Professional learning usually means growing an educators' knowledge base, abilities, and mindsets for the purpose of benefiting students. But Harford County Public Schools in Maryland has reframed it with a much broader scope. Professional learning is now called organizational development, reflecting the district's aim for everyone in all…

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are undergoing financial, structural and cultural transformation. With the marketization of higher education, 'war for talent' is also gaining momentum. As bars are raised on evaluating academics' performance, the human resources and academic leadership need to rethink their approach to talent identification,…

Systems, structures, and practices perpetuate disparities because they reinforce barriers that sort and separate students based on assumed success or failure. When students are disadvantaged in this way, the implicit message is that their learning doesn't matter. The counterpoint to these discriminatory systems is an asset-based approach, which is…

Purpose: This article presents a model based on a review of international and European policy and current European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education work on school leadership for inclusive education. The model aims to support analysis of the policy context and interactions between the structures and processes at different levels to…

Even though equity has become a hot topic, the pathway to making it a reality has not necessarily become clear. The national agenda on race, racial equity, and dealing with COVID-19 has pushed the challenge of equity to the front and center for schools. This pressurized moment in history has raised important questions: (1) What are the steps to an…

Research highlights the importance of individualized approaches and coaching to ongoing professional learning (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). The purpose of this article is to describe an initiative that set out to help all students become proficient readers by 3rd grade. It demonstrates how coaching can support…

Peer review of teaching is recognized increasingly as one strategy for academic development even though historically peer review of teaching is often unsupported by policy, action and culture in many Australian universities. Higher education leaders report that academics generally do not engage with peer review of teaching in a systematic or…

During the last 20 years, faculty have faced rising workloads, increasing amounts of top-down accountability and oversight, mounting publication demands, decreasing numbers of tenure-track positions, and an increasingly dismal job market. The current recession has exacerbated the pressure by requiring departmental budget cuts, faculty layoffs,…

From 1998 to 2008, the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) offered its employees a variety of options for formation, a type of reflective practice. The district encompasses 10 locations, seven of them independently accredited colleges. Formation is based primarily on Parker Palmer's model for Circles of Trust as described in "A…

Some teaching centers flounder while others flourish. This paper provides concrete suggestions for launching or revitalizing a teaching center, drawn from the experiences of these authors and from principles in the literature. Two center directors worked to apply the principles in the literature to their newly launched or revitalized centers. One…

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how an institutional learning, teaching and assessment (LTA) strategy was developed and a "dynamic" strategy created in order to achieve the ongoing enhancement of the quality of the student learning experience. Developing LTA strategies that foster ongoing engagement and provide inspiration to…

We present findings from in-depth interviews with mid-career faculty who describe themselves as "thriving." As we ground ourselves in the theoretical contexts of Erikson's stage of "generativity vs. stagnation" and Dweck's construct of "growth mindsets," we discuss themes that run through their personal narratives and delineate key elements of the…

In this article, the author explores the promising practices of Audrey Union (all names in this article are pseudonyms), a white principal of Integration Middle School (IMS), which served nearly 400 students in sixth through ninth grades. Approximately 40% of the students were of color and a similar percentage qualified for free and reduced lunch.…

Looking at literacy teaching across classrooms at the urban Mill City Charter School provides an opportunity to explore the importance of coherence within a school. This work was informed by teachers' voices and classroom observations over several months. Findings suggest that when teachers and school leaders share a common theory and vision for…

The 2002/2003 Seton Hall University (SHU) ELMP (Education Leadership, Management and Policy) Department objectives included developing a "learning community" or Community of Learners (COL) framework for ELMP to advance a research and scholarship culture and have a "researchable" element. The Department developed a framework and…