Active, dialogic participation is a necessary component of high quality teacher professional learning (Dunst, Bruder, & Hamby, 2015). However, logistical problems arise when implementing cooperative learning opportunities for early childhood educators, as preschool teachers are habitually separated from peers both institutionally and…

Student-led discussion modules are the bread and butter of the language arts classroom; however, teachers are currently limited to very few techniques to choose from, such as large class Socratic Seminars and fish bowls, or small group literature circles. In order to determine which of these discussions are more successful for students, each…

This book presents an approach to teacher education and professional development that emphasizes carefully deconstructing fundamental instructional practices that are complex and often not visible through observation, definition, or brief explanation. Its goal is to assist teachers in learning how to enact specific practices, referred to as…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experience students have reentering high school following psychiatric hospitalization, and within programming designed to assist with this transition. To accomplish this goal, two research questions were formulated to guide this study: What is the experience of re-entering high school, for…

Background: New emerging online technologies have made dynamic changes in the structure of the online environment possible to address varying needs of diverse learners. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the changes that occurred in online instructional design and strategies in mathematics education courses taught over a course of…

This proposal presents findings from the large-scale study "Literacy Teacher Educators: Their Backgrounds, Visions, and Practices" which includes 28 literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) from four countries. Five LTEs who use a constructivist approach are presented. Three aspects of their constructivism are discussed: knowledge is…

With increased demands for institutional accountability and improved student learning, involvement in assessment has become a fundamental role of higher education faculty (Rhodes, 2010). However, faculty members and administrators often question whether assessment efforts do indeed improve student learning (Hutchings, 2010). This mixed methods…

For school librarians, being part of a "connected" community provides support for getting specific needs met, solving personally relevant and meaningful problems, and developing professional expertise. AASL provides many avenues for members of the profession to learn with and from one another. These include AASL and subgroup electronic…

This study aims to determine if "Facebook," when used as an online teacher portfolio (OTP), could contribute meaningfully to pre-service teachers' professional development (PD) and in what ways the OTP can be meaningful. Pre-service teachers (n = 91) were asked to develop OTP using "Facebook" and engage in learning and…

As governments the world over continue to advocate the importance of teacher professional learning, researchers and practitioners continue to explore ways to enact that learning in meaningful ways. The value of narrative for teacher education has been widely discussed and several studies show that learning is significant when teacher-writers…

The article uses a case study to illustrate transdisciplinary perspectives on facilitating emergent literacy skills of Elsa, a primary grade student with autism. The study demonstrates how a professional learning community implemented motor, sensory, and speech/language components to generate a classroom model supporting emergent literacy skills.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to inquire about the characteristics of effective school leadership networks and the contribution of such networks to the development of individual leaders' professional capacities. Design/methodology/approach: The study used path-analytic techniques with survey data provided by 450 school and district leaders…

Over the last decade, school-based professional learning communities (PLCs) have emerged as a key feature of the education system in South Korea. To understand this relatively new phenomenon in the context of South Korea, we provide a review of research on school-based PLCs in South Korea and an empirical analysis of the Teaching and Learning…

Rob and Amy Castañeda, the co-founders of a sports/play-based youth and community development organization called Beyond the Ball (www.beyondtheball.org), cite the collaborative and dynamic nature of the TPSR Alliance as an important influence for their work. Beyond the Ball serves individuals between kindergarten and post-college, in the North…

In this article we review the Knowledge-Building literature, unpacking its conceptual framework, principle-based pedagogy, distinctive features, and issues regarding scalability and sustainability. The Knowledge-Building goal is to reframe education as a knowledge-creating enterprise, engaging students from the earliest years of schooling. Despite…