This paper reports on a study of Teacher Support Teams (TSTs) established to generate peer support and collaboration among teacher and nurse educators at a Norwegian university. In TST groups, educators share experiences from their own teaching practices and support one another in solving work-related problems. By the use of interaction analysis,…

Through a single-case study design, the research study described in this article examined one rural Canadian school division's use of teacher-directed collaborative action research as a mediating tool for teacher learning within a professional development (PD) initiative known as the Numeracy Cohort. The PD initiative brought together a dozen K-12…

This study investigates the experiences of a group of classroom teachers who transitioned into administrative roles as vice-principals in a rural schoolboard in southwestern Ontario. We included both elementary and secondary former teacher leaders who moved into the school administration and explored the aspects of their leadership experience that…

Entry into the Fellowship of Staff and Educational Development Association is through the production of a professional portfolio which evidences the applicant's achievement of the Fellowship requirements. Supporting and Leading Educational Change takes participants through the Fellowship process. The 12-week online course combines theory of…

This article presents a professional development programme which brought an indigenous minority group of tertiary staff together. We describe a peer-mentoring model, piloted in 2009 at The University of Auckland, New Zealand with university staff in order to promote staff advancement. The participants were all Maori, the indigenous people of New…

This paper investigates the presence (or absence) of Ely's (1999) conditions for implementing innovation in a rural context in the province of Quebec (Canada). The innovation, namely the Remote Networked School (RNS) initiative, is designed to bring new technology tools to enrich the learning environment of students and diminish teachers'…

While the microblogging service Twitter is increasingly popular among educators and offers numerous affordances for learning, its relationship with formal education systems remains complicated by generally ambivalent educator attitudes and institutional policies. To better understand the role Twitter plays in education, we conducted a survey of…

This article examines what both in-service and pre-service trainee teachers learn from their early experience of teaching in further education (FE) colleges in England. Despite differences between in-service and pre-service trainees, that early experience is often characterised by isolation and lack of control over practice for both groups.…

The concept of "professional learning community" (PLC) has been suggested as a tool to improve teachers' professional competency and students' learning outcomes since the mid-1990s. In such a community, teachers can share their individual practices with the aim of searching for "good practice" based on the outcome of collective…

Connecting with other education professionals is important in supporting teacher learning. Teachers in remote locations in Australia experience a professional isolation due to geographic isolation that makes it difficult to engage in sustained collaborations with other teachers. In a national project ICT was used to assist these teachers by…

In Australia, concerns about the quality of mathematics education that students experience are particularly salient in rural schools. These schools typically report great difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified teachers of mathematics. Teachers in non-metropolitan locations may also experience professional isolation if they have limited…

The focus in the author's role as Director of the New Zealand Principal and Leadership Centre (NZPLC) has been strongly influenced by her involvement with principals and has resulted in her dedication to a developmental approach that meets interpersonal, personal and professional needs of principals. It has been imperative that the focus of such…

Discusses the findings of a recently completed British Library project which sought to enable information professionals to develop and enhance their careers by identifying a framework of transferable skills. Highlights include professional isolation; the Library Association Framework for Continuing Professional Development; mentors and learning…

Teaching in a remote town has its drawbacks with regard to Professional Development (PD), which becomes extremely costly, so each staff member is probably limited to one decent PD once a year. This means choosing PD extremely carefully to ensure "value for money" and hopefully that it will provide the teacher concerned with…

Describes a study that examined the professional information needs of rural secondary school teachers in New South Wales (Australia). Concludes that teacher librarians have a pivotal role in meeting information needs, and that computer networks provide a means of overcoming the teachers' professional and geographical isolation. (LRW)