Recent innovations in professional development are rife with a wide array of efforts focused on teacher collaboration. In this essay, we address some of the unexamined assumptions about the nature and significance of interactions in teacher professional collaboration, drawing on the concept of the "fourth wall" from theater and film…

Transitioning into a new role can be difficult in any walk of life, and this is no different for physical educators entering a new teaching environment. In a new setting, a physical educator may go through a socialization process where beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and teaching philosophies are influenced. Teacher socialization research suggests…

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…

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…

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…

Teachers are the "lone rangers" of education. They are sequestered in their classrooms, unable to see what their colleagues are doing. All too often, good teachers have few, if any, opportunities to share their teaching techniques with others in their profession. Based on the development of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and…