This study examined the role of text-based discussions in mediating middle school teachers' discussions during a semester-long, online, synchronous professional development sequence. The PD sequence involved teachers engaged in weekly Zoom meetings, during which they learned about digital literacy and designed curricula. Qualitative data analysis…

Educators must consider how today's technology-mediated environments expand our conceptualization of learning contexts and the continuities and tensions between learning and participation in various settings. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted educational systems worldwide, necessitating emergency remote teaching and coinciding with increased social…

Bullying is a significant problem in the USA, with both school bullying and cyberbullying peaking in middle school. Although 80% of students witness bullying, only half of middle school students report bullying to their teachers. Bystander training is effective in teaching students how to intervene; however, teachers play an instrumental role in…

Virtual teams are composed of members who work together, transcending time and space through communication technologies to meet shared goals. Many organizations currently use virtual teams to connect employees across the globe. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic forced almost all organizations to shift their employees to hybrid and remote…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to better understand the ways in which K-8 teachers from a semirural, predominantly white district perceive their responsibilities to work toward anti-racism, as well as to learn more about how the teachers can be supported as they work to overcome the challenges facing teachers in these fraught times in this…

Background: Communities of practice (CoP) have been proposed as a promising form of continuing professional development for teachers' learning. However, there remains limited understanding of the processes and factors that sustain teacher-initiated CoP. Purpose: This study provides a qualitative examination of a group of internal leaders'…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which cyberbullying prevention and intervention efforts were provided at different school levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and high). In the first journal article, the extent to which the frequencies of cyberbullying teacher trainings differ by school level was…

Cyberbullying remains a significant issue in school environments, impacting students of diverse backgrounds. The problem addressed by this study was that despite the proven effectiveness of traditional bullying interventions within the school environment, the ability of teachers to identify incidents of cyberbullying and apply intervention methods…

The purpose of the addendum is to document the findings from the Year 2 student achievement analyses of a teacher-level randomized experiment, which was designed to examine the implementation and impact of a scalable version of the 2-year MyTeachingPartner Secondary (MTP-S) program as part of a federally-funded Education Innovation and Research…

The pandemic changed how we viewed professional development. Our teachers reported needing support in the affective domain in addition to traditional professional development. To address this, we piloted Professional Development in Pajamas ("PD in PJs") that focused on sharing peer-to-peer technological pedagogical knowledge and added…

We present the results of our analysis regarding the discursive tendencies of four mathematics coaches during planning and debriefing conversations within online coaching cycles. Guided by the Content-Focused model of coaching (West & Cameron, 2013), the coaching cycles are a single component of a larger online professional development model…

In this working group, we continue with previous efforts to consider design and research methodologies related to teacher learning in online professional development contexts. We then describe an innovative project designed to support the development of middle school mathematics teachers, with a focus on three distinct forms of online learning:…

A pilot program was developed for middle school (grades 6-8) educators and students to apply NASA real-world problems to classroom concepts through the use of digital badges, as part of NASA Langley Research Center's (LaRC) Centennial Celebration. Three sets of digital badges were developed on three of NASA's main missions: Earth Science,…

Despite the impetus from professional organizations for science and mathematics integration, few teacher training programs provide opportunities for teachers to develop the knowledge and skills in effective content integration. This study reports on the impact of a graduate course on in-service middle school, math, and science teachers'…

At the heart of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM) "Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All" (2014) is the development of professional practices such as eliciting and using evidence of student thinking, supporting productive struggle in learning mathematics, and posing purposeful questions. In…