Studies on physics identity have shown that it is one of the main factors that can predict a person's persistence in the field; therefore, studying physics identity is critical to increase diversity within the field of physics and to understand what changes can allow more women and minorities to identify with the field. In this study, we…

The Ministry of Education in New Zealand in 2013 provided funding for universities to develop and implement initial teacher education programmes with innovative school-university partnerships to promote the success of graduates. To enhance the success of this new programme, four teacher educators reviewed the literature on school-university…

We Love Weather is the fan community of The Weather Channel. Launched in 2016, We Love Weather aims to serve so-called "weather geeks" by providing exclusive and specialized weather content, as well as participatory and communal elements. This study proposes that We Love Weather is an "affinity space" where participants create,…

Faculty learning communities, a specialized form of communities of practice, are not new. These communities provide opportunities for learning, feedback, and collegiality. Even with all of these benefits, many faculty have never participated in a learning community, sometimes because colleges and schools have not yet established one. This paper…

Purpose: This study explored one physical education teacher's engagement in an online professional learning community and her perceptions of its impact on her own feelings of isolation. Sense of community theory was used as a lens to explore the data. Method: Using a single instrumental case study design, the participant of this study was a female…

This conceptual paper revisits a set of pivotal learning community notions filtered through sociological and community psychology perspectives to unravel representations of the community construct within learning contexts. A conceptual review of sociological and community psychology perspectives on the community construct is initially presented.…

With the increasing demand for improved student achievement in mathematics, few studies have been conducted examining teacher efficacy when continuously supported through a collaborative professional learning community (PLC) structure. This study examined teacher efficacy within PLC activities in a middle school. Both the belief that mathematics…

In this article the author explores ways in which affinity spaces (Gee, 2004) can be adapted for English language instruction. Affinity spaces attract participants who enthusiastically share their passions, such as popular culture, video games, or literature. Researchers have found that affinity spaces contribute to improvements in reading…

At a time when cognitive and behavioral theories dominated the landscape of learning theories, Lave and Wenger's situated learning theory (SLT) opened new territory by illuminating social and cultural learning processes. Many researchers and educators in the health professions embraced this theory, but few have considered how SLT has been used and…

Teachers spend a lot of time talking about students: They talk about how students learn, how to best plan lessons for them, and how to understand their written work using different protocols. Instead of hypothesizing about what a student might do on a task or why a student made a certain mistake, why aren't teachers just asking the student?…

We enter this book writing venture as members of the Faculty Academy, a multi-institutional group of teacher educators spanning post-doctoral, clinical, and tenure-track positions. Our group's deep history enables us to comprehensively examine our learning and leading along the teaching and teacher education continuum as well as over the passage…

Federal and state accountability obligates public schools to improve standardized test scores for students in certain grades and in certain content areas from year to year. In the name of school improvement district and campus level administrators implement professional learning communities (PLCs) and set expectations for data informed instruction…

In this article, I share some of the findings from a community-engaged research project based at Autores Fuertes, a community literacy center, located in urban Philadelphia. Using an engaged, ethnographic case study approach, I conducted observations and interviews at the center, as well as taught translanguaging writing workshops. The findings…

As part of a multi-year project within a network of Cambodian Christian schools, researchers facilitated training with the purpose of strengthening learner-centered education. To support teachers to grow beyond previous training, leaders ensured that the structure of the training was carefully aligned with intended outcomes. Informed by…

Practitioner research has been gaining prominence as a means for professional development (PD) since it provides teachers with opportunities to reflect on, comprehend, and transform their practices. However, there is a dearth of research that examines how teachers learn in online communities established to mentor teachers across the world to learn…