We report on the establishment of communities of practice at four Australian institutions and evaluate their effectiveness and durability as a means of building staff and institutional capacity for interdisciplinary teaching. A community of practice approach is a potentially valuable methodology for overcoming dynamics of fragmentation, isolation…

How do we determine if incoming students are ready for college-level work? California's community college system is currently working to address this complex question in a more nuanced, comprehensive, and equitable way. This research brief offers insights that can inform these efforts resulting from the Student Transcript-Enhanced Placement Study…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the gap between conceptualizations of social injustices and the desired social transformation that addresses multiple social subsystems and levels on one hand, and social justice leadership that addresses intra-school efforts on the other. The paper aims to expand the conceptualization of social…

STEM Pathways aims to increase youths' long-term interest, learning and achievement in STEM through a deliberate and interconnected system of STEM learning opportunities. STEM Pathways is a partnership of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), The Bakken, The Bell Museum of Natural History, Minnesota Zoo,…

A review of American charter schools and Swedish free-school research is outlined, providing strong evidence that both free-market models are flawed in their claims of enhancing young people's educational experience. A substantial body of work is included that strongly indicates charter and free schools increase social segregation and lower…

This article reports on the collaborative efforts undertaken for systematic statewide support for the recruitment, development, and retention of quality leaders in schools and school districts in Kansas, USA. The author presents the case of a strong sense of "collaboration" that made the difference and stimulated movement from vision…

Universities have been increasingly engaged in international collaborations with peer institutions overseas. In recent years, Confucius Institutes have emerged as a new model of collaboration between American universities and Chinese universities. In an attempt to identify factors contributing to successful international university collaborations,…

While recreational reading material was once an integral part of the academic library collection and librarians were seen as guides in reading development for students, this has not been the case in the last 50 years. Fiscal constraints have forced library professionals to make choices so that leisure reading material has not been viewed as a high…

Career assessments are a common resource used by career practitioners internationally to help inform individuals' career decision-making. Research on the topic of cross-cultural career assessment has been mostly limited to the applicability of an established inventory to a different culture. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the existing…

By the mid-19th century, liberal protestant universities had allowed their religious identity to slip away. During the same period, Catholic institutions had maintained their religious identity. Catholicism's stance against modernist thought had held the day. In the 1960s, the Aristotelian-Thomistic hegemony was broken, allowing for a pluralistic…

Harrisonburg, Virginia, a community nestled in the fertile hills of the Shenandoah Valley, is emblematic of the demographic changes taking shape in the U.S. for some years now. The town's agricultural industry has attracted a large number of immigrant workers from Central America. In addition, Harrisonburg's refugee resettlement center has drawn…

Drawing on their personal experiences, the authors reflect on the relationship between the European Educational Research Association (EERA) Council and the National Educational Research Associations (NERAs). The article will argue that while much of the work undertaken by the EERA Council is hugely valuable, at times it can be difficult to see a…

This paper explores how, in the light of global economic downturn and rising student populations, new academic-industrial models for research collaboration based upon specific technological expertise and knowledge can be developed as potential mechanisms for preserving and extending central university research infrastructure. The paper explores…

The primacy of the research question in designing studies affords an opportunity for enhancing collaborations between researchers and "practitioners". This paper describes the use of a modified Delphi technique to co-generate research questions for a collaborative research study co-funded by a university and a natural history museum.…

Educators from eight institutions engaged in collaborative self-studies of their own practices to gain deeper insight into the significance of narrative-based writing supporting the process of teacher induction. A series of teacher induction institutes based on narrative writing processes provided the context for critical exploration of the lived…