Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore shared workspace and professional learning community (PLC) interactions in schools. The collaborative culture and PLCs were parts of the school culture. The collaborative culture of each school was designed to ensure teachers share intellectual and physical contributions in learning to investigate…

Master degree programs have rapidly increased in Colombia to the point where they are one of the most favored options for English teachers seeking to bolster their professional development. This survey study characterizes eighty participants, their five master programs, and their perceptions concerning the influence these graduate courses exerted…

Background: Data-driven decision making continues to be a common feature of educational reform agendas across the globe. In many U.S. schools, the teacher team meeting is a key setting in which data use is intended to take place, with the aim of planning instruction to address students' needs. However, most prior research has not examined how the…

This paper reports a study into the development of staff understanding of assessment and assessment practice. Eight teachers from two universities constructed an initial concept map about assessment that was discussed in a one-to-one semi-structured interview. A year later, a new map was created and the interview focused on change in thinking and…

Does participation in a reflective teaching development program transform educators? In a three-year teaching development program, faculty met in small interdisciplinary groups with peer facilitators and used online resources to complement their learning activities. The first two cohorts of participants found that involvement in a teaching…

The main objectives in building professional learning communities are to improve teachers' professionalism and well-being, and create positive impacts on student learning. It is a question of changing the school culture. The main objective of this quantitative study was to investigate the maturity level of thirteen Finnish schools as professional…

The purpose of this study was to compare differences in the quality of professional development between U.S. music educators and teachers of other disciplines. Data were drawn from the 2011-2012 Schools and Staffing Survey. Factors such as types of professional development, quantity of activities, and levels of satisfaction were analyzed through a…

In recent years, teacher collaboration has emerged as an important strategy to drive improvement, informed by research showing how on-the-job interactions can boost teacher development and effectiveness. Schools across the United States are adjusting their professional cultures and workplace practices in response, creating formal opportunities for…

Contemporary teachers have an obligation to support and scaffold students' learning in digital technologies and to do this in authentic contexts. In order for teachers to be successful in this, their own competency in digital technologies needs to be high, and their own 21st century learning skills of communication, collaboration, creativity and…

In this self-study, we look at the contribution made towards our professional learning through an aspect of teacher education work that is not commonly featured in the research literature: exploring the implications of our work as co-editors of an international collection about teacher educators' journeys of professional becoming. Through this…

This article describes learning walks that focus on enhancing student intrinsic motivation and learning at a dual-language pre-K-8 urban public school. Descriptions in this case study are a composite based on the authors' actual experiences as well as ideas from literature and other schools. About once a week at Chicago's Talcott Fine Arts and…

This article reports on findings from a research project on interdisciplinary collaboration between mainstream school teachers and special school teachers. The aim of the research project has been to examine the knowledge of special school teachers and how this knowledge can contribute to the development of an inclusive learning environment in…

Learn how to increase instructional rigor so that all students can reach higher levels of learning! In this new edition of a best seller, author Barbara R. Blackburn offers practical ideas for raising expectations, increasing complexity, integrating scaffolding into instruction, creating open-ended choices and projects, and much more. This timely…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the most influential elements of teacher evaluation as perceived by K-8 teachers and administrators, determined through their lived experiences related to this topic. The researcher utilized a phenomenological approach in this study, engaging in semi-structured interviews of 11 K-8 teachers and…

This study set out to explore how five principals experienced collective teacher efficacy in their schools. The uniqueness of this study was the context of collective teacher efficacy in urban turnaround schools. Each school in the study was once considered among the lowest performing schools in Massachusetts, with persistent low student…