This article presents exploratory research into an education-based virtual mentoring provision, the Virtual Professional Learning and Development (VPLD) program, and uses the Elements of Value Pyramid to help frame findings in a way that highlights the participants' (mentors' and mentees') perceived value of working together. Participants were…

As pressures on new academic staff members increase and change, academic developers need to find different ways of working with them. This paper offers for discussion a new way of supporting early career academics in their negotiation of liminality, the betwixt and between space separating old and new roles. We call this innovative approach…

In this study, the kinds of shares made by science teachers in a WhatsApp group as an online community of practice to support professional development were examined. The netnographic research method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The messages shared by 12 science teachers, who worked at a private school between…

This paper examines the initial steps of an internationally funded project focused on enhancing teachers' conceptual and pedagogical knowledge of literacy development in the Western Cape of South Africa. We asked what are the tensions and breakthroughs when engaged in international teacher professional development? Four lines of inquiry support…

Active and collaborative teaching methods increase student learning, and it is broadly accepted that almost any active or collaborative approach will improve learning outcomes as compared to lecture. Yet, large numbers of faculty have not embraced these methods. Thus, the challenge to encourage evidence-based change in teaching is not only how to…

Purpose: The use of data for instructional improvement is prevalent in today's educational landscape, yet policies calling for data use may result in significant variation at the school level. The purpose of this paper is to focus on tools and routines as mechanisms of principal influence on data-use professional learning communities (PLCs).…

This case study research reports on elementary (grade 8) and secondary school (grade 9) teachers' participation in job-embedded, professional learning and engagement in collaborative inquiry. Teachers constructed an inquiry-oriented media literacy unit following the collaborative inquiry model. The current study sought to investigate how…

This article details the results of an action research study which investigated how teachers used online learning community spaces to develop and support their teaching and learning of the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), a web-mediated, character-playing, simulation game that engages participants with social, historical and cultural curricula.…

This article looks closely at a teacher inquiry group and the dilemmas that emerged during the first year of facilitating the group. The author encountered a number of unforeseen dilemmas that challenged previous understanding of teacher inquiry, its processes, and purposes. The author moved from viewing the process of facilitation of teacher…

This study focuses on using wikis as a learning environment, as part of a professional development program for chemistry teacher leaders. The study was performed in Israel and involved 20 chemistry teachers. One goal was to investigate how using wiki may promote effective science teacher professional development. Various aspects of the teachers'…

This article is based on a study involving 126 International Baccalaureate (IB) teachers in more than 30 countries who, through the use of asynchronous online discussion forums, shared how they teach and simultaneously reflected upon how they conceptualize global citizenship. Data analysis revealed that participants developed new understandings…

A Victorian government initiative called "The Primary Science Specialists Professional Learning Program" is designed to tackle students' falling interest in science by investing in the building of teacher capacity. The aims of the initiative are: to improve the science knowledge base of all teachers and therefore increase teachers'…

High school teachers today work in challenging, high-accountability instructional environments, striving to meet the needs of upwards of 100 learners per day. Rapidly growing numbers of English-language learners (ELLs) in U.S. classrooms have added to these pressures. Rather than using collaborative structures to face these challenges, the…

This study investigated how involving in a lesson study process at virtual settings impacted participating teachers' knowledge. The two elementary mathematics teachers, teaching in two public elementary schools at distant cities and meeting occasionally face to face and regularly at virtual settings formed the sample of this study. Neither of the…

This article describes the use of self-study as a frame for professional learning that grew out of a professional development program for teachers examining their practice in a dual-language K-4 school. Located in the center of the rural state of Iowa, the school's development of a bilingual program for native speakers of both English and Spanish…