This investigation seeks to understand what constitutes successful professional learning for informal educators, and thus contributes to the research base needed for developing a professional infrastructure for the informal education field. This study draws on summative evaluation research for the national field trial of a professional learning…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a key piece of current reform efforts to reshape the U.S. educational system. Critics contend that the related Revised Publishers' Criteria (RPC), coupled with the authoritative power of the CCSS, will de-professionalize teachers, directing their practice from a distance. The purpose of this qualitative…

Musical Futures is a music learning program that was established in the United Kingdom in 2003. It aims to make secondary classroom music more relevant to young people through engaging them in the informal learning practices of real world musicians, recognising that the way in which popular musicians learn is quite different from the pedagogy of…

This article describes a qualitative research study designed to analyze the implementation of an art program for children in a homeless shelter. Using a socio-cultural lens and the framework of resilience theory, teacher researchers implemented community-art programs for children residing in a family emergency shelter. Data collection included…

This paper reports on the approaches undertaken to support the development of teachers' uses of interactive whiteboards in the Primary Schools Whiteboard Expansion project. Mixed methods were used to identify practices and staff perceptions about the extent and impact of professional development through surveys (initially from 528 schools),…