Teacher professional learning is of increasing interest as education professionals continually seek ways to support 21st-century learners. Continuing education is necessary for teachers to expand their knowledge base and remain current on the latest educational research; therefore, professional development is a staple in the teaching profession.…

College staff performing recruiting tasks without collaboration or shared knowledge formation creates redundancies and knowledge gaps. This study sought to investigate causes and find solutions to recruitment gaps and redundancies. Participants and data collected in Cycle 1 consisted of interviews with college staff and recent high school…

Previous scholarship finds that effective Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have increased student achievement and advanced teacher pedagogy. As a result, PLCs have become increasingly prevalent in school reform efforts to remediate professional development. Dialogue is considered an essential component of effective PLC practice needed to…

When it comes to implementing educational policy changes, teacher leaders have been identified as playing a critical role. Yet, despite more calls for increased teacher professionalism and leadership, we lack substantial empirical research on how these teacher leaders are developed and the role of collaborative relationships in their development.…

Purpose: The first-aid courses organized by the Youth Red Cross Carinthia (Austria) had a quality problem, necessitating a professionalization in teaching and time structure. This research aimed to enhance the quality and effectiveness of these courses by implementing modified lesson studies with non-professional trainers. The paper presents the…

Maintaining a commitment to social justice teaching can be especially challenging when navigating the bureaucratic systems and ever-spiraling responsibilities of the education system. To better understand how social-justice-oriented educators navigate these tensions, this paper uses qualitative methods to investigate the social justice problems of…

This dissertation examines the connection between the English Language Arts Professional Learning Community, data analysis, and research-based instructional strategies to improve students reading levels, as measured by the Pennsylvania Literature Keystone Exam at an Urban High School. It is a mixed-method study. Data were collected from 9th -12th…

The proposed qualitative year-long descriptive study explored how high school teachers who participated in a Professional Learning Community had their school leadership aspirations impacted while serving in the New York City Public School System. Currently, the system has a dire need to fill school and district instructional, supervisory, and…

National and local data sets reveal that students with disabilities have yet to gain full access to the opportunities that science, technology, and engineering (STE) education has to offer. Through an improvement science lens, this three-manuscript dissertation attempts to define, diagnose, explain, and address this pervasive problem of practice.…

The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) calls on school counselors to take part in collaborative work experiences using data to address problems of practice. School counselors experience professional isolation leading to underperformance (Elliot et al., 2004; Stone-Johnson, 2015). School structures that lack collaborative experiences for…

Knowledge Building Communities (KBCs) are principled-based, interactive learning environments designed to scaffold higher levels of student agency and the formulation of goals and questions stemming from students' knowledge-building needs. The design of KBCs is guided by a set of 12 principles that have been examined across hundreds of studies.…

Purpose: This study explored high school teachers' perceptions and collaborative learning experiences in integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs) in teaching using lesson study (LS) whilst engaging in teacher professional development (TPD). Earlier forms of TPD were often theoretical, and teachers had difficulty in applying…

The Sullivan County School District, a pseudonym, is a specialized district in NYC catering to newcomers and students at risk for high school dropout. In the 2022-2023 school year, there was a significant increase in enrollment of asylum-seeking students living in shelters. Using an improvement science approach, the aim of this study was to…

"Lesson study" has garnered considerable attention from educational researchers and practitioners as a promising method for improving instruction. At its core, lesson study reflects a collaborative inquiry process, grounded in cycles of planning, enacting, and reflecting, that promotes teacher learning through active engagement in lesson…

We report findings from qualitatively analyzing audio recordings and teacher-generated products from a two-day in-person collaborative design (co-design) workshop where nine experienced high school CS teachers revised parts of an existing introductory high school program toward justice. In response to our research question of how teachers…