Easily accessible, asynchronous professional learning can support new career technical educators' instructional skill development from their 1st day of employment. This two-cycle action research inquiry aimed to improve special education student engagement in the licensed trades curriculum by exploring the connection between teacher induction…

This is the first edited volume dedicated to both teachers and learners of second/foreign language (L2) pragmatics. It comprises a collection of studies that explore how teachers background and practices, and individual learners differences contribute to the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. Also included are chapters that present…

This research investigates the social and socialization practices within an online professional development web seminar. The aim of this study was to identify the kinds of social and community building practices that occur in online professional development webinars by exploring how communication tools such as chat are used for community building…

The purpose of this study was to understand the ways virtual school teachers experienced professional development framed as a year-long collaborative action research endeavor. These virtual school teachers taught completely online courses for a large virtual school and did not reside within the same geographical location. Thus, the professional…

This paper reports on the development and implementation in 2012 of McGill University's French at Work program for McGill employees, using a blended learning model. The program is an example of how a reduction in face-to-face teaching presents one solution to employees' scheduling constraints and how this model might offer suggestions for the…

The American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) was founded in 1982 as the result of a merger between the National Association for Public and Continuing Adult Education (NAPCAE) and the Adult Education Association (AEA). This prestigious association is dedicated to the belief that lifelong learning contributes to human…

In response to the need to cultivate pre-service Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) teachers' information and communication technology (ICT) competency in online synchronous environments, this research adopted a three-stage cyclical model named "cooperation-based cognition, action, and reflection" (CoCAR). The model was implemented in an 18-week…

A training module of six sessions was designed for professors in higher education who were transitioning to teaching synchronous, e-learning courses from formerly teaching in either asynchronous courses or in face-to-face courses. Since the participants were experienced educators, the boundary of their expertise to be extended was moving to the…

Education systems are increasingly relying on online and distance education technology as a means of delivering instruction. The issues that are faced in online education settings include how to address the distance between participants and the instructor, and the best way to deliver instruction. Although new online technologies provide the…

Variations in group co-construction of knowledge and the extent to which participants engaged in negotiating meaning were directly related to instruction. The authors examined social interaction resulting from controlled variation in instruction using a counter-balanced design in two professional development courses for teachers. Both courses were…

The study compared the effects of a professional development course delivered in an online and a face-to-face format. The effects examined included changes in teachers' pedagogical beliefs, instructional practices, and understanding of teaching number-sense and related mathematical concepts. The study randomly assigned participants to either the…

This study investigated whether two different versions of an online professional development course produced different impacts on the intended outcomes of the course. Variations of an online course for middle school algebra teachers were created for two experimental conditions. One was an actively facilitated course with asynchronous peer…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of the discourse generated by two different online approaches to mathematics teacher professional development. Thirty mathematics teachers participated in online activities involving analysis and discourse about artifacts of teaching practice. Half were randomly assigned to a group that…

Computer-mediated distance education holds potential for providing professional development opportunities for teachers. This study investigated teaching and learning through written asynchronous and synchronous communications in an online graduate education course. Types of student participation during four weeks of discussions in the course, two…