This study aims to investigate pre- and in-service EFL teachers' definitions, expectations, and experiences concerning teacher mentoring. The study sample included EFL teachers from 41 countries: 49 pre-service and 187 in-service EFL teachers teaching at various levels from kindergarten to university. A qualitative research design was employed…

Background/Context: Continuous improvement methods are becoming increasingly popular in education. Existing research has emphasized the technical aspects of improvement practice and has rarely focused on important social phenomena that underlie improvement work, such as the mindsets and identities of successful practitioners. To address this gap,…

This study investigated a framework for supporting English teacher candidates' efforts to reconcile theory and practice in classrooms that are subject to the tensions and challenges presented by contemporary, standardized education reforms that often ignore students' diverse cultural contexts, needs, and interests. Using the transcripts of seminar…

Contract cheating presents an existential threat to university assessment integrity and, therefore, to the reputations of universities and their graduates. We report on two workshops, with academic development participants who collaboratively addressed assessment identity verification through problem identification and solution creation. As…

The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between the problems of practice teachers encounter and social media use. In this study seven teacher bloggers were interviewed about their professional use of blogs and Twitter. Data from the interviews were compared with data from teachers' blogs and Twitter networks. Results indicated…

Professional development for academics has seen a trend towards social engagement through communities and groups, as reflected by a number of increasingly popular concepts: communities of practice, faculty learning communities, and learning and teaching networks. Despite the potential benefits of such engagement, there is a paucity of research on…

According to Richard DuFour (2004), "To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively and hold yourself accountable for results." Professional learning communities provide the structure that must exist within a school in order to become effective. However, to truly prepare…

This final report describes a project that prepared 28 integration/support facilitators to work with school district personnel to plan and implement systems change to result in integrated service models for learners with moderate and severe disabilities within their local home schools. The project offered a 30 to 36 credit hour post-Master's…