Teacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this article, the authors draw on survey data collected in primary schools…

Notions of distributed leadership and professional learning communities are bedfellows in the drive to school improvement. However, these ideas of sharing leadership and mutual learning as a community are not introduced and developed in a neutral context. Power relationships, priorities and purposes are constructed in certain ways within the…

Princeton University Press recently published the American moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit", which quickly made the New York Times best seller list. Originally published in the journal "Raritan" in 1986, Frankfurt's book has been heralded as an important theoretical development in the study of what he (and society)…

This paper presents a framework of approaches to sharing meaningful knowledge of assessment standards amongst an academic community, particularly students. Presented as a nested hierarchy, these approaches encompass: a "laissez faire" approach in which students' knowledge of standards is acquired in ad hoc and serendipitous ways; an…

A well-constructed, step-by-step protocol is a critical starting point for teaching undergraduates new techniques, an important record of a lab's standard procedures, and a useful mechanism for sharing techniques between labs. Many research labs use websites to archive and share their protocols for these purposes. Here we describe our experiences…

Judith Rance-Roney calls on teachers to form intentional learning communities within their classrooms. The Culture Share Club, initially conceived to provide scaffolding for ELL students to acquire English and pass the statewide test in English, legitimized student knowledge by benefitting all students as they prepared materials for lessons and…

The American Academy's Rome Prize brings together scholars and artists whose work relies on the rich and ancient city, in a Renaissance-style palace, which was custom-built for the institution in 1914. The academy experience is intrinsically communal, with staff members and fellows alike, regularly using the term ecross-pollination to describe the…

Examines critically implications of claiming that the British National Literacy Strategy (NLS) provides teachers and educationists with a common language with which to talk about literacy teaching/learning in the classroom. Raises two questions: (1) what is the nature of the common language offered by NLS, and (2) should there be only one common…

States that composition studies cannot agree upon a common nomenclature for categorization of methodologies. Claims that discrete institutional communities can be defined and that the standard discursive practices and values of such communities function in a pattern of exclusion. Suggests that pedagogies reified from discourse community theory…

Offers six personal "passing" strategies the author uses to "pass" for heterosexual in organizational settings: distancing, dissociating, dodging, distracting, denying, and deceiving. Suggests that the price for passing was the prevention of authentic, healthy relationship development within the workplace. (PA)

This study used Porter's "Forum Analysis" to provide a framework for describing the characteristics of a forum and examined a publication of a discourse community: "The American Journal of Distance Education" (AJDE) 1987-1995. Answers to the questions formed the basis for a discussion of the trends in research and practice in…

Structural approaches to journal writing enable learners to manage subjectivity while seeking "objective truth." Holistic approaches attempt to synthesize ways of learning, giving a false sense of completion and inclusion. Poststructuralism places journal text in the context of discourses; through reflection and deconstruction, the…

Examines the history of the filibuster, particularly the ways in which the discourse surrounding attempts to eliminate the filibuster exemplify certain fundamental contradictions in American political mythology. Concludes that popular democracy and the American form of republican government are as contradictory as they are collaborative. Sees the…

This is the fifth in a series that examines the challenges that teachers in different domains face as they attempt to implement the pedagogical reform "Fostering a Community of Learners" (FCL). Here we focus on the relationship between FCL and the teaching of mathematics. We argue that it is possible to teach mathematics through the FCL pedagogy,…

There has been growing interest in linking the learning of Science with the literacies of Science and representations. Recent attention has been focused on learning theories that emphasise the socio-cultural and situated aspects of learning, and in particular the notion of learning as participation in a discourse community. This paper will…