Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have emerged in the last 20 years as a popular professional development initiative. However, despite a wealth of PLC literature available, researchers have found that forming teacher communities does not automatically result in improved teaching practices that support student learning. This qualitative…

This paper is based on a research project designed to cultivate teachers as creative writers and as teachers of creative and critical writing. The project involved both primary and secondary teachers from eight schools located in Sydney, Australia. It documents the evolution of an open-ended research project that aimed to accommodate the needs of…

Mathematics teachers across the Western world are faced with an expectation that they make significant change to their teaching, but repeated attempts have shown little embedded success. This paper draws on a longitudinal study of two apparently well-placed English mathematics departments attempting to make change aligned with both policy and…

With the increasing diversity of pedagogic models of delivery in higher education, universities are continually exploring practises of learning and teaching designed to enhance student experience and retention. The number of courses provided online continues to grow through, among other reasons, an escalation of higher education (HE) students…

Preparing students to be engaged participants in our democratic society has long been an important college outcome. Over the past few decades, postsecondary institutions have primarily attempted to improve civic outcomes by integrating service activities into their curricula. While research on the effects of service-learning are plentiful,…

This is the concluding article of a series of four articles, which started by introducing the concept of the "fully-functioning university" in 2008. Subsequent articles have looked at the consequences of this concept for the higher education of students and the advancement of knowledge. This article is about the fully-functioning…

Fostering reflective deliberation in the online classroom ensures that students reach a high level of achievement in virtual courses. Student peer exchanges were evaluated on a collaborative web site structured around interactive weekly discussions offered across an online, face-to-face, and upper- and lower-division political science courses.…

The teaching of reading provokes heated discussion, particularly when the reputations of governments and institutions rest on what students do and achieve. This paper focuses on the first two years of a three year project where the researchers worked in communities of practice with secondary school English teachers in state, Catholic and…

The community of inquiry (CoI) framework suggests social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence are essential elements to foster successful educational experiences in computer-mediated distance learning environments. Although thousands of CoI-based articles have been published, those critical of the framework and related research…

Although there is a large body of research on the effectiveness of supplemental instruction for college undergraduates, very little of it has focused on transfer students, who often confront additional sources of stress and historically perform more poorly than their native student counterparts. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of…

This study takes a grounded theory approach as a basis for a case study examining a cross-disciplinary artistic and academic collaborative project involving faculty from the areas of English, music, dance, theatre, design, and visual journalism resulting in the creation of research, scholarly, and creative activity that fosters student engagement…

Data from a national survey of U.S. advertising students compared those who planned to seek creative jobs in advertising with those who desired management positions and "Generalists," who chose both. Male and female students were equally likely to aspire to be Creatives, despite current U.S. agency estimates that men outnumber women by…

In this study, we explore how preservice teachers utilized Twitter during one middle grades social studies methods course. Specifically, we analyzed how various Twitter assignments--following specific accounts, weekly communication with class members, and participation in #sschats--contributed to either "restricted" or…

In the era of standards-based reforms, informal teacher leadership is a critical factor in realizing instructional improvement. In this paper, we report on data from a one-year study of four early career mathematics teachers engaging in professional development around Common Core mathematical practices and leadership. Our findings highlight how…

In 2012, a research project was implemented to investigate the possibility and effectiveness of instituting a personalised and virtually networked mode of professional development to promote teacher confidence and competence with information and communications technology and its use as a key component of teachers' pedagogy. The aim of the project…