The predominant conceptualization of scientific literacy occurs on the micro scale of an individual person. However, scientific literacy can also be exhibited at the meso scale by groups of people in communities of place, practice, or interest. What comprises this community level scientific literacy (CSL) is both understudied and undertheorized.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the principal coaching and/or professional development activities that expert high school principals experienced that helped them to achieve expert status, i.e. exemplary leadership, and positively impact student outcomes, to rate the effectiveness of the identified activities as reported by the…

Leadership strategies for school turnaround and how to prioritize improvement efforts seem to lack a clear pattern for leaders of failing schools. The purpose of this study was to determine successful leadership strategies and methods for school turnaround and how best to prioritize the efforts by surveying a panel of experts through a Delphi…

The purpose of this study was to identify distinguishing characteristics of action research within the Action Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. The authors sought to delineate the foundational framework endorsed by this community. The study was conducted during January-April 2012 and employed an…

Evaluation of instruction has typically occurred during development, before implementation, and after course completion. The problem is that evaluation is typically post delivery; courses are not traditionally updated in real time with feedback from students in the classroom. However the potential to evaluate and modify instruction during delivery…

This empirical study attempted to investigate the effect of using online communities of practice in teacher education on pre-service teachers' critical thinking dispositions. California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory and the comments posted to the online community of practice were used as the data collection tools. Results showed that…

In order to seek more effective ways to design and support online communities of practice, we examined how Wikipedia, a large-scale online community of practice, is developed and emerges over time. We conducted a Delphi study to explore the social, organizational, and technical factors that Wikipedia experts believe have supported the evolution of…

Informal learning communities in which participants show critically reflective work behaviour (CRWB) have the potential to support lifelong learning. In practice this behaviour does not always occur in groups of autonomous professionals. This study explores design principles (DPs) that could act as social affordances for CRWB, within the context…

The purpose of this study was to investigate three constructs that affect online faculty: initial preparation, collegiality, and continued professional development. An increasing number of colleges and universities are responding to the demand for greater learning flexibility and, consequently, offering online and hybrid courses at an increasing…

With plans to improve a Technical Report Writing course, writing faculty and engineering technology faculty formed a faculty learning community (FLC). Although discussions were often productive, it was often difficult to gauge consensus and differing views among the group members. In a previous study, Q methodology, a measure of subjectivity, was…

This study involved an evaluation of the subjective perspectives held by a panel of 16 homeland security subject matter experts to determine what the needs of the homeland security professional community are for educational programs. The researcher examined the knowledge, skills, and abilities deemed important in homeland security to determine…