Many pre-service teachers (PSTs) face a common dilemma when completing their internships: they seek to display their own strengths and competencies in teaching while also adhering to the guidance of their mentor teachers and avoiding instructional risks. The underlying structure of the internship promotes a hierarchy which positions mentoring…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of targeted social emotional practices, coupled with teacher collaboration, on students' sense of belonging in elementary school using the improvement science approach. During the six-week plan-do-study-act cycle, teachers (N =5) participated in a biweekly professional learning community (PLC),…

Research-based blended learning (RBBL) allows students to be part of an authentic scientific discovery process. In this study, students' perception and motivation of the RBBL coupled with Scrum methodology in a third-year polytechnic chemistry laboratory course were investigated. Results showed that the scaffolded approach, designed referencing…

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to better understand the lived experiences of novice teachers in K12 Hawaii schools implementing professional learning communities (PLCs) and what, if any, influence their experiences have on their resilience and retention. The research questions that guided this study: What are the lived…

The Scholarship Development Program (SDP) was created four years ago to promote scholarly productivity for early career faculty. The SDP consists of professional development sessions, formal mentoring, and small research interest groups, all involving senior faculty members. The components of the SDP allowed for a team-based approach to mentoring.…

Recruiting students to science and mathematics fields continues to be a nationwide issue, resulting in a dearth of individuals to fill these present and future careers. Novel interventions, especially within the K-12 space, call for a move from content acquisition to the formation of individuals' identity that particularly fosters science and math…

Learning communities, the co-registration of student cohorts sharing curricular goals, are often associated with greater academic achievement, retention, inclusivity, and engagement. While not all previous studies unequivocally demonstrate a positive learning community effect on performance, many suggest that students participating in learning…

This collaborative self-study explores how educators' pedagogical identities developed in the process of learning to use a Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum (SCIC) approach in activity settings within a community of practice (CoP). Participants included a university professor, college instructor, postdoctoral student and doctoral student.…

Too often, leaders overlook valuable human capital in their schools and miss the opportunity to develop them so that the school and its students can reach their full potential. This is particularly true for a highly qualified but underused group of professionals: school counselors. School counselors are uniquely positioned to support students'…

Currently there is little guidance given to teachers in selecting focal issues for socio-scientific issues (SSI)-based teaching and learning. As a majority of teachers regularly collaborate with other teachers, understanding what factors influence collaborative SSI-based curriculum design is critical. We invited 18 secondary science teachers to…

The Assessment for Learning disposition has been long established in the literature as a desirable attribute for teachers. To use the biological metaphor of adaptation, assessment for learning has been argued to be a key base pair on the teacher genome. We argue that the selection of the correct genotype for teachers is not enough. What is needed…

The Introduction to Technology-Enabled Learning (TEL)MOOC was intended to engage teachers worldwide who work in any level of education and are interested in technology-enabled learning and Open Educational Resources. This paper investigates the response by participants from post-secondary educational institutions to the content presented in week…

Previous research has emphasized the importance and potential of actively involving teachers in the design and implementation of educational technologies in schools. However, only a few studies have explored the development of methodologies for engaging teachers in the appropriation of digital technologies, as the increased digitalization of many…

The author successfully implemented the "House" system in a university social studies methods class and reports on the positive results that ensued. Students reported a sense of unity, camaraderie, identity, and closeness that was missing in many of their other classes. The House assignments and competitions are described, as well as…

This article reviews motivation research published in "Distance Education" since 1980, highlighting the major foci of investigation and reflecting on past findings. A major trend was that past research has focused predominantly on learners' motivational attributes using sociocognitive models of motivation. We therefore have developed a…