Sustained professional development can support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) reform. The authors describe a 3-year study of sustained professional development for 3 diverse urban schools across the salient factors of fidelity of implementation of project-based learning, development of professional learning communities,…

Little research has investigated factors that facilitate beginning teachers' participation in professional learning activities related to differentiated instruction (DI). This study examines environmental factors for DI learning activities in a sample of 272 beginning teachers from 72 primary schools. Multilevel analyses show that teacher…

Technology facilitated teaching and learning can now influence the way both lecturers and students collaborate. The problem is that many of these interventions are conducted in a non-systematic ad-hoc way. There are concerns that merely adopting a traditional lecturing approach to a technology based environment provides little if any advantage to…

Grounded in the construct of community of practice, the authors discuss the Teacher-Learner Community (TLC), where the goal is to support the development of pre-service teachers' understanding of culture, community, and background in learning. Insights and perceptions of pre-service teachers were gathered after implementing a TLC designed to…

The aim of this philosophical and historical position paper is to discuss the ways in which Popular Education--folkbildning--has contributed to the social transformation of Sweden through self-directed and collaborative educational practices. One of our premises is that individual transformative learning, fostered by folkbildning, has contributed…

Open Source Software (OSS) communities are homogenous and their lack of diversity is of concern to many within this field. This problem is becoming more pronounced as it is the practice of many technology companies to use OSS participation as a factor in the hiring process, disadvantaging those who are not a part of this community. We should…

What opportunities and challenges are presented to religious education across the globe by the basic human right of freedom of religion and belief? To what extent does religious education facilitate or inhibit "freedom of religion" in schools? What contribution can religious education make to freedom in the modern world? This volume…

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology has implemented reforms in Japan to promote language education through technology. Blended language learning is a way to fulfill the mandate set in these reforms. Combining the benefits of online and face-to-face learning leads to increased engagement in the target language.…

When major news breaks in our hyper-connected society, we increasingly turn to an encyclopedia for the latest information. Wikipedia's coverage of breaking news events attracts unique levels of attention; the articles with the most page views, edits, and contributors in any given month since 2003 are related to current events. Extant…

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of technology in the professional leadership practice of gifted education coordinators. An adapted version of the Teacher Technology Integration Scale (TTIS) was administered to 36 gifted coordinators recruited at meetings of regional gifted coordinator groups affiliated with the state professional…

This paper describes the need for developing, implementing and sustaining professional development (PD) designed to provide a network of coaching support for teachers, an element of independent online study and a collaborative network of peers. Leaders recognize the importance of school structure but need to further address the impact of…

For the past 10 years, schools have been required by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act-No Child Left Behind (ESEA-NCLB) to develop meaningful family engagement practices that provide welcoming environments to parents. However, for parents who have had negative experiences in school, either as a student or through interacting with…

No major change has occurred up until now with regard to the teaching-learning methods of science used in Bangladesh. Teachers, in most cases, tend to teach the same things in the same ways they were taught when they were students. This study will, therefore, investigate how science teachers' learning in a professional learning community (PLC)…

As more and more schools implement professional learning communities (PLCs), school librarians often ask: What is the role of school librarians in PLCs? What should they be doing to contribute? What are their colleagues in other schools doing? In this article the authors explore these questions by first describing eight potential roles for school…

This study explored "To what extent will preservice teachers with adequate nature of science (NOS) conceptions and who participate in a community supporting NOS instruction teach NOS in their internship settings?" Using a combination of focus group discussions and peer feedback, five preservice teachers met with university personnel bi-monthly…