By definition and purpose, education is the development of human capital towards meeting the individual and social needs of learners and their societies. This transdisciplinary collaboration parallels the underpinning principle of Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1990) to South Africa's post-colonial…

An interactive Web site was developed and investigated to determine whether interaction on the site among college and high school teachers of writing could result in the formation of an interpretative community. An interpretative community is one in which meanings are stable (Fish, 1980), and which adjudicates student writing with a high degree of…

Current research indicates that a professional learning community (PLC) is an effective means for helping teachers to bridge the gap between research and practice. A PLC is a team of educators systematically working together to improve teaching practice and student learning. This study evaluated the PLC formed by teachers at a public elementary…

A teacher narrates from activities and discussions that arose among undergraduates and herself while doing critical explorations of mirrors. Surprised by light's behaviors, the students responded with curiosity, losing their dependence on answers as the format of school knowledge. Inadequacies in how participants supposed light works emerged in…

In this article we investigate the changing context for teacher professional learning potentially afforded by the conceptual change from professional development to professional learning. Using a narrative case study methodology, we utilize the "Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration" developed by Timperley, Wilson, Barrar and Fung (2007) to analyse…

Purpose: In the USA, as elsewhere, there is an ongoing need to improve quality in higher education. Quality improvement models from business have not been widely embraced, and many other approaches to accountability seem to induce minimal compliance. This paper aims to contend that learning communities represent a viable alternative in the quest…

In our pre-service department, university practicum supervisors are faculty members who offer academic, social, and personal support to teacher candidates during their year-long program. Their role is described as one designed primarily to provide formative assessment and feedback to improve classroom practice and reflection on practice. This…

This article reports the findings of a pilot research project that investigated the perceived educational value of sharing narrative practice amongst graduate students from the School of Education and the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Tasmania. During a semester the graduate students reflected upon and wrote about a…

The academic community is more fully integrating technology into the business it conducts. Online courses are becoming more and more popular. Popular culture can be a source of commonality among students that can be used to more effectively teach leadership in an online environment. This manuscript outlines the use of a group book review…

This discussion considers a new pre-service teacher education initiative at the University of Western Sydney, called "Classmates". "Classmates" aims to prepare pre-service teachers to work in diverse and challenging schools. The paper argues that the neo-liberal industrial model of mass teacher education may be limited in its…

The application of Communities of Practice (CofP) can potentially serve as an effective learning strategy for higher education classrooms by contributing to student professional development while fostering a desire for life-long learning. The purpose of this qualitative study was to assess the effectiveness of this learning strategy and help…

Paralleling the accelerating pace of educational change in the last two decades has been the development of a professional learning community (PLC) in schools. Characterised by teacher collaboration and a spirit of enquiry, the PLC represents a response to change and an opportunity to benefit teachers, students and schools, using an approach most…

This investigation documents an intervention that successfully counteracted a grade inflation trend at a small, Catholic, liberal arts university in the eastern United States. The intervention produced a significant drop in grades awarded by full-time faculty, but not by adjunct faculty who were not yet included in the intervention. Institutional…

The Educational Leadership Project (ELP) is a professional development programme attuned to the curriculum and assessment approaches of Te Whariki, New Zealand's early childhood curriculum framework. ELP encourages and supports early childhood teachers to adapt of Te Whariki to their situations. This article links the author's community…

This article describes how to build a classroom community of learners, pre-service teachers, during the first days of the semester. This process not only creates a supportive learning environment, but it provides pre-service teachers with a model of how they can build a community of learners in their own classrooms.