Researchers have been drawing attention to the power of collegial interaction for teacher professional development for some time. Yet collegial interaction should not be taken as a perfect solution absent of any drawbacks. In this study, the author examines teachers' collective construction of students to examine whether counter-productive…

A key dimension to social justice leadership is building authentic partnerships with families and community-based organizations to confront educational inequities. Authentic partnerships are respectful alliances among educators, families, and community agencies that value building relationships, communicating across difference, and sharing power…

Based on an ethnography of a language policy in the region of Apurímac in the Peruvian Andes, I analyze the boundaries that are constructed by a community of practice of Quechua "experts" in a context where resources in the indigenous language become more valuable. Although the declared wish is to build a regional "us," Quechua…

On the basis of our long-standing training programs and teaching the graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training course during the pandemic, I reflect on the importance of personal wellness, community building, and collegiality in GTA training courses. By considering GTA training in terms of four important skill areas: pedagogy, technical,…

Implementing inquiry-based teaching in secondary school is often a challenge for pre-service teachers. Thoughtful reflection on their teaching experience may help future teachers address this challenge. This article examined the quality of reflection on inquiry teaching by two pre-service science teachers as they participated in a mini-Community…

A close look at segregated African American progressive high schools in the Southeast during the Jim Crow era offers insights into the "courageous willingness" of black educators to examine and modify their practices. This essay is part of the John Dewey Memorial Lecture series sponsored by the Daniel Tanner Foundation.

Literature has suggested numerous benefits of online learning. In this study, we focused on asynchronous online discussion in higher education. We defined effective online discussions as making social presence known and conducting multidimensional discussions. Three dimensions were used to define multidimensional discussions: time, learning space,…

Research in the higher education literature argues that communities of practice (CoPs) can be effective staff development by helping academics to share teaching experiences and innovations. One of the key proposed benefits of CoPs involves the opportunity for early career practitioners to learn from more experienced colleagues. This raises the…

This study examined how factors associated with student development and persistence differ between first-generation and continuing-generation students and how participation in a learning community influences development and persistence. The findings show that first-generation students were less involved in academics and had lower gains in…

The objective of this study was to describe community-college faculty's experiences teaching in learning communities. Quantitative survey data were collected from 34 faculty who had taught in at least one learning community during fall 2012-spring 2018, at an urban community college in the Northeast. Survey questions examined faculty's evaluation…

This article explores teachers' learning from a Vygotskian perspective, which emphasises collaborative interaction and self-direction. The article describes case-studies of three senior teachers in socio-economically disadvantaged Egyptian primary schools where collaboration and self-direction were systemically discouraged. It analyses how,…

Preparing teacher candidates to analyze achievement data is necessary to develop the understanding of how academic data is collected and used to inform instruction. Collecting achievement data in the area of literacy includes a variety of assessments focused on reading and writing. A critical component of analyzing data involves working in…

Building a sense of community (SoC) is an important process in the success of distance education and students' retention. However, developing a community in online learning environments is not an easy task. The purpose of this research study is to explore perceptions of graduate students on SoC and learning after using different collaborative…

Inclusion of students with severe intellectual disabilities in general education classrooms remains a major challenge in education systems around the world. This is despite the manifest value of inclusion: it is consistent with today's hybrid, diverse knowledge societies, there are direct benefits for all students involved, and inclusion is a…

Discipline-based educational research (DBER) has shown that three instructional techniques--Supplemental Instruction (SI), Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), and Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL)--can be effective ways of improving student performance in chemistry courses at the K-12 or college/university levels. The goal of this paper…