Implementing district level change to an established teacher leader professional development model calls for an understanding of the power and influence structures within the school district. Levels of power and influence are impacted by four main factors in the change process: roles in the organization, ability to communicate, personal…

The need for professional development is universal, whatever a person's profession. Professionals must continually enrich their knowledge and increase their sense of professionalism over the course of their careers so as to implement current research-based practice. Early childhood professional development brings to the forefront the significance…

The aim of this paper is to develop a conceptual model which allows for an understanding of the general and discipline specific support needed by academics new to the profession. The approach taken is qualitative in nature and centers around a series of semi-structured interviews carried out with new academics and senior managers in two…

Mentoring works as a strategy for helping people and particularly disadvantaged groups of population such as the unemployed, young people or immigrants improve their professional opportunities and succeed in life. It helps give people the confidence, access to valuable resources, and skills they need to reach their potential. The article presents…

The goals of this essay are to shed light on the importance of faculty-student (or staff-student) relationships to student success and to describe the various faculty or staff roles that are available to help students succeed. Students rely on the support of faculty advisors and mentors to help them navigate their undergraduate experiences. Now a…

School districts across America have responded to the accountability movement by increasing professional development activities, including the utilization of onsite coaching strategies for educators. But who is mentoring the mentors? This descriptive study in one Western state found that 56% of instructional coaches reported they did not have a…

The development of research higher degree supervisors is a relatively recent phenomenon. In most cases, supervisor development continues within the traditional workshop mode and remains firmly located within what Bob Smith calls the "administrative framing" of supervision. This framing ensures that a liberal and policy-orientated discourse retains…

The main objective of the Bologna Process is to create a "European space" for higher education that allows for comparability, compatibility, and coherence between the existing systems of higher education across Europe. This objective is commonly known as the European higher education area (EHEA). The creation of the EHEA is a new and…

Based upon the words of small school-district superintendents, this article explores how superintendents might lead in these complex contexts. In national focus groups, thirty-five participants described their decision-making processes as resting upon "doing what's best for students," acknowledging the unique challenges of small school district…

The Behavior Intervention Support Team (BIST) is a proactive school-wide behavior management plan for all students, emphasizing schools partnering with students and parents through caring relationships and high expectations. The BIST program is well-grounded in behavioral theory and combines strength-based and resiliency principles within the…

Professional identity development is an important professional issue. Examining the lived experiences of counselors-in-training (CITs), the authors used grounded theory methodology to describe the transformational tasks that are required for professional identity development. Tasks include finding a personal definition of counseling, internalizing…

The philosophical foundations of action learning research have not received a great deal of attention. In the context of action learning postgraduate and professional programmes in universities, articulation of a philosophy of action learning research seems timely and appropriate. This article explores a philosophy of action learning research,…

This paper will explore how to connect the administrative and professional perspectives in the era of accountability. Conflicting school accountability perspectives come from the contradiction between managerialism and professionalism. This inconsistency in accountability may have shifted the teaching profession's role toward supervisory…

Despite repeated calls to improve the quality of Australian business higher education, sector-wide improvement has been elusive. This paper presents an analysis of a multi-institutional project undertaken by the Australian Business Deans Council Teaching and Learning Network. Earlier studies of change in higher education demonstrated the need to…

We examine the impact of teacher professional development on a key aspect of teacher quality--teacher knowledge. Specifically we use English Language Arts teacher content and pedagogy assessments to determine whether the California Professional Development Institutes significantly improve teacher content knowledge and whether teachers retain that…