Sustainable Development Goals call on Members States to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" and sets a number of targets related to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In order to collect input from the global TVET community, UNESCO-UNEVOC organized a…

This virtual conference took place from September 28 to October 3 on UNESCO-UNEVOC's e-Forum and brought together 165 participants from 57 countries. This virtual conference was the twelfth in a series of moderator-driven discussions introduced by UNESCO-UNEVOC in 2011. Conducted on the UNEVOC e-Forum--a global online community of over 4,000…

Providing ninth-graders with academic and social support can put more students on the graduation path, but it can be challenging for schools and school systems to implement that support routinely and effectively. This brief describes how Broward County Public Schools adopted a community of practice (CoP) approach to improve school-based teams'…

In this webinar, Dr. Stephanie Hirsh, Executive Director of Learning Forward, presented the research on effective PLCs and shared her experiences in creating, assessing, and leading PLCs. This Q&A addressed questions participants had for Dr. Hirsh following the webinar. The webinar recording and PowerPoint presentation are also available.

With increased improvements to technology for online teaching, synchronous instruction continues to grow. Increasing student interaction has been an important component to enhance a sense of community in online learning and improve student satisfaction. There is a paucity of research on how to effectively manage online interaction and increase…

Community colleges in the United States are faced with several challenges, one of which is increasing the percentage of students that earn an associate degree. Research (American Association of Community Colleges, 2012; Amey, 2005; Eddy, 2010; Roueche, 2008) suggests that community college administrators need to think, act, manage, and lead in…

This study investigated a group of six junior primary school teachers' learning as they collaboratively inquired into teaching practice they observed together. The focus of the study was on understanding how teachers collaborated around observed teaching practice to improve their pedagogy. The design involved four iterative stages of co-planning,…

Collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators may provide a means of improving the quality of pre-service teacher education for prospective teachers of mathematics. Some preliminary findings of a project that investigates this type of interdisciplinary collaboration, both within and across institutions, are reported on in this…

This Special Issues Brief from the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEDAR Center) and the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) outlines essential features for providing high-quality, structured, and sequenced opportunities to practice within teacher preparation programs. This brief is…

This is the first of three chapters that draws on empirical, qualitative research data generated from an eight-month long ethnographic investigation of four teachers in an Australian secondary school setting. In particular, this chapter uses the knowledge and context frameworks outlined in Chap. 1 to examine the interplay between policy,…

This manuscript builds on the previous reviews of professional learning communities (PLCs), using 10 empirical international research studies to present the impact of PLCs on teacher practice and student learning. The results showed that PLC studies that embrace collaboration and focus on student learning reported improved teacher practice and…

Since informal learning occurs outside of formal learning environments, describing informal learning and how it takes place can be a challenge for researchers. Past studies have typically oriented to informal learning as an individual, reflective process that can best be understood through the learners' retrospective accounts about their…

This project uses the community of practice metaphor to explore some of the discursive characteristics of learning that take place when a group of United Kingdom-based professional examiners engage in joint-work activity in both face-to-face and remote computer-mediated communication contexts. Professional examiners are all subject experts, and…

Agamben's notion of the "paradigm" has far-reaching implications for educational thinking, curriculum design and pedagogical conduct. In his approach, examples--or paradigms--deeply engage our powers of analogy, enabling us to discern previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of…

Online classroom discussion is ubiquitous in higher education today, with both online and hybrid courses. As a result, tools need to be created that enable an in-depth assessment of this medium, thereby facilitating the establishment and support of best practices in education. Such an assessment requires tools for consistent, efficient analysis of…