In this Viewpoint, we aim to raise questions about the positioning of teachers and teacher knowledge in professional development networks. We contend that diverse purposes across professional development configurations labeled "networks" have been glossed over in the literature, obscuring important questions about teacher learning and its role in…

Over the past 15 months, the Virginia Board of Education has been redesigning its public school students' high school educational experience to better prepare them to participate in the global economy. To lay the groundwork for this redesign, the Profile of a Graduate was developed. The profile in turn grew out of a broader review of Virginia's…

Collaboration is now is frequently required among representatives of myriad disciplines to intervene more effectively in complex community and public health problems. A fundamental tenet of collaboration across professions is that it is facilitated by socialization to one's own professional identity and to interprofessional collaboration with…

This article reports on research regarding interprofessional education (IPE) in child welfare conducted in 2009 and 2010. Pre service nursing, social worker and teacher education candidates participated in a workshop that "exposed" (Charles, Bainbridge & Gilbert, 2010) students to IPE in child welfare. This paper addresses a gap in…

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have become increasingly popular in schools. PLCs are groups of teachers, administrators, parents, and students who collaborate to improve their practices and focus on results (DuFour, 2004). Grade-level and department teachers participate in regularly scheduled collaborative team meetings; however, many…

Research has been conducted to identify and analyze how schools are determining that the activities of their Professional Learning Community (PLC) are directly tied to student achievement as there is currently a gap in the existing literature with regards to this topic. For the purpose of this study, a "successful" PLC was defined as one…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to seek to investigate Etienne Wenger's theory of social learning in a community of practice by modeling two simultaneous aspects of teachers' collaborative learning: their engagement in close-knit internal groupings and engagement with colleagues that work externally to the core group. These two learning…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to undertake a personal, historical, analytical and interpretive investigation of the evolution of the concept of authentic leadership in educational administration/leadership over a number of decades. Design/methodology/approach: The paper includes the author's reflections on his own journey on the topic as…

As college communication instructors, we could further assist students by teaching the value of positive networking. This article provides (1) a foundation for positive networking and (2) several successful ways in which students can begin building a strong long-lasting network of professional relationships during the semester…and for their entire…

Leaders in mathematics are responsible for implementing positive change within their school districts and motivating teachers of mathematics to improve their practices. One way mathematics leaders can achieve this goal is by establishing professional collaborations. We analyzed the research and summarized the common attributes found in successful…

One important effect of increasing localized autonomy, authority, responsibility, and accountability has been a growing yet understated recognition that effective business management is an essential component of educational leadership. The education business is expanding and becoming more complex and requires propitious oversight. As a result,…

This article looks across six years of teacher leadership research to explore what today's teachers want (and don't want) from teacher leaders. A secondary analysis was conducted on volumes of teacher leader data, focused on teacher leader-teacher interactions, using a "justice" and "integrity"-oriented framework.…

Novice public middle school principals currently face the challenge of navigating internal micropolitical structures while negotiating educational change during a period of decline. This year-long qualitative study detailed the lived experiences of two suburban novice middle school principals as they found themselves leading within a…

Effective collaboration between early childhood teachers and social workers is now considered critical to providing children with adequate psycho-social supports and services in early childhood settings. In order for this interdisciplinary collaboration to be more effective, opportunities for each discipline to learn about each other's knowledge,…

Academics who engage in collegial socialization can benefit in a variety of ways. The challenge, however, is creating a culture which inspires, within a voluntary model, academics to participate in such activities. Teaching development programs have tended to focus on teaching competencies and problem areas through offerings of workshops. It has…