Despite the growing number of studies exploring PhD students' experiences and their social relationships with other researchers, there is a lack of research on the interaction between the type of experiences and the social agents involved, especially in relation to not only problems and challenges, but also to positive emotions and experiences. In…

School leaders pour time and energy into others all day, every day. To keep them energized and build their capacity to lead, principals need to connect with others and engage in conversation around effective practices. A new model of professional development known as Edcamp offers a place where school leaders can stay abreast of emerging practices…

Research on and about queer people and topics in higher education continues to evolve, expand, and push boundaries on identity, policy, and programming, increasingly informed by our narratives and experiences. Thus far, this work has done little to dismantle the imposed binary of researcher and subject(s), relegating queer research and practice as…

Building an effective mentoring program for community college faculty is a complex and multifaceted task. There are multiple layers of stakeholders and levels of involvement, which at times makes navigating the mentoring relationships challenging and complicates the decision of what types of information to provide to the faculty as part of their…

In this paper we address the obfuscation surrounding the concept of learning communities by operationalizing "community" according to four characteristics that serve as boundaries for defining a community: access, relationships, vision, and function. Although these community boundaries sometimes overlap, they represent distinctive…

This article explains a program design and planning process using the Value Creation Framework (VCF) developed by Wenger, Trayner, and de Laat (2011). The framework involves identifying types of value or benefit for those involved in the program, conditions and activities that support creation of that value, data that measure whether the value was…

The researchers employed qualitative methods to evaluate first-year female students' definition of "leadership" through involvement in the Women's Learning Circle. The findings revealed that students defined leadership in two dimensions: traits and behaviors. The qualitative findings explore a multidimensional approach to the voices of…

Preservice teachers are typically educated in university settings and learn teaching methodology through coursework. Many preservice teachers find themselves underprepared for handling challenging situations in art classrooms. Teaching is very often influenced by contextual factors such as the space and design of the classroom, demographics and…

More than ever, schools and families are embracing technology as positive aspects of creativity and collaboration. In a recent study, 78% of parents perceived technology as a constructive learning tool that has the potential to propel children toward highly successful lives and careers (Family Online Safety Institute, 2015). The increase in…

Lurkers, who are also known as silent learners, observers, browsers, read-only participants, vicarious learners, free-riders, witness learners, or legitimate peripheral participants (our preferred term), tend to be hard to track in a course because of their near invisibility. We decided to address this issue and to examine the perceptions that…

During professional development time in secondary schools, teachers often engage in peer exchanges that can have positive influence on instruction and learning, but often this time is focused within departmental groupings on content development without an emphasis on how to improve instruction through a more diverse student lens. This research…

With few exceptions, digital humanities projects and objects have been described rather than studied. This dissertation attempts to advance that discourse by empirically studying, from a sociotechnical point of view, DH projects and the products they produce, specifically those within the realm of Old and Middle English language and literature.…

Research interest in numeracy is growing as a result of increased understanding of the impact of low levels of numeracy. However, there has been little research on factors that influence how teachers implement learning from professional development interventions to support teachers to promote numeracy learning. This paper reports on how a…

Teachers in most American schools work in isolation, separated from other teachers, making it difficult to benefit from their colleagues' expertise or to share their expertise with others about how to help more students learn. However, a growing body of research shows that when teachers work more collaboratively, student outcomes can improve,…

The need to improve the quality of early childhood education is urgent. Researchers are diligently studying which forms of professional development will yield positive changes in teacher practices. Communities of practice (COPs) and coaching have both been shown to be potentially effective and efficient means of professional development in early…