As the superintendent of a school district, how do you establish yourself as a leader of learning? This question was paramount to the author as he began his first year as superintendent in Kelso, a 5,000-student district in southwestern Washington. He wanted his staff and all stakeholders to know he was serious about instructional improvement and…

Teaching is changing. It is no longer simply about passing on knowledge to the next generation. Teachers in the twenty-first century, in all educational sectors, have to cope with an ever-changing cultural and technological environment. Teaching is now a design science. Like other design professionals--architects, engineers, programmers--teachers…

This study examined the role that mentoring, formal networking, and informal networking have played in the lives of women who have obtained the position of superintendent in the state of California. The researcher explored the access that female administrators had to mentors and networks, followed by the perceived benefits they received when they…

This study focused on a postsecondary organization in California, which has embarked on a groundbreaking, highly interactive online Master of Arts in Teaching Program. This program provides students with the flexibility and ability to not only share and interact with peers from across the nation but also work with a diverse group of instructors.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate entry-level student affairs practitioners' perceptions of professional development and their involvement in individualized professional development opportunities within the student affairs field. The literature review explored the founding of student affairs, a historical review of student affairs,…

In the physical spaces of writing classrooms and the conceptual spaces of writing practice and pedagogy, knowledge about computers is constructed by many individuals, groups, and institutions. Each has a stake in defining what computers mean for education and the role computers should play in the everyday life schools. Some of these stakeholders…

The purpose of this paper is to report on a small pilot study in which an heuristic was used to enable principals to reflect on the confidence they have in their existing leadership knowledge and how they might add to that knowledge in the future. The motivation for the study arose from a literature review of strategies for leadership development…

A small group of new academic developers reflected on their induction into the profession and wondered if things could have been done differently. The researchers decided to question the directors of three tertiary academic development units about how they recruited new developers, what skills and competences they looked for and how they inducted…

In this study, we examined National Board certified physical education teachers' (NBCPETs) perceptions of change as a result of certification. Randomly selected NBCPETs (65; women = 53, men = 12) were interviewed. Analysis was done through the lens of Lawson's (1989) Model of the Interactive Factors Influencing Workplace Conditions for the…

Most, if not all, school librarians concur that funding has been their major problem in recent years. State and local budgets have been slashed, grant money is spread thin, yet still the bar remains high for school librarians to remain on the cutting edge of information trends, issues, and technology, and to provide training for teacher colleagues…

In the author's small school district of about 1,450 students and over 150 staff members, she is considered a local expert on all things social media. She has a minor presence on many of the social-media platforms including Twitter, Blogger, Pinterest, and Edmodo, and more accounts that she can remember. Interacting daily with her personal…

The purpose of this study was to determine the views of teachers who are employed in the primary education (grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) on professional development and professional cooperation and whether there are significant differences among these views in terms of gender, level of education and length of service variables. The population of the…

The growth and evolution of professional doctorates in Australia, the UK and other parts of the English-speaking world has been widely reported and discussed. Recently, forms of doctorate have emerged that are not geared to specific professions or disciplines, and that are used by senior practitioners as vehicles for professional development and…

Using the Threshold Concepts Framework, I explore places where faculty frequently get stuck when attempting to adopt new technologies. They may be held back by preconceptions that technology is superfluous to traditional teaching methods or believe that they must understand the technology perfectly before introducing it into their teaching.…

During these hard economic times, Heads of Department (HoDs) need to find cost effective ways of providing CPD for their staff. An astute department or subject leader will want to be adept at creating the right opportunities for professional learning for their staff with a minimum of expenditure. This article provides ideas on how to find cost…