The current study compares estimates of peer influence from an analytic approach that explicitly address network processes with those from traditional approaches that do not. Using longitudinal network data from the PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience peers project, we obtain estimates of social influence on…

How do people acquire knowledge about which individuals belong to different cliques or communities? And to what extent does this learning process differ from the process of learning higher-order information about complex associations between nonsocial bits of information? Here, the authors use a paradigm in which the order of stimulus presentation…

Environmental educators exchange ideas in social networks, which may in turn impact their practices. This study uses social network analysis, surveys, correlation analysis and interviews to examine the relationship between network and practice change in three professional development programs. In the first program that used face-to-face…

Professional development programs provide an opportunity for environmental educators to develop networks to exchange ideas and practices in professional learning communities. This study investigated how diverse educators develop professional networks for exchanging information through online and face-to-face professional development activities. We…

Network building vitally impacts career development, but in few professions does it impact daily practice more than in teaching. Teacher networks, known as professional learning communities, communities of practice, peer learning circles, virtual professional communities, as well as other names, play a unique and powerful role in education. In…

Pennsylvania began scaling up high-fidelity implementation of SchoolWide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) in 2006-2007 due to converging regulatory, legal, ethical, and practical influences. The Pennsylvania Community of Practice on School-Based Behavioral Health adopted Algozzine et al.'s (2010) blueprint to describe and…

Language learning occurring in authentic contexts has been shown to be more effective. Virtual worlds provide simulated contexts that have the necessary elements of authentic contexts for language learning, and as a result, many studies have adopted virtual worlds as a useful platform for language learning. However, few studies so far have…

This study explored the ways that students in an online teacher education program connected in a specially crafted peer mentoring program developed for cross-level peer mentoring. Program administrators developed the peer mentoring site in response to observations that enrolled students, particularly new students, were often unsure of how to…

The goal of this paper is to use Knowledge Tracing to augment the results obtained from an experiment that investigated the effects of practice schedules using an intelligent tutoring system for fractions. Specifically, this experiment compared different practice schedules of multiple representations of fractions: representations were presented to…

It is widely recognized today that a teacher's surrounding professional community inevitably affects the kind of teaching that students are offered. However, until recently, it has been difficult to quantify and systematically study the nature of professional relationships in schools and districts. The articles in this special issue provide a…

This paper presents the first in a series of studies on the informal advice networks of a community of teachers in an in-service professional development program. The aim of the research was to use Social Network Analysis as a methodological tool to reveal the social networks developed by the teachers, and to examine whether these networks…

This paper presents the annual report of Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) for 2009-2010. This annual report documents the journeys of several participants in their programs who have gone on successfully to college and careers, and demonstrates the potential of young Philadelphians to begin to reach their goals. In telling these stories, they build…

This year's annual report of Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) celebrates the continuing expansion of opportunities for high-quality education and career preparation available to Philadelphia youth. These opportunities--offered by an ever-growing set of partners and program providers--are present in neighborhoods and communities all across the…

A study examined local work-related education and training institutions from a system perspective. Information was obtained through field interviews of staff and administrators in secondary education, community colleges and technical facilities, and Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and similar programs, as well as record data from eight…

This paper presents the annual report of the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) for 2005. Throughout the year, PYN's members continued their focus on linking work and education in ways that promote access for young people to Philadelphia's growth economy, and supply a high-quality workforce to power the City's continued economic development. [For…