The forum contributors draw on their personal experiences and insights to put forth ideas about contingent faculty's relations with other faculty and with the academic institution as a whole.

Across the landscape of American higher education, research has gradually established its dominant role in faculty work since the end of WWII--a paradigm shift yet to be fully studied and understood. Situated on their traditional locales on the spectrum stretching from pure teaching to heavy research, contemporary institutions all attempt to be…

Teachers might be working significantly more with one another, but principals are not. Superintendents might bring principals together for district meetings or even to expose their performance results to colleagues in public, but principal collaboration is too often trumped by district control. Even worse, more and more schools and their…

This article offers insights into the leadership enactment of primary school heads in terms of the dramatis personae or "masks of the drama" they perceive themselves to portray during interactions with staff in their schools. The article draws on the reported identities and performances of ten heads in their day-to-day leadership of…

Even though faculty are obviously vital to the work of internationalizing academia, "surprisingly little work has been published that addresses the roles, responsibilities, and problems faced by faculty on an operational level" (Dewey and Duff 2009, p. 491). This chapter examines the motivations, supports, and barriers faculty are facing…

The internet of the mid-to-late 1990s was defined by static web pages created by people with specialized technical skills. Today, that barrier has been all but eliminated with the emergence of easy-to-use online tools for creating and sharing content. "Web 2.0," or the read/write web, has dramatically altered the way we communicate and share…

To move toward educational excellence leaders, teachers, and district administrators must be strategic in planning for instructional success. As this planning takes place, I believe that the concept of "Professional Learning Communities" (PLC) should occupy a large space in a school strategic plan for success. Strategic planning should be viewed…

Prior research on student affairs professionals has focused largely on the nature of student affairs work with most attention given to mid- and senior-level administrators. Thus, relatively little is known about new professionals and their socialization to the student affairs profession. Based on a multivariate analysis of survey data from a…

In her influential 1988 essay, "Fighting Words," Jane Tompkins argued that the arguments typically made by literary critics are characterized by an aggressive competitiveness that amounts to violence. But, as Tompkins's own rhetorical strategies demonstrate, at least as deplorable are the practices whereby critics render certain people anonymous.…

Numerous authors have suggested that the working relationship between coach and coachee constitutes an essential condition to the success of executive coaching. This study empirically investigated the links between the coach-coachee relationship and the success of a coaching intervention in an organizational setting. Data were collected from two…

Professional learning (PL) is an essential ingredient in the professional and personal lives of contemporary educators. PL can take many forms but large-scale conferences remain a touchstone in many fields, including languages education. In this paper, we review the evaluation of the 18th biennial conference of the Australian Federation of Modern…

With school budgets shrinking every year, tough decisions are made by those powers that be, and you very well may be the next RIF (reduction in force) waiting to happen. Sadly, those school librarians who have stopped learning, who have become stale in their role as librarian, or who feel the newer tools and ways of doing the job are not necessary…

Using a transnational framework, this paper focuses on four graduates of Gipsy Hill Training College (GHTC) for nursery school teachers in London, United Kingdom, in the early to mid-twentieth century. Firstly, I explore GHTC's progressive ideals and highlight ways in which its principal, Lillian de Lissa, encouraged students to "think…

Based on a qualitative case study that examined elementary teachers' understandings of a professional development policy, we question the conceptual disconnection between professional learning and professional practices in some conceptualizations of professional learning communities. We analyse the research data using Actor-Network Theory and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate participating teachers' (PTs) perceptions on the effectiveness of collaborating with a peer for purposes of professional development. As the primary researcher, I wanted to investigate how my colleagues (PTs) perceived peer-to-peer collaboration as a method of professional development. As well, I wanted…