This article examines whether a three-year learning-based work community intervention resulted in changes in working community-related interaction factors and occupational well-being among Finnish and Estonian school staff. It reports the types of changes in working community-related interaction factors and their associations to the subjective…

As the diversity of American schools is increasing, teachers should understand the role culture plays in the classroom and employ teaching practices that accommodate students from diverse cultural backgrounds. However, while more is known about pre-service teachers' beliefs about multicultural education, less is known about what practices…

Teacher educators strive for student engagement in their pre-service curricula. Recent studies of university-level engagement have focused on the need for active learning pedagogies. Grounded in anti-deficit approaches that are relevant, responsive, and sustaining for diverse cultures and literacies, this article discusses the use of…

To improve academic ESL, a community college has been experimenting with linking an ESL class to a Sociology class. The primary goal was to use the methodology of Content Based Instruction to develop a curriculum that would promote academic vocabulary acquisition, critical thinking, and authentic communication in a sheltered environment. The…

The teaching and learning of writing in the elementary classroom setting is a complex process. As students participate in the classroom community and write, they engage not only in the cognitive task of academic writing, but in various social practices as well-negotiating positionality, developing identities, cultivating understandings of genre,…

Numerous studies have found that students of color are often subject to teacher biases or negative preconceptions. These biases often result in barriers and limitations that negatively impact students' academic achievement and social and emotional development. Studies have also documented the impact of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in…

Rising enrollments of students for whom English is not a first language mean that every teacher -- whether teaching kindergarten or high school algebra -- is a language teacher. This book explains what teachers need to know about language in order to be more effective in the classroom, and it shows how teacher education might help them gain that…

This paper discusses a model for structuring resources for automatic assessment in scientific education by means of textual descriptions. This study aims to support instructors in extending teaching strategies and expanding formative assessment in virtual communities of practice. The strategy to achieve these goals involves the implementation of a…

Little research has examined the capacity of ECE [early childhood education] leaders to build capacity for job-embedded professional development in local ECE centers. This study reports findings from a three-year evaluation of a job-embedded early childhood education professional development initiative in a major mid-western city. Results indicate…

The purpose of the Collaborating States Initiative (CSI) is to help state education agencies (SEAs) create statewide conditions that facilitate and encourage implementation of evidence-based approaches to social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools and districts. Because each state is unique, state teams must develop their own customized plans…

The Better Math Teaching Network (BMTN) is organized as a networked improvement community, which is a structured network of researchers and practitioners working together to address a common problem of practice, in this case, how to improve opportunities to increase student engagement in high school mathematics. During the 2017-18 school year, 41…

Subsequent to participating in the 2006 National Summer Institute on Learning Communities sponsored by the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education at The Evergreen State College, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College's Learning Communities Team spent the next several months preparing the college for a fall 2007…

This paper reviews a wide range of literature applicable to understanding why and how hobbyists learn. Of particular importance appear to be theories such as situated learning and communities of practice, but insights from the cognitive sciences related to expertise, motivation, and interest also emerged as important. The boundaries between formal…

What is--or should be--the purpose of a teacher evaluation system? To compare teachers? To inform the public? To help teachers improve? Legislators might say that a teacher evaluation system's purpose is to remove bad teachers. Administrators might say that it is to assist them in matching teacher skills to specific groups of students. Parents…

Online learning has grown exponentially in recent years; however, dropout problem remains challenging for some online programmes. The dropout problem can be attributed to a number of reasons, with a lack of interaction between learners and the instructor constituting one of the main reasons. The lack of interaction also leads to learners'…