This study examined the relationships between school-level professional learning communities (PLCs) and individual teachers' self-efficacy and commitment based on questionnaire responses from 1,203 teachers from 39 primary schools in mainland China. Multilevel analysis indicated that reflective dialogue significantly predicted self-efficacy.…

Increasingly, graduate student instructors (GSIs) teach online without prior formal training on how to design online assessments of learning and participation. We present findings from a collective case study of seven GSIs at a university in the United States of America to describe how these novice online instructors learned to enact assessment…

Purpose: The professional development needs of university professional staff are an under-researched area. More data were needed to understand their needs to ensure that employers invest their resources appropriately. A conceptual framework is developed for the workplace learning of career development activities using concepts of professional…

Using Desimone's (2009) framework for studying the effects of teacher professional development (PD), this qualitative study examines the effectiveness and impact of a 10-week professional development course on 31 foreign language (FL) instructional faculty and staff in a U.S. Government language school. Data sources included 31 K-W-L reflections,…

This article explores efforts to stimulate significant conversations through a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Community of Practice (CoP) amongst a diverse group of professors and professional staff in a College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, Canada. Participants share their reflections on the formation of significant…

The potent combination of a global pandemic, crises involving human and civil rights, economic shortfalls, and public policy challenges has import for the field of physical education. The time has arrived for physical education professionals to engage in planning for a more desirable future. One aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical…

As teachers' informal professional development is visible in social media, this study probes teachers' participation in self-organized Facebook groups in mathematics or Swedish-language education. In total, 553 posts from six Facebook groups were categorized using Shulman's knowledge-base framework, and analysed using systemic functional grammar.…

This story from the field describes the experiences of 11 early childhood education centers in Philadelphia that were part of a project to implement Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). It tells of the many challenges they faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and calls for racial equity and social justice and how these events…

Guided by Chicana Feminist Epistemology, the authors of this study discuss the experiences of 16 Latina faculty and staff who served as mentors in a Latina undergraduate mentoring program at a research-extensive public university designated as a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI). This article focuses on findings from interviews as mentors made…

Critically reflecting on a "pedagogy of tenderness", this essay delineates how to build a liberative community of learning in the undergraduate classroom of sexual ethics. The learning community aims to help students understand religion's complex roles in shaping sexual ethics in society, challenge heteropatriarchal sexual ethics through…

This article focuses on pedagogical talking circles as a practice of decolonizing and Indigenizing education. Based upon Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) Calls to Action and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), non-Indigenous educators have a responsibility, while Indigenous educators…

Research around learning community models often shows a structured and defined model to follow with the underlying assumption being if the steps are followed, the results will come. The model we offer in this paper is rather counter-cultural as it was not a specific process or practice we followed; rather, we found ourselves in a highly engaging,…

Action learning is seen under many guises, being adapted into different contexts (Marsick and O'Neil [1999. "The Many Faces of Action Learning." "Management Learning" 30 (2): 159-176.]). This is especially true in higher education, due to the divergent requirements and challenges of multiple action learning programmes and…

The process of reflection is assumed to be important for developing professional knowledge through practical experience in science teaching. However, this claim requires more evidence, based on a clear definition of reflection. The main goal of the present study is to explore how reflection skills influence the development of professional…

Participatory design is a well-known approach that involves stakeholders in designing technologies and other innovations. In education, participatory design is especially advocated for involving students with special needs. However, less attention has been paid to how participatory design can help in collaborations with teachers. This paper…