This article seeks to extend current understandings of educational action research, particularly how teachers' actions, talk and ongoing relatings can serve as a vehicle for transforming their learning, including under current global conditions of more performative accountability. The research is grounded in Noffke's (2009) understandings of the…

While current reform efforts press for ambitious changes to teachers' instructional practice, teachers' instructional beliefs are also consequential in such efforts as beliefs shape teachers' instructional practice and their responses to instructional reforms. This article examines the relationship between teachers' instructional ties and their…

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify and describe the strategies that California public high school principals utilized to develop a growth mindset in classroom teachers. Methodology: This qualitative case study used interviews from 12 high school principals to gain an understanding for how they supported a growth…

The purpose of this study was to explore secondary English teachers' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of professional learning communities (PLCs), with particular focus on what they considered to be characteristics of effective PLCs. Through a qualitative study in grounded theory using individual interviews among a subgroup of ten…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have gained attention as an effective practice for supporting teachers and developing students since their inception in the early 1990s yet there is still work to be done in developing a blueprint for effective implementation in a pervasive culture of isolation and resistance, especially in secondary…

For the past 20 years, countless reports have been issued calling for reform of undergraduate education to improve student learning, persistence, and graduation rates for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. However, by many measures, recommendations in these reports have not been widely implemented. While…

This paper documents the progress of eight middle schools, four from one school district, and four from another that were engaged in the process of implementing Professional Learning Community (PLC) concepts. The descriptive study used quantitative and qualitative information gathered in a standardized, open-ended interview with the teachers and…

In 1999, it was necessary to build an interface for the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (the world's largest digital video archive at the time) that constituted over 120,000 hours of video of over 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors, rescuers and witnesses. In order to build this educational research interface, an…

Research has been conducted to identify and analyze how schools are determining that the activities of their Professional Learning Community (PLC) are directly tied to student achievement as there is currently a gap in the existing literature with regards to this topic. For the purpose of this study, a "successful" PLC was defined as one…

Music education leadership in public schools has often been the responsibility of a department chair or a district music supervisor. Nevertheless, budget constraints have forced districts to consolidate supervisory positions, frequently eliminating district chairs in music and the arts among other curricular areas. Without a strong advocate at the…

Systemic splits between pre-compulsory and compulsory early years education impact on transitions to school through discontinuities in children's experience. This paper presents data from a critical participatory action research project about transitions between pre-compulsory and compulsory early education schooling in Australia. The project aim…

Background: Physical education has long been caught in a time of "innovation without change". Yet, despite a wealth of pedagogical innovations and policies, which encourage a reconsideration of the "traditional pedagogy", teachers rarely move beyond the honeymoon period of implementation. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is…

The purpose of this study was to examine the essential elements of a community of practice intended to increase communication and collaboration between traditional public and charter school leaders. Members of the Los Angeles Cohort of the School Leaders Network participated in this study. This case study triangulated observation, interview, and…

Teachers' efficacy beliefs are critical to improving student learning, but we have yet to fully understand how these beliefs develop. The prevailing model of teachers' efficacy development emerges from cognitive theories, but sociocultural theories may add insights to modeling the impact of teachers' school contexts. This case study takes a…

This study explores action research as a professional development strategy to improve interprofessional collaboration in a school division team focused on supporting students with a variety of learning and behavioural needs. Occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, a psychologist, and a social worker worked together to learn more…