This paper addresses the impact of teachers' beliefs about argumentation and their community of practice framed views of teaching on co-designing an environmental health afterschool club curriculum with researchers. Our team collaborated with a group of four middle school teachers, asking them to co-design a club that would facilitate (1)…

Wagner College's academic program emphasizes interdisciplinary study, experiential learning, and reflection on theory and practice. The curriculum is enhanced by a rich array of opportunities in New York City. In the course of their undergraduate studies, students enroll in three learning communities, two of which include experiential learning and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate instructor participation in asynchronous discussions through an in-depth content analysis of instructors' postings and comments through the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework (Garrison et. al, 2001). We developed an analytical tool based on this framework in order to better understand what instructors…

According to Richard DuFour (2004), "To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively and hold yourself accountable for results." Professional learning communities provide the structure that must exist within a school in order to become effective. However, to truly prepare…

This article is a case study of an integrated, experiential approach to improving pre-service teachers' understanding and use of educational technologies in one New Zealand teacher education programme. The study examines the context, design and implementation of a learning activity which integrated student-centred approaches, experiential…

The area of teachers' continuing professional development (CPD) is of growing interest internationally. However, while an increasing range of literature focuses on particular aspects of CPD, there is a paucity of literature addressing the spectrum of CPD models in a comparative manner. This article therefore considers a wide range of international…

Community colleges play a vital role in higher education, enrolling more than one in every three postsecondary students. While the market share of these institutions has grown over the past 50 years, students' success rates remain low. Consequently, community college stakeholders are searching with mounting urgency for strategies that increase…

This research is a qualitative, reflective case study regarding a cohort in the form of a district-university partnership between the Oak Park Schools in Oak Park, Michigan and the College of Education at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The initiators of the program envisioned a more successful urban school district by offering…

This study examined whether adding student and teacher survey measures to existing principal evaluation measures increases the overall power of the principal evaluation model to explain variation in student achievement across schools. The study was conducted using data from 2011-12 on 39 elementary and secondary schools within a midsize urban…

Communities of practice as organisations of learning have developed different forms as: task-based, practice-based or knowledge based communities (Barab et al., 2004). The paper presents a case study of a successful community of practice developed under the umbrella of Council of Europe Pestalozzi programme for teacher development. The programme…

This qualitative study examines the experiences associated with instructional coaching in Title I schools. The experiences of eight teachers and four instructional coaches are represented within the study. The personal experiences and beliefs are provided in the data collection process through the use of one-on-one interviews. Additional accounts…

As more guided study abroad interventions move online and into a collaborative format, it is important to not only examine the influence of students' social interactions as related to their intercultural development and experiences in the interventions, but also understand which variables influenced the success of an intervention. The purpose of…

This mixed methods participatory action research study explored how an instructional coach influenced a state mandated curriculum adoption at a Title 1 urban middle school. The purpose of this study was to identify ways in which an instructional coach supported a veteran staff during the adoption of new curriculum standards. The instructional…

This paper introduced the features of scaffolding to the development of instructional interaction in online foreign language learning, and testified their effects on learners' perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, sense of community, and continuance intention by the integration of the Technology-Acceptance Model and the Organizational…

A professional learning network (PLN) is a community of individuals around the world who are learning together. They can start out as strangers, people one couldn't pick out in a crowded room. But Twitter, the virtual meeting place where one's PLN comes together, helps these strangers come together to create a community built on communication and…