We offer the collaborative inquiry-action cycle as a framework for principals' practice and principal preparation. The cycle is a pragmatic tool that does not prescribe behaviors or contexts. Moreover, the cycle does not represent another programmatic solution or model for leadership. Rather the power of the cycle is that it drives collaboration,…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe and explain teachers' perceptions about effective professional development as well as to identify the environmental factors that affect the teacher participants' ability to engage in and implement various behaviors and beliefs transferred from the professional development experience. Four…

Despite that fact that the demand for asynchronous learning is booming, the literature on distance learning facilitation skills is lacking (Sherry, 1996). This study supports the premise that the use of paraphrasing strategies impacts learners in an asynchronous environment. The research question has been narrowed to inspect the particular…

This analysis, that utilizes data from part of the Academic Pathways Study (APS) of the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE), found that as a result of taking a course in engineering design and/or studying engineering for four years, students acquire engineering design language that is common to a larger community of practice…

This report summarizes 2008-2009 program evaluation results for the high school professional learning communities initiative.

To a large extent, schools encourage collaboration all the time, especially in countries such as the United States, Britain, and Australia. Much of what goes on in schools is fairly short-term. There are, however, an increasing number of teachers who are seeing the potential value in longer-term projects in which students have to work together.…

This phenomenological study explores the experiences of non-native English-speaking international students regarding language, culture and identity in the context of their graduate studies. Interviews were conducted with each of the eight participants. Interpretive analysis was used within a constructivist frame. The findings of this study are…

The paper reports results of three studies that used a formative assessment (FA) framework to compare schools that vary in their level of functioning as professional learning communities with respect to three processes: classroom assessment (study 1), development and implementation of school-based curriculum (study 2), and pedagogical…

This paper presents the argument that the use of wikis in a learning environment involves a different way of thinking, learning and knowing than perhaps many practitioners are familiar with. In particular, wikis foster collaborative, egalitarian learning that is designed to foster group interaction instead of just individual performance. Moreover,…

Traditional lecture-based teaching methods are being replaced or supplemented by approaches which call for reframing the roles and identities of teachers and learners. Enquiry-Based Learning (EBL) is one such approach. This paper reports on a study investigating the perceptions of staff and students (N=25) involved in an EBL capacity building…

"Lesson study" is a professional learning approach in which teachers work together to: formulate goals for student learning and long-term development; collaboratively plan a "research lesson" designed to bring to life these goals; conduct the lesson in a classroom, with one team member teaching and others gathering evidence on…

A form of voluntary workplace engagement, communities of practice are characterised in literature as providing entities with the potential to harness the multiplier effects of collaborative processes by building on informal networks within entities. As knowledge building and sharing institutions it would be reasonable to presume that communities…

Recent developments in early childhood education in the UK and other parts of Europe have emphasised the importance of dialogue between adults and children. In the UK, the EPPE project paid particular attention to the role of extended child-centred conversations ("sustained shared thinking"--Sylva et al. 2003) as an important element or…

Active living and continuing learning are important to the well-being of seniors. As the generation of so-called baby boomers approach retirement, the same public schools built to accommodate their compulsory schooling are now being considered as sites for intergenerational learning. This article explores one such project where seniors learning…

Presented primarily in the context of graduate education in design, this paper argues that apprentice-master pedagogical models of learning and the development of exclusively tacit knowledge are inadequate resources for preparing the next generation of high level design practitioners or teachers. Today's design context requires more than formal…