenges such as overcoming geographic barriers to providing high-quality services, the isolation…

To determine factors that influence faculty engagement and success in faculty learning communities focused on collaborative Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), our project gathered information on (1) faculty motivation to engage with SoTL; (2) structures that support collaboration; (3) the perceived impact of SoTL on teaching,…

Models of response to intervention (RtI) are being widely implemented in schools across the country in order to increase effective teaching and remove barriers to student learning. The implementation of RtI is greatly facilitated when teachers and staff see themselves as a professional learning community (PLC). This article begins with an…

This article considers how online conferences can support professional development across Africa and reviews elements of the literatures of social learning, online professional development and online conferences. The e/merge online conference is then described in terms of design features and participation metrics. This sets context for discussion…

Communities of practice as organisations of learning have developed different forms as: task-based, practice-based or knowledge based communities (Barab et al., 2004). The paper presents a case study of a successful community of practice developed under the umbrella of Council of Europe Pestalozzi programme for teacher development. The programme…

Professional development for distance tutors is traditionally delivered through texts or websites, supplemented by face to face workshops. However, one of the major challenges is to ensure that they engage with the materials and carry away something which is of value to their practice. At the Open University (UK) our 8000 tutors work from home,…