A year-long collaborative action research project used networked technologies to connect researchers at a university-based online professional development program and a group of practitioner researchers based in a range of schools and educational agencies in several countries. They studied the process and effects of online professional development…

The Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT) facilitates the use of modern genomics methods in undergraduate education. Initially focused on microarray technology, but with an eye toward diversification, GCAT is a community working to improve the education of tomorrow's life science professionals. GCAT participants have access to affordable…

Professional learning communities among teachers and schools have been envisioned as a mechanism for development, knowledge building and implementation. However the formation of an effective learning community is more complex than giving teachers a project and asking them to share a room. This paper reports a synergistic interaction between a…

The notion of "professional practice knowledge" has been significant in some recent explorations of the nature of practice and discussions of the development of practitioners and practices. This article begins by outlining "professional practice knowledge" as a window into practice, but suggests that practice has features that…

Dispositions for teaching have become a key issue in teacher education reform. Relatively little attention, however, has been devoted to studying how dispositions for teaching develop. This article argues that acquiring appropriate professional dispositions for teaching is a socio-cultural process that benefits from both formal and informal…

This interpretive case study explores an attempt to add an online component--the On-line Literacy Project--to a successful face-to-face professional development community. Participants were six members of the Literacy Project, which was carried out in the school board of a western Canadian city. The principal theoretical framework informing the…

Background/Context: This study builds upon research on teacher professional communities and high school restructuring reforms. It employs a conceptual framework that draws upon theories of "community of practice" and "community of learners." Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study analyzes how teachers' professional inquiry…

Purpose: This paper discusses insights from a study of women working, or seeking or preparing for work, in the information technology (IT) field. At issue is how and whether alternative career pathways and informally acquired skills and knowledge, as well as the operation of gender in learning and work, are acknowledged by employers, colleagues…

This paper takes a large-scale social perspective in describing a national project in Australia that was premised on local school communities working together and contributing ideas for the benefit of their students, and potentially, the whole country. The project was intended to improve schools' capacity for educating boys, and in the long-term,…

This exploratory study examines the impact of a professional development program where a K-16 networked learning community approach was implemented to provide training and support for technology integration in science education. The study presents findings from a three-year project with five cohort groups that included 17 student teachers, 17…

Online discussion boards have the potential to provide significant support to beginning teachers; thus, we designed an online collaborative consultation community to provide mentor support to university students enrolled in an alternative certification program. The results suggest that although students in alternative certification programs will…

A considerable amount of current research on teaching and teacher education focuses on teacher collaboration. Teacher collaboration is presumed to be a powerful learning environment for teachers' professional development. However, empirical research about how teachers actually learn in collaborative settings is lacking. In this study, learning…

This article connects teachers' experiences of reflective school portfolio development to the idea of teachers' knowledge communities, the different groups and individuals with whom teachers negotiate meaning for their stories of experience, lived and told, and re-lived and re-told, over time. The reflective analysis makes the case that the…

In reviewing research from three successive research studies in one school district in Ontario, Canada, I trace the influence of leadership on the building of capacity in schools and the district. In so doing, it has become clear that the style of leadership has shifted to a more distributed approach, in which more teachers are becoming engaged in…

The relevance of action research to organisational change within contemporary health services in the United Kingdom is discussed in this article. Two examples of collaborative community-based studies are presented: one exploring ways to encourage community participation within a health and regeneration programme and the other considering the types…