The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify, investigate, and describe the espoused Pennsylvania Principal Mentoring Network (PPMN) training program and protocols for the principals who served as mentors for newly hired principals in Pennsylvania. This study posed three research questions: (1) what was the espoused training provided…

The American Nurses Association advocates for nursing professional development (NPD) specialists to have an earned graduate degree, as well as educational and clinical expertise. However, many NPD specialists have limited exposure to adult learning theory (ALT), and this lack of exposure may reduce organizational knowledge transfer (KT) and the…

Today, women comprise nearly half the U.S. workforce and outnumber men in many previously male-dominated fields. This seismic cultural and demographic shift has dramatically impacted organizations. The most obvious impact is the presence of, and dependence on, increased numbers of women employees throughout organizations. Retention of talented…

The intent of this qualitative study was to examine pre-service teachers' growing awareness of the role dispositions and autonomy play in the classroom and the implications these constructs have for teaching and learning. Teacher candidates' written reflections and focus group statements revealed three robust emergent themes: engagement,…

Incorporating Vygotsky's concept formation theory and Berger's appropriation theory, an assessment which highlights authentic operations with the concept of area was designed and administered to 44 sixth grade students to determine what types of understanding they maintained. The results indicated the more novel the situation, the more diverse…

John Dewey knew that when students were actively involved in their learning, they were more motivated and achieved higher. Unfortunately, our practices often negatively affect motivation, such as when teachers emphasize competition, social comparison, normative grading criteria, public forms of evaluation, and ability self-assessment. Most…

In this article we present a conceptual framework that we have found sufficiently robust and broad-based to offer a platform for engaging with social and educational challenges in collaboration with our students and research participants. In our framework we employ aspects of the work done by Engestrom (1987; 2001) in terms of cultural-historical…

This article presents the concept of facilitative theorizing as an alternative to prescriptive and descriptive theory in educational technology. The authors contend that these traditional forms of theory do not offer sufficient assistance to practitioners as they go about everyday design work. Facilitative theorizing, as an alternative, is…

This article problematizes the role of autobiographical narratives in adult learning and suggests that the life histories produced by adult learners in our classrooms are, in important senses, fictions. Rather than being the free expressions of experience and selfhood, students' narratives are multiply overdetermined, both by the cultural frames…

Unplanned events occur every day and have a deep impact on individuals' lives. The happenstance learning theory (Krumboltz, 2009; Krumboltz & Levin, 2010), briefly summarized in this article, provides guidance for employment counselors assisting clients to clarify goals and brainstorm actions to capitalize on chance events.

The purpose of this study is to apply the Rasch model to investigate both the Van Hiele theory for geometric development and an associated test. In terms of the test, the objective is to investigate the functioning of a classic 25-item instrument designed to identify levels of geometric proficiency. The dataset of responses by 244 students (106…

Previous research indicates that lesson study can support preservice teachers' abilities to professionally notice. This qualitative case study examined specific lexical and indexical conversational components of lesson study analysis meetings that afford or constrain elementary preservice teachers' incidences of professionally noticing students'…

Since Edwards' influential study on mature women students and families in the 1990s, questions have been raised about the effects of Higher Education (HE) on family lives. Edwards maintained that relationships were at risk of breakdown due to the changing identity, increased self-esteem and enhanced confidence levels of women students. Men were…

This article explores the development of pedagogical content knowledge in relation to one teacher's experience in learning to engage in a Vygotskian approach to teaching second language (L2) pragmatics known as "concept-based pragmatics instruction" (CBPI). The teacher, Mrs. Hanks, was a PhD candidate in second language acquisition at…

The Simmons World Challenge is a unique, interdisciplinary program recently developed at Simmons College. It immerses students in an intensive winter-session course that challenges them to tackle a pressing social issue, such as poverty or hunger, and create actionable solutions to the problem. The program was conceived and designed to harness the…