Children's transition from an early childhood education setting to school needs to involve children and their families to best support the family in this time of change. This article focuses on a case study from doctoral research exploring the potential of Facebook™ to create a virtual community of practice to support children and their families'…

Drawing on a larger ethnographic study, this article reports a case study investigating the impact of a blended professional learning community (PLC) on teacher educators' changes in professional identity situated in initial teacher education (ITE) curriculum reform. Out of 200 teacher educators involved in the project under the Indonesian…

University middle leaders play a significant role in change management. While research examines the outcomes of change management, far less attention has been paid to how middle leaders develop agency and negotiate their identities in achieving these outcomes. This study presents the cases of two middle leaders in Shanghai enacting a curriculum…

Research and design activities are becoming more important in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and D&T (design and technology) education. Research and design are often taught separately from each other, while in professional STEM practices, many projects are neither 'research only' or 'design only'--they are both. In…

This qualitative case study of 20 teachers enrolled in a two-year fellowship, examines the professional development of science teachers during participation in a professional learning community. Our professional development model specifically employs vertical teaming of teachers from elementary, middle, and high school levels to examine the…

Professional learning community (PLC) studies in the Asian Chinese nations remain scarce despite the emerging interest in the practice of PLC beyond the Western context. This study attempts to provide an understanding of the practices of PLC and challenges in implementing PLC in a Malaysian Chinese culture-dominated secondary school. This…

Professional school cultures, which can be characterized by teachers who take an inquiry stance and in which exchanging knowledge and collaboratively developing classroom material is common practice, receive increasing attention. However, teachers in many schools still often work in isolation and generally do not critically examine their…

This article describes a practical approach for implementing instructional strategies in order to build a Community of Inquiry (CoI) into an online course. Online community building has positive effects on the quality of student learning, increases student engagement, and encourages motivation of students in online courses. The CoI is a…

In response to accountability systems dominated by external inspections and achievement data, calls are being made for "intelligent" accountability or a new accountability paradigm that focuses on "meaningful" learning, enabled by professionally skilled and committed educators within the system. In such systems, the actors are…

This article introduces readers to a collaborative community of practice that implemented the Sanford Harmony curriculum, a curriculum that was implemented at a social skills camp for children who were "typical developing," as well as children on the autism spectrum. Even though a small number of families enrolled in the camp, several…

Distance education has become one of the popular choices among the student's community. More and more students are enrolling into various distance education courses. Technology advancements have created a new avenue in distance education. ICT has helped the universities and colleges in reducing the distance between the students and faculty…

The third annual research symposium at Zakher KG School in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), presented an exciting opportunity for the 33 teachers in the school to present their findings from classroom-based action research conducted within their professional learning communities. In this brief article, one attendee describes an unexpected…

During the spring and fall semesters of 2016 and the spring semester of 2017, Kingsborough Community College, part of the City University of New York, launched an initiative to loan over 5,000 books for the entire semester to students in its Learning Communities and other special programs. This paper is a case study that describes the challenges…

This process and outcome qualitative study describes and critically assesses the experiences of the faculty who participated in the one-semester FLC addressing CLTs through a content analysis of individual narratives completed at the end and ten months after the FLC ended. The existence and contributions of four prerequisites for successful…

A 'Sustainability Commons' is a place to try out sustainable living (Taylor & Westerman, 2013). It is also a place that anyone can visit and experiment with low-carbon technologies, which are usually very simple and inexpensive, and are being used locally for the benefit of the community and the environment. This article reflects on the…