Teacher professional learning (PL) is viewed by governments, bureaucracies and school systems as important for improving teaching quality and effectiveness. This new enthusiasm, however, is set against a history of professional development in schools of marginal benefit. In response to this history, education authorities are interested in PL that…

The case study discussed in this article examines how the community of inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010) was used to redesign the digital learning environment in the context of an Australian university. Some purposes were to replicate features of a traditional classroom and to support collaboration between professionals…

This study examines how involvement in four cross-institutional STEM faculty communities of practice is associated with local departmental and institutional change for faculty members belonging to these communities. It is informed by the communities of practice and change in higher education literature and utilizes data gathered through a survey…

The Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine has established online education programs to provide healthcare professionals with advanced training in the field of gerontology to establish proficiency in providing quality care to older individuals. A major barrier to creating our online education…

This paper examines the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) "PISA for Schools," a new variant of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that compares school-level performance on reading, math and science with international schooling systems (e.g., Shanghai-China, Finland). Specifically, I…

The MSUrbanSTEM fellowship program provides exemplary urban STEM teachers the opportunity to engage in transformative instructional and leadership experiences that support the advancement of their teaching practice. In this chapter, we provide a foundational examination of the development and implementation of a curriculum for this innovative…

In order to be effective, professional development efforts are most promising if they are context specific and focus on supporting collaboration. Increasingly, schools initiate professional development with small groups of teachers, with the intention that the effects of the initiatives will spill over to other school personnel. This study follows…

To challenge deficit thinking concerning immigrants and refugees in urban schools, we engaged members of local immigrant and refugee communities from China, Mexico, Liberia, and Sudan in focus group discussions about their prior educational experiences, their hopes and aspirations for education, and the supports and challenges they encountered in…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are an effective way for faculty to learn about pedagogical topics and tactics. However, less is known about how effective they are at changing the teaching practices of the faculty participants and ultimately student learning. This article describes a mixed-method study of such a transfer of knowledge. In…

This paper explores the experiences of 37 physical science high school teachers who participated in a professional development (PD) programme coordinated by three Experimento multipliers. The Experimento programme is a Siemens Stiftung international educational programme aimed at providing didactic and methodological approaches to classroom…

This article considers in a wide perspective the crisis in the assessment of examinations in A-level English Literature and current attempts to address the problems. Examining the implications of a survey of recent reports initiated by the regulator, it argues that trying to ensure reliability merely through technological advances and changes in…

This research investigates the social and socialization practices within an online professional development web seminar. The aim of this study was to identify the kinds of social and community building practices that occur in online professional development webinars by exploring how communication tools such as chat are used for community building…

This essay focuses on the important, but often taken-for-granted, roles that mentoring and collaborative inquiry play in rethinking childhood studies and situates our work in a time of resurgent racism and xenophobia in the United States--as well as invigorated movements to affirm human rights and social justice. It represents a co-mentoring…

Most research in primary and secondary computing education has focused on understanding learners within formal classroom communities, leaving aside the growing number of promising informal online programming communities where young users contribute, comment, and collaborate on programs to facilitate learning. In this article, we examined trends in…

The purpose of this study was to determine if engagement and mentoring of African American male students were a predictor of graduation. The participants of the study were engaged with mentors, instructors and learning communities from the beginning of their community college experience. This research study was guided by the two primary questions:…