Test-based accountability (TBA) draws on a managerialist ideology that emphasises standards, constant measurement, and external motivation for improvement. It stands in sharp contrast to the idea of professional learning communities (PLCs) that aim to mobilise teachers' internal motivation and willingness to cooperate with peers to facilitate a…

According to the Next Generation Science Standards, three-dimensional teaching challenges educators to adopt an inquiry approach through science and engineering practices aligned with disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts. Few teachers today feel confident in their ability to orchestrate such lessons. Teaching inquiry science takes…

The confluence of crises facing our global and local communities have challenged leadership educators to think and practice differently. This has meant shifts in how we teach, how we connect with students, and how we understand our role in making change in our institutions and communities. How can we navigate change personally and as a community?…

The need for quality science education has long been established, but despite reform after reform, it remains a current concern. What we know as good teaching is not happening, perhaps because there is an increase in science teachers using alternative certification programs to enter the field. This lack of formal training causes teachers to have a…

Teacher inquiry is the process of applying action research to educational problems of practice, carried out by educational practitioners. The value of teacher inquiry--and all applications of action research--is that the research is being conducted by insiders, those who work directly with the problem being studied. It is based upon critical…

Teachers in professional development (PD) programs need time to adopt, enact and reflect on what they are learning in the PD within their own situations. To encourage reflective implementation and adaptation of ideas and practices promoted in the PD studied in this article, participants were asked to engage in several small action research…

Professional learning for teachers requires an immense amount of time and resources, but it often shows varying efficacy in terms of shifting teacher practice or impacting student growth. Studies have identified the characteristics that lead to more impactful professional learning experiences. In Cycle 1 research, this study began by asking…

High school instructional leaders describe how they reframed professional learning around autonomy with structured support. The new system, guided by trust and teacher inquiry, sparked innovation that proved critical during the pandemic.

Integration of research into teaching is a major area of interest in the field of higher education. Considerable work has been done on how staff and students view this integration, how it can be achieved in practice and how it might best be researched by scholars. However, relatively little research has considered how research-informed teaching…

Induction Programs, Teacher Efficacy, and Inquiry Practices in Novice Teachers This purpose of this study was to identify the influence of Induction Programs on first-year teachers. Research shows that a large percentage of novice teachers leave the profession within the first five years. Novice teachers often begin the first year of teaching with…

When data is collected, summarized, and analyzed with sufficient frequency, decisions about instructional changes can be based on student progress. Use the suggestions here to begin conducting progress monitoring.

In recent years considerable advances in both theoretical formulation and in methodologies have appeared in the Educational effectiveness research field. Yet there is a significant lack of studies that are focused on the effectiveness of learning tasks. Structured content analysis of learning tasks can provide information about learning…

Practitioner inquiry is an alternative form of professional learning that can result in significant changes in teacher practice and student learning. We share our evolution as teacher learners within our classrooms and teacher leaders within our school as we progressed through 10 years of continuous cycles of practitioner inquiry. Beginning as…

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) model scientific inquiry practices and can provide rich learning experiences for students. However, the teacher is an essential component of how the students engage with the technology, as they embed the IVE into everyday teaching and learning. Ideally, classroom pedagogies would reflect the scientific…

A common complaint about teacher education programs is that it follows a linear model--where theory and teaching skills are learned at the university and then applied in practicum experiences--that is inadequate and does not accurately represent teacher candidates'(TC) experiences (Brouwer & Korthagen, 2005; Korthagen, Loughran & Russell,…