The effects of social capital on school improvement make it important to understand how teachers forge, maintain, or forfeit collegial relationships. Two common explanations focused on formal organizational features and individual characteristics do not address how social capital accrues from informal dynamics of teachers' interactions in…

The aim of the article is to understand practice as negotiation of meaning among novice and internal change agents in school organisations. The research question is as follows: What themes of participation and reification/management occur among the change agents? The study was qualitative in design using the social learning theory of community of…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate graduate students' perceptions of a completely online master's degree program in special education for emotional and behavioral disorders. The Community of Inquiry survey was used to examine graduate students' perceptions of the online program in the areas of teaching, cognitive, and social presences. The…

The present paper reports on early-career academics' (ECAs) experiences of support for teaching in a research-intensive university in Africa. Through conducting a questionnaire and follow up in-depth interviews greater insight into how ECAs perceive and experience support for developing their teaching practice, is gained. Our analysis suggests…

This qualitative study examined the identity of doctoral students in their quest to become scholars. The research question asked: What impact did a Community of Practice have on the doctoral students? The findings illustrated that on the journey the participants struggled to integrate multiple identities and roles. They also refined their…

This article focuses on the life history of a university academic, and the ways in which he learned in different communities of practice during his career. This account raises questions about the applicability of situated learning theory to a knowledge-based organisation, and argues that both the external context and the individuals within the…

A major challenge for higher education academics is to research and publish when faced with substantial teaching responsibilities, higher student numbers, and higher output expectations. The focus of this piece is to encourage publication more generally by educators, and to build publication capacity, which academic developers can facilitate. The…

This research explores the intersections among learners, online learning, and the development of a sense of community by critically evaluating Canada's first fully-online Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) program at the University of Alberta. A survey with open and closed questions was distributed to all students in the inaugural…

Objective of the Case--There is a large volume of theoretical and "how to" literature on professional learning communities (PLCs), but little documenting the challenges of implementation and even less on the challenges of system-wide implementation of PLCs. This case is about the role of the central office in initiating and supporting…

The paper reviews teacher candidates' use of action research and the Professional Learning Community (PLC) concept to support their work in their pre-student teaching field experience. In this research study, teacher candidates are involved in a professional development school relationship that uses action research and PLCs to support candidate…

We present findings from an in-depth study on a school-based multi-disciplinary learning community in the context of practice teaching in university pre-service education. We elaborate on one of the three predominant patterns of talk identified, the "star" pattern, and show how it created particular power relations in the discourse which…

Faculty in the School of Education have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e. where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and…

Digital teaching portfolios (DTPs) are increasingly adopted in higher education for various purposes such as assessment, learning, and showcasing. This paper reports on a collective case study of four teaching staff who have developed DTPs with an emphasis on building a professional learning community at a higher education institution. A number of…

The American educational landscape is changing rapidly, and so are the students in American mathematics classrooms. In the New York City public schools, one of every four students is an English language learner (ELL) (New York City Department of Education 2014). Mathematics teachers find themselves teaching either in a classroom that contains all…

Purpose: Teacher learning communities (TLCs) formed within subject departments are conceptualized as reform platform for facilitating school improvement and teacher development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which three TLCs were structured and managed for generating change capability in secondary schools in Hong Kong.…