This is an excerpt from "The State of Educators' Professional Learning in Alberta: Executive Summary" (Learning Forward, 2018), part of a series produced by Learning Forward. Coinciding with the 2016 Annual Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Learning Forward commissioned and supported a study of professional learning across the…

Within higher education, rubric use is expanding. Whereas some years ago the topic of rubrics may have been of interest only to faculty in colleges of education, in recent years the focus on teaching and learning and the emphasis from accrediting bodies has elevated the importance of rubrics across disciplines and different types of assessment.…

This study examines how researchers can better understand the instructional and practical realities of teachers through collective sensemaking. Traditional approaches to curriculum design engage learning models without accounting for the needed flexibility of teachers. This approach has resulted in tension and gatekeeping--inhibiting the…

Childhood shyness and associated psychosocial difficulties can place pupils at risk of underperforming cognitively. Yet shyness is not regarded as a special need demanding a response from education professionals. In this article, drawing on data from a national study of how teachers support shy children, we trace how teachers negotiate this…

In this action research study, we investigate the impact that social collaborative professional learning activities have on art educators' perceptions of required professional development on art assessment. The study was conducted in the context of a district-wide professional development program and evaluated through a performance-based…

In recent years, teachers around the world have been increasingly confronted with various expectations concerning the improvement of their classroom practices and school activities. One factor widely acknowledged to facilitate school and classroom improvement is a strong collaborative culture among teachers. As such, teachers are expected to work…

School principals play a key role in the creation and nurture of school conditions conducive to Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). In China, whereas the term PLC itself is an imported concept and rarely used by school practitioners, the precept of PLCs, collaborative teacher learning activities, are firmly embedded in teachers' daily work.…

Faculty members often lack support structures in which they can support each other in crisis. The authors recently discovered that sharing ideas with a community of colleagues has made them more resilient. The Civility Community of Practice (CoP) at IUPUI transitioned to a weekly online teaching and support seminar in response to the university's…

During the past two decades there has been a concentrated effort to enact standards-based education reforms at the federal, state, and local levels. Following a grounded theory approach, this article examines the experiences of secondary social studies teachers who have been directly impacted by the incorporation of English Language Arts based…

Years of research on teacher quality indicate that the quality and effectiveness of teachers have a significant influence on learner achievements. The quality of teachers and their teaching practice is widely debated where quality may depend on the teacher having acquired sound and relevant knowledge and skills to ensure effective teaching. The…

Leadership has been identified as an important influence on the provision of primary physical education (PE) in several different contexts. To date, however, there is a lack of data explicitly investigating informal PE leadership provided by generalist teachers in primary schools. Accordingly, this research sought to explore generalist teachers'…

Discipline-specific instructional improvement policies require teachers to implement new teaching and collaborative practices. What kinds of leadership moves do principals make to support enactment of new practices? Drawing on leadership theories to examine principals' leadership actions, data come from a qualitative study of three elementary…

The aim of the current study was to extend knowledge of occupational commitment by examining predictors at the teacher- and school-level. Several job resources hypothesized to be positively associated with occupational commitment were examined: helpful feedback, input in decision-making, teacher collaboration, and principal discipline support. The…

Teacher professional development (PD) is about change. One of the most prominent lines of research on PD addresses what makes it an effective change process. This research produces critical features of effective PD, the seemingly active ingredients of teacher change that are meant to guide professionals in the design, implementation, and…

Demographic and policy shifts in U.S. schools have contributed to English learners enrolling in schools with historically few English learners. This phenomenological study used interview data to identify dilemmas that one elementary teacher navigated while working with the sole English learner in her classroom. This context has the potential to…