This article explores teacher clusters as possible mechanisms for teacher development in dealing with a number of the difficulties facing education in the South African context. It describes the benefits and challenges experienced by primary school teachers who are involved in a self-sustaining teacher cluster (development and support group). This…

Increased attention to evidence-based practice (EBP) among rehabilitation professionals closely corresponds to recent interest in knowledge translation, which connects quality research to rehabilitation practice aimed at improving the lives of people with disabilities. Despite the importance of knowledge translation for rehabilitation…

In this paper, I explore the experiences of secondary teachers in four London schools [UK] who participated in Teacher Learning Communities, defined as meetings in which professional learning was supported as they learned about Assessment for Learning (AfL). The claim for these communities is that they lead to sustained improvements in teaching…

Supervision of research degrees is currently undergoing significant re-evaluation, as the research environment itself responds to new and ongoing external policy and funding pressures, internationalisation, increasing cross-disciplinarity and the proliferation of sub-specialisations amongst other factors. The Exploring Supervision Program is…

Community assessment is the concept of using wider professional communities to provide authentic assessment to students. It means using the knowledge available in one's immediate surroundings and through Web 2.0 tools to enrich instructional processes. It means using retirees, experts, and volunteers from professional organizations and…

A core tenet of the open educational resources (OER) movement has long been that 'the world's knowledge is a public good' (Smith & Casserly, 2006, p.2) and should be available for everyone to use, reuse and share. However, this vision of openness and of the connection between OER and social justice, which McAndrew and Farrow…

This paper reports on case study research in the UK analysing the participation of early years staff in interprofessional practice to provide effective care and education for children, primarily those with special educational needs. Even though case study staff in different "outstanding" settings had equivalent qualifications and similar…

This study examines the affordances of blogging on establishing communities of practice within an elementary teacher education program. Building upon the previous work with in-service teachers of Luehmann (2008), we examined pre-service teacher participation in an online community of practice where pre-service teachers, over the course of their…

This commentary is based on two of the lessons the author learned as the professor in residence at ASU Preparatory Academy-Phoenix (ASU Prep), a Title I school operated in partnership with the Phoenix Elementary School District. Her role as a university professor on special assignment as a literacy coach, staff developer, and co-researcher. The…

Netnography is an approach to studying online communities and cultures to arrive at an ethnographic understanding. Drawing on our own experiences and methodological choices in a netnography of a multi-site online community of practice of English language teachers, known as Webheads in Action, this article illustrates how ethnographic fieldwork…

Effective pre-service teacher education integrates theoretical and practical knowledge. One means of integration is practicum in a school workplace. In a time of variable approaches to, and models of, practicum, we outline an innovative model of school immersion as part of a teacher preparation program. We apply Fuller and Unwin's (2004) expansive…

Grounded as a self-study using arts-based inquiry to explore the experiences of six university faculty members participating in a cross-disciplinary faculty development program, the purpose of this paper is to (1) describe the Madison Research Fellows (MRF) program, and (2) explore the impact of the MRF program. Participating members included…

The image of students passively absorbing information from an educator who is lecturing from behind a podium does not reflect the current scope and dimension of higher education. There are now tools of technology that can be used to create learning experiences to actively and meaningfully "pull" students into course content. The author…

This study sought to understand how graduate and undergraduate students learn to do science by participating in research groups. A phenomenological approach was used to illuminate the experiences of the students. The results provide evidence that the students were in the role of apprentices, although this was not made explicit. As apprentices they…

This article explores a faculty-facilitated consultation group that was created for MSW students in an academic setting as a response to the paucity of group work supervision and training available in many field placements. This study considers the context in which training occurs, the impact of systemic and professional factors, which includes…