This article deals with an action research project, where a group of university teachers from different disciplines reflected on and gradually extended their knowledge about how to support students' academic literacy development. The project was conducted within a "research circle" [Bergman, L. 2014. "The Research Circle as a…

Elementary teachers were involved in a two-year grant focused on professional development using lesson study processes to increase their understanding of mathematics content and effective mathematics pedagogy. The primary research questions focused on how 16 elementary teachers described their professional growth after being involved in lesson…

This study aims to understand the recurrent challenges of professional development school (PDS) partnerships experienced by many countries. It does so by conceptualizing PDS partnerships as endeavors to cross institutionally and epistemologically developed boundaries between teacher education, schooling, and academic research. After introducing…

University-community partnerships can play an important role in curriculum development, but little has been written about the role of community agencies in designing curricula. This article describes the role of field education in an innovative university-community partnership aimed at transforming an MSW curriculum to integrate a trauma-informed…

The importance of parents to the success of students in schools and to school improvement has long been established and acknowledged by researchers and educators. In this article, we present a fourth--generation model of school--family linkages, one anchored in understandings of schools as communities as opposed to schools as institutions. Our…

With a growing number of teachers engaging online with their peers, online social spaces are increasingly highlighted as playing a key role in teachers' professional learning and development. However, while academic and professional discourses tend to focus on the benefits and weaknesses of teachers' engagement in online social spaces, little…

"MyScience" is a primary science education initiative in which being in a community of practice is integral to the learning process. In this initiative, stakeholder groups--primary teachers, primary students and mentors--interact around the "domain" of "investigating scientifically". This paper builds on three earlier…

This study uses Facebook as a platform and arranges certain learning tasks to identify the feasibility of mobile collaborative learning for pre-service teachers. The pre-service teachers' sense of community and perceptions of collaborative learning are investigated. A total of 153 pre-service teachers volunteered to participate in an Intern Mobile…

The number of freshmen interested in entrepreneurship has grown dramatically in the last few years. In response, many universities have created entrepreneurship programs, including ones focused on engineering entrepreneurship. In this paper, we report on NEWPATH, an innovative NSF-supported program at Ohio State, designed to nurture students to…

The effects of social capital on school improvement make it important to understand how teachers forge, maintain, or forfeit collegial relationships. Two common explanations focused on formal organizational features and individual characteristics do not address how social capital accrues from informal dynamics of teachers' interactions in…

The aim of the article is to understand practice as negotiation of meaning among novice and internal change agents in school organisations. The research question is as follows: What themes of participation and reification/management occur among the change agents? The study was qualitative in design using the social learning theory of community of…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate graduate students' perceptions of a completely online master's degree program in special education for emotional and behavioral disorders. The Community of Inquiry survey was used to examine graduate students' perceptions of the online program in the areas of teaching, cognitive, and social presences. The…

The present paper reports on early-career academics' (ECAs) experiences of support for teaching in a research-intensive university in Africa. Through conducting a questionnaire and follow up in-depth interviews greater insight into how ECAs perceive and experience support for developing their teaching practice, is gained. Our analysis suggests…

This qualitative study examined the identity of doctoral students in their quest to become scholars. The research question asked: What impact did a Community of Practice have on the doctoral students? The findings illustrated that on the journey the participants struggled to integrate multiple identities and roles. They also refined their…

This article focuses on the life history of a university academic, and the ways in which he learned in different communities of practice during his career. This account raises questions about the applicability of situated learning theory to a knowledge-based organisation, and argues that both the external context and the individuals within the…