Collaborative working has been part of official government policy for some time and whilst a great deal has been claimed about its benefits, in terms of better quality services and improved outcomes, it would seem that translating policy intentions into practice has hitherto proved a challenge. Moreover, evidence concerning the effectiveness of…

A 2004 paper, "The invisible workers" by Szekeres, lamented the "invisibility" of professional staff in Australian higher education. Even then, professional staff constituted more than half the university workforce, but they were defined by what they were not (non-academic) and they experienced a high level of frustration in…

Teachers need to be taught how to collaborate. When the Stamford (Conn.) Public Schools introduced PLCs in the district's 20 schools, they learned of the four roles that districts play when implementing PLCs systemwide: 1) Districts must involve teachers and administrators in developing and leading the PLC process, 2) they must teach…

Teachers' efficacy beliefs are critical to improving student learning, but we have yet to fully understand how these beliefs develop. The prevailing model of teachers' efficacy development emerges from cognitive theories, but sociocultural theories may add insights to modeling the impact of teachers' school contexts. This case study takes a…

In spring 2012, Sherry Kaufman, a consultant at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, was asked to support kindergarten teachers in deepening their practice of constructivism and exploring the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Central to such an approach is the belief that all learning is socially constructed through interaction…

This qualitative study of four executive doctoral programs for experienced educational leaders examines the relationship between specific program features and learning opportunities for students. I found that the weekend format, cohort model, and professionally grounded curriculum and assessments provided important opportunities for reflective…

What is an emeritus professor? The emeritus role means different things at different colleges and universities, but generally it has an elusive, ambiguous quality. It may simply mean that a professor has retired with an honorific title acknowledging many years of service to an institution. Or it may mean that a senior professor has transitioned to…

This article focuses on personal learning environments (PLEs). The idea with PLEs is to put students in a more central position in the learning process by allowing them to design their own learning environments and by emphasising the self-regulated nature of the learning. This study describes the structure, functions and challenges of PLEs made by…

Forty per cent of new teachers in Australia leave the profession in the first five years (Ingersoll, 2012; Watt & Richardson, 2011; Hartsuyker, 2007). Stress, induction failure and professional isolation have been identified as key attrition factors. Mentoring has been used both internationally and in Australia to enhance induction and…

High-fidelity human patient simulation has emerged as a valuable medium to reinforce educational content within programs of nursing. As simulation learning experiences have been identified as augmenting both didactic lecture content and clinical learning, these experiences have expanded to incorporate interprofessional education. Review of…

Professional learning communities and teacher efficacy are at the core of many of the current educational reform models. The intention of this dissertation was to identify the correlation between professional learning communities and collective teacher efficacy for math data teams in the six Kaua'i Complex Area secondary schools, as measured by…

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which the practice of mentoring aided male and female administrators to secure employment at an administrative level within four Tennessee public school systems as a measured by the Carter Mentoring Scale during the 2009-2010 school year. The study was intended to provide information about…

Purpose: This paper, taking a participatory perspective of learning, seeks to look at the interaction between individuals and their workplace, focusing on the perceptions of workplaces and self by beginning teachers in terms of support for their learning. Design/methodology/approach: The study presents an analysis of 37 interviews from 17…

This study shows how a group of English language lecturers use storytelling as a form of professional dialogue. The aim of the study is to highlight the dialogic role of storytelling in supporting the construction of lecturers' professional knowledge and not to identify lecturers' professional knowledge. In a professional development project, 12…

This article examines how managers' tendency to discuss new ideas with others in their professional networks depends on the density of shared ties surrounding a given relationship. Consistent with prior research which found that embeddedness enhances information flow, an egocentric network survey of mid-level executives shows that managers tend to…