This study explored how Malawian teachers who participated in an adapted lesson study (LS) professional development (PD) for the first time understood teacher collaboration, and the lessons learnt by the inexperienced knowledgeable other (KOs) through facilitating the new practice. The study was conducted qualitatively using data from lesson…

Reform efforts in different parts of the world call for the adoption of integrated approaches to STEM education. However, little is known about how teachers work, as members of learning communities, to design STEM teaching material such as lesson plans. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the design of STEM lesson plans by…

Educators have many "meetings of the minds": Grade-level planning sessions, PLCs, coaching meetings--which together should allow teachers ample opportunities to create high-quality, rigorous lesson plans that deepen student learning. But do these meetings actually work? Frequent planning sessions often become a time for teachers to…

The main purpose of this study was to explore how engaging in lesson study improves secondary mathematics teachers' effective lesson implementation to support students' learning better. The research was conducted in Jimma City, Ethiopia, and employed design-based research with qualitative data collected from two secondary schools and 12…

Purpose: Finding ways in which technology can be used to modify, strengthen, scale up and sustain lesson study (LS) is an emerging field of research. It has become even more important due to a pandemic leading to teacher and student learning being delivered online. The purpose of this paper is to present research findings about experiences of…

New reforms and the Next Generation Science Standards call for three-dimensional learning through the integration of the crosscutting concepts (CCCs) with the science and engineering practices (SEPs) and disciplinary core ideas (DCIs). However, teachers face challenges in knowing how and why to incorporate the CCCs in their planning and teaching,…

Lesson study is a collaborative and contextualised approach to professional learning that involves small groups of teachers working together to design and reflect on the teaching of a research lesson. Although it is a well-established approach to professional learning in classroom-based subjects, research on its effectiveness within physical…

In this study, we explore the following: a) How do secondary student teachers, engaged in collaborative action research, function as critical friends? b) What challenges do they encounter? How do they mitigate these challenges? and c) In what ways did meeting as critical friends influence the student teachers' learning to conduct collaborative…

Purpose: This article describes an effort to ease the tension between boundary spanning roles for interns participating in a yearlong Professional Development School (PDS) program. In order to do this, the structure of a Social Studies Methods course was revised to mimic a professional learning community (PLC) and assignments were not evaluated…

This study aimed to investigate the needs and develop guidelines for improving competency-based instruction for teachers in small-sized secondary schools under the Office of Nakhon Ratchasima Secondary Education. The research gathered data from 216 teachers drawn by using a stratified random sampling method, the sample size was determined by…

Few studies have examined how professional learning communities (PLCs) engage in collaborative inquiry over multiple years. This longitudinal study explored how a team of high school science teachers collaborated with researchers and district-based coaches in a PLC over 4 years. We examined (1) how the PLC, which was situated in a culturally and…

This study examined the impact of an Adapted Lesson Study Project (ALSP), an undergraduate course assignment, utilized for field-experience, on teaching efficacy, and the quality of lessons developed by pre-service teachers. Participants consisted of 23 undergraduate early childhood education students enrolled in an early childhood mathematics and…

Offering online courses can be seen as a way of enhancing the three essential "presences" (teaching, cognitive, and social) of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model. Creating and enhancing cognitive, teaching, and social presences require an innovation for teachers during planning, implementing, and evaluating their online courses. As…

Information literacy (IL) open learning object repositories (LORs) provide a space for librarians to find and exchange instruction resources and lessons. Given many librarians enter the workforce with little or no formal training or educational opportunities to learn about pedagogy, these repositories are indispensable resources to the Library and…

Rely on "Enriching the Learning" to help your school community answer critical question 4 of the Professional Learning Communities at Work® process: How will we extend the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency? The book's wide range of student enrichment strategies, templates, and tools is designed to fully prepare…