The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact professional learning community (PLC) implementation and collegial trust have at the organizational level and the effect these elements have on the positive school culture that nurtures academic achievement in select rural Title I elementary schools located in southeastern North Carolina. An…

A new generation is growing up who have known the internet for their entire lives. More people incorporate social media into more aspects of our lives, including how we learn and negotiate our identities. While formal online classrooms such as MOOCs are a part of the picture, learning also occurs in informal settings such as affinity groups'…

Social media with diverse functionalities enables people to communicate, make connections, exchange information, and transfer knowledge without time and location restrictions. The number of informal learning communities based on social media is growing, but the knowledge about how these communities work is still limited. Three main issues for…

Effective professional development for course instructors in higher education has long been a point of interest in terms of how not only ongoing training can benefit instructors but also how those benefits could possibly improve student experiences and learning outcomes. This qualitative case study specifically examines a population of teachers…

A shortage of science and engineering professionals has led to an effort to engage and retain higher education students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors in the United States. School reformers call on faculty members to shift their teaching practices towards evidence-based instructional strategies that involve…

A suburban school in the central United States failed to close the achievement gap with a neighboring school on state-mandated tests despite both schools' implementation of a professional learning community (PLC) to improve student performance. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the implementation of a PLC with the mitigating…

With the heightened focus on STEM education in school districts, there is a need to examine the professional learning provided to teachers who implement STEM curriculum, especially low-cost, sustainable professional development experiences. This study used an embedded mixed-method design to examine the connection between Guskey's model of teacher…

Campus life is disrupted. Boards and campus leadership are under immense pressure from all directions. Candidates face the uncertainty of the higher education landscape. Search firms must manage competing, conflicting, and uneducated opinions of how to run a presidential search. The purpose of this action research study was to investigate and…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the first-year experiences of 10 first-generation college students who participated in university-established learning communities at a small private Historically Black College. Further, this study was conducted to discover what participants felt was the role of the learning community…

The Smith (pseudonym) School District's mathematics achievement data show disparities among subgroups with respect to middle and high school mathematics learning. Institutional data point to a variety of factors that may indicate low mathematics teaching efficacy and lack of supports for educators, particularly those new to teaching. Because…

This is a qualitative phenomenological study of an urban high school. This study explores the teachers' perceptions of relevance of Constructivism, Professional Learning Community Training involving technology, and the impact those two have on student engagement. The study further considers various approaches to professional development and…

Purpose: In response to the top-down professional development (PD) practice, this study conceptualizes lesson study (LS) as a bottom-up approach to foreign language teacher PD in the Turkish context. Relatedly, the authors seek to empower teachers so that they can engage in reflexive PD and claim voice over their practices.…

Distributed peer mentoring networks are a valuable and cost-effective way to support isolated faculty. Our National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded eAlliance project supports 12 such networks for women physics faculty at all ranks and across varied institutions. We discuss how they function for the participants, particularly the advantages of…

Massive Open Online Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been transitioning slowly from being completely open and without clear recognition in universities or industry, to private settings through the emergence of Small and Massive Private Online Courses (SPOCs and MPOCs). Courses in these new formats are often for credit and have clear market…

The role of teaching presence in online courses has received significant attention within the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework since Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, and Archer (2001) proposed a set of categories of teaching presence and a tool to assess them. However, there has been limited research addressing whether the instrument proposed by…