This paper explores persistent obstacles undermining in situ teacher professional development as well as possibilities for learning and growth in a professional learning community (PLC). We extend the existing scholarship in this field by examining how teachers' discursive practices can predict the success or failure of a PLC initiative. We used…

This research report details a faculty learning community (FLC) developed by three faculty teaching in a graduate program in a mid-size southern university. The purpose of the research was to engage in the study of best practices for online graduate courses by engaging in collaborative discussions on common texts related to improving the teaching…

Classroom conversations, such as those implemented through dialogic and deliberative pedagogies, can help students develop skills for democratic listening, but existent norms and power differences can limit the opportunity for students to use those conversations as a site for transformation. The co-creation of community agreements, however, can…

Professional development and experiential learning opportunities are essential to student success. This work utilizes qualitative content analysis of survey responses to compare students' expectations regarding a learning opportunity at Super Bowl LVII to students' reported outcomes after the event. Open-ended data from an online survey prior to…

Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) offer a collaborative and structured environment for professional development, enabling educators to build their capacity to incorporate service-learning into their teaching practices. This study examines the initial impact of a FLC for institutional awareness and implementation of service-learning at Slippery…

The pivot to online teaching during the pandemic brought new challenges for instructors teaching large classes. In response to instructors' need for additional support with engaging students online, two educational development units collaboratively designed the Teaching Exchange. The Teaching Exchange was a virtual series of sessions on different…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) actioned through collaborative action research (CAR) have been found in the literature to be beneficial for both teachers and students. However, previous studies mainly examined teachers' perceived effectiveness of CAR-based PLCs, as well as identified steps and elements involved in such PLCs, either…

Recalling Freire's lessons on education and teacher development, this study embraces the transformative power of dialogue. In the context of Brazilian public schools, where education faces challenges such as rigid curriculum prescriptions, the researchers implemented a Lesson Study cycle as a dialogic teacher development intervention. Despite…

Building on Woolf's (2020. "Exploring Pedagogies to Elevate Inquiry: Teaching Action Research in the Third Space." "Educational Action Research" 28 (4): 579--596) conceptions of `third space theory' this article describes how, in order to find continuity between theory and practice, the convenors of a network for educational…

Contemporary schools seek to employ teachers who are curious learners, who can employ practitioner inquiry skills to investigate, inform and grow their own classroom practice, responsive to their circumstances. As a profession, the question we must ask is how do we best prepare and continue to equip teachers with the necessary research skills to…

The challenge faced by newly graduated nurses from undergraduate study to practice is a persistent theme in nursing practice literatures. However, there is a lack of understanding about how this transition happens. This focused ethnographic study explored how newly graduated nurses (novices) interacted with experienced nurses and learnt in a…

STEAM education puts professional learning communities on the agenda by requiring teacher collaboration along with disciplinary integrity. In this study, a professional learning community in STEAM education was investigated by observing 49 teachers from different disciplines working in different districts during 16 weeks of interdisciplinary…

Organizational tasks and processes are preconditions for organizing professional learning teams but are often neglected in research. In nine schools, we examined which organizational tasks and processes were set up for lesson study, a form of a professional learning team, and in what way. Schools set up three organizational tasks and processes:…

Since 2016, Park School in Denmark has consistently used Japanese lesson study as an approach to the professional development of its mathematics teachers. The school has moved beyond the initial adaptation of lesson study, and no longer includes external support. In this article, I investigate how three groups of teachers participated in the…

In this chapter, the authors describe the theory of change behind a regional cross-institutional community of practice (CoP) for educational developers seeking to strengthen their institution's SoTL culture and increase faculty SoTL production by providing institution-level support initiatives and programming.