Innovations in faculty development, particularly those that make the most of available technologies, are essential. "Learning is a social activity and we are social beings; and everything is connected" (Trammel & Bruce, 2008). Finding methods for creating these faculty connections is a challenge--one that can be met by technology.…

One of the most complicated academic endeavours in transmission pedagogies is to generate democratic participation of all students and public expression of silenced voices. While the potential of mobile phones, particularly mobile instant messaging (MIM), to trigger broadened academic participation is increasingly acknowledged in literature,…

A major criticism of the Community of Practice theory is that it mainly focuses on the inward induction process of learning while neglecting the outbound trajectory. Yet, this criticism still remains at the hypothetical level in most of the literature. This paper aims to advance the theory by addressing this criticism on an empirical basis. The…

Through a sociocultural lens, this study examines five Saudi Arabian engineering graduate students' valuation of English writing, their self-perceptions of writing, what promoted the development of those self-perceptions and how their self-perceptions compare with engineering industry writing standards. The data collected for this qualitative case…

Historically, the concept 'child' has a Lockean (1960) connotation, as empty slates, new born infants are considered weak and helpless, until the improvement of growth and age has removed this deficient state of childhood. In modern societies, including South Africa, children are still viewed as citizens-in-waiting, and as citizens who need to be…

This study followed a causal comparative research design that utilized mixed methods. This non-experimental investigation sought to identify potential cause and effect relationships between variations in achievement data among schools. The purpose of the study was to determine if urban students' reading and math achievement increased as a result…

"Leadership, Capacity Building and School Improvement" provides a fresh and original perspective on the most important issues confronting today's practitioners and academics in the field of educational leadership. New and exciting concepts are introduced such as the research-engaged school of the future. While its theoretical and…

What would a learning community look like "if we really meant it" when we committed to ensuring the learning of each student? What would we consider good enough for our own children? In "Every School, Every Team, Every Classroom," the authors suggest that these two questions drive PLC leaders to embed PLC at Work[TM] practices in their entire…

Commonalities exist between family and consumer sciences (FCS) middle and secondary teachers and Cooperative Extension Service (CES) state and county faculty. From educational backgrounds to the content and societal issues of concern, FCS teachers and CES faculty follow similar paths, with differences in the audiences they reach and the settings…

In this paper, the author talks about community building and the power of active listening. Active listening is a particular kind of listening that requires conscious effort; it is a type of listening that some rarely practice and sometimes is virtually absent from classroom interactions. Thus active listening itself may be deceptively simple…

This analysis encompassed four different projects that were implemented as reform initiatives at the college. The authors' collaborative work and this subsequent analysis have drawn on insights from Cochran-Smith (2004), who describes teacher education as both a "learning problem and a political problem" that involves the creation of inquiry…

The school environment is a very dynamic sphere. Changes continually take place in educational policy, curriculum and in a school's physical and social environment. A teacher who wants to be effective in such an environment has to adapt to these changes. Continuous professional development of teachers is essential to addressing the gaps in…

In this article, the author offers an appreciation of the writers and their books that have shaped her teaching and thinking. Her face-to-face encounters with these books prompted her to question her own beliefs about literacy, about authority, about language, about writing, about literature. She was surrounded by the living animations of the…

No moment of teaching is an island, entire of itself. Every move the author makes, every decision to speak or keep silent, every utterance emerges out of a larger ongoing professional conversation, as unfinished now as it was a hundred years ago when that first "English Journal" ("EJ") appeared. His specific moves as a teacher are turns at talk in…

How does the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) help teachers and students foster cultural memory? In this article, the author underscores three areas of NCTE that have facilitated the integration of his experiences and cultural background into his teaching mission. First, NCTE has published groundbreaking research in this area: most…