Using a life history approach, this article explores the ways in which women in the military who are also mothers learn to embody various masculinities and femininities as they negotiate workplace gender processes. Complex intersections of gendered communities of practice result in the participants' learning to variously understand, accept, shape…

This article explores several professional development models currently being used in the US and in other countries to support teacher learning, including coaching, mentoring and communities of practice. While in some contexts the activities of the participants are informed by social constructivist views of learning, the authors argue that…

Research about how teachers construct practitioner researcher identities is central to teacher education and professional development because it provides insight into how teachers continue to learn about and implement practices that meet the needs of their students. The paper explores how one fourth-grade teacher (Holly) constructed her…

During 2008 and 2009, a group of nine Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) from Canterbury met as a Community of Practice to investigate the way that play in the school playground contributes to the social competence of students. While the original concern was around the needs of students who were unable to manage their behaviour in…

A prominent feature of education discourse relating to teachers' practice has been the call for increased emphasis on professional development (PD). This paper is part of a wider project which explored the impact of a collaborative PD initiative on teachers' teaching and learning in five urban disadvantaged schools in Ireland. It focused on the…

This paper explores the informal and social learning dimensions of activists as they learn skills and knowledge through participating in social action. In doing this I draw on Lave and Wenger's epistemology of situated learning and Bourdieu's theory of "habitus". I argue activists learn an array of community development skills in the…

This research investigated how secondary school technology teachers planned and implemented units that enabled students to access authentic technological practice through their contact with a community of practice (CoP). It was found that when teachers plan to access a community of practice for their students a complex dance-style relationship…

Students in remote communities face many challenges to get an education. This is especially true for indigenous and native people. To train teachers for these populations, the authors used web-based conferencing, which avoids some of the technological challenges of communicating with students in these communities. The virtual classes also were…

This article focuses on educational enterprises outside the formal sector, such as museums, botanical gardens and interactive science centres. International research is drawn on to illuminate how design, culture, educational strategies and settings combine to affect the way in which young people respond to experiences on offer, leading to analysis…

This paper introduces an innovative course design incorporating both communities of practice and reflective practice as a learning strategy for part-time learners in higher education. The new design has been applied to teaching HR practitioners in a UK-based business school. Findings indicate that the suggested way of organizing teaching and…

This article examines the introduction of new online technologies to support distance language learning in a higher education institution in the UK, charting the development from using telephone conferencing in the 1990s to the implementation of Moodle and videoconferencing more recently. It uses the sociocultural concept of the learner-context…

Mentors need to be proactive in helping the newer teacher to anticipate the critical episodes that inevitably face any teacher. These episodes include the challenge to manage a daunting workload while following habits necessary to stay healthy; to recover from disappointments, errors, and disrespect; to form positive relationships with students,…

An innovative program for schools that promotes respect and understanding between major religions enables students to engage with peers around the world via videoconferencing. Using videoconferencing and online community, "Face to Faith" enabled students from across the globe to learn from, with, and about one another. In the 2013-2014…

Students seldom think about language unless they are instructed to do so or are made to do so during learning activities. To arouse students' awareness while learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), this study formed a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) community to engage teachers and students from different domains and…

This study investigates student interactions in a blog-based learning community in a university course. In addition, this study explores the dynamics of group interactions in individual blog-based environments compared with collaborative "wiki"-based educational activities. A learning community of 56 graduate students wrote individual…