"A strong K-12 physical education program is usually backed up by a strong leader" (Franck, 2007, p. 7). Strong and persistent leadership is especially important in today's reality of undervalued physical education. Despite the obesity epidemic and the many health problems facing youth, physical education is viewed as a low-status…

Material resources, personalized support, time to collaborate, and strong principal leadership are necessary for making curricular and instructional shifts. The authors of this article share the lessons they learned about supporting implementation of the Common Core State Standards. They draw on interviews with teachers, as well as field notes…

Dr. James Lytle's discussion of the "destruction" of the School District of Philadelphia was indeed a bitter pill for Indi Ekanayake to swallow. As an educator who is both an alumnus of Teach For America and a charter school employee, Ekanayake feels as if he might be a representative of the types of people whom Dr. Lytle is…

A visit to a primary school in Dublin, Ireland, shows that, although the structure of the Irish school system is much different than in the U.S., the professional learning needs and challenges are very much the same. In this article, Anthony Armstrong, publications editor at Learning Forward, writes about his meeting with Maria Spring, principal…

This article explores the powerful idea of capital and articulates its importance for professional work, professional capacity, and professional effectiveness. Systems that invest in professional capital recognize that education spending is an investment in developing human capital from early childhood to adulthood, leading to rewards of economic…

Purpose: At a time when secondary vocational education is implementing competence-based education (CBE) on a large scale, to adapt to the needs of students and of the labour market in a modern society, many vocational schools have recognised that interdisciplinary teacher teams are an important condition for this implementation. In order to…

This paper examines the evolution of the professional identities of student teachers (STs) in a paired-placement teaching practicum in Vietnam. The study draws on activity theory, its notion of contradiction, and Vygotsky's concepts of ZPD and "perezhivanie", to identify the factors driving the intricate learning process. Opportunities…

Many professors recognize that online education is changing the landscape of academe. But faculty members at several colleges are making it clear that they will not be steamrolled. Philosophy professors at San Jose State University last week wrote an open letter saying they refused to use material from an edX course, taught by a famous Harvard…

The recent call for a disciplinary perspective on literacy instruction in the content areas has generated considerable interest among literacy educators. This column addresses some of the questions that have been raised about disciplinary literacy. These questions concern the definition and assessment of disciplinary literacy, as well as the…

Work contexts are frequently referred to as spaces of learning and production of individual and/or collective knowledge. In such contexts specific dynamics are developed which cause the processes of learning and of knowledge production to have particularities. This paper aims at accounting for some dynamics that are associated with those…

This study aimed to understand how people learn and teach informally in an anonymous online bulletin board, the primary purpose of which is not learning and teaching. We conducted a qualitative analysis of comments and replies tagged to the most popular postings of an anonymous online bulletin board, during the global economic crisis in 2008-2009.…

This study examines an embedded professional development practice for secondary teachers, namely peer-to-peer observations (P2POs). P2POs involve teachers identifying goals and watching colleagues teach in order to expand their knowledge, practice and pedagogy. The research questions addressed are: what are teachers' experiences with P2POs, and…

This study investigated the effects of a guided collaboration approach during professional learning community meetings (PLC's) on the perceptions of general and special educators as well as the effect on student performance as measured by benchmark evaluation. A mixed methodology approach was used to collect data through surveys, weekly…

This study aimed 1) to describe a school principal's leadership and the context of the school's overall teacher culture that cultivated an award-winning team at an elementary school; 2) to analyze the award-winning team's learning behaviors, shared goals, values, beliefs, mutual interactions or dialogues, and sharing of experiences; and 3) to…

The interaction of leadership, collaboration, and networking in the development of Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC) is examined in five north Wales primary schools noted for their ESDGC development. Strong leadership and considerable, but varying, forms of distributed leadership were found in each of the…