This study explores the coaching experiences of educational administrators in an attempt to gain greater understanding of how they develop the necessary skills to implement, lead, and support technology rich professional learning communities (PLCs). Participants came from a mix of urban, rural, and suburban school districts. Using semi-structured…

Student Ratings of Teaching (SRT) are widely employed to evaluate teaching for both formative and summative purposes. The appropriateness of items on these forms is one factor among many determining the utility and validity of SRT. Another is whether stakeholders are sufficiently knowledgeable to interpret the resulting data. Evidence gathered…

Self-study teacher research is designed to encourage teachers to be agents of their own reform initiatives while working collaboratively with school colleagues. It has proven useful to an array of educators coming from multiple disciplines and programs. In self-study, teachers critically examine their actions and the context of those actions as a…

This article presents an interview with Michael Shepherd, the 2011 NASSP/Virco National Assistant Principal of the Year. In the interview, Shepherd shares how the role of assistant principal is defined at his school. He also talks about how he practices instructional leadership. He puts a strong emphasis on instructional leadership and…

What does committee work entail? The author outlines the effort and the satisfactions. This essay is a sound byte of what needs to be said about the professional benefits one can experience when becoming a full-fledged, participating NCTE member through committee or task force work.

Many believe that the key to translating research into successful practice lies in providing teachers with continuous professional development and ongoing coaching support. In this article, we provide an overview of the relevant coaching literature and describe 4 critical features of an evidence-based preschool literacy coaching model: the coach…

This article presents three case studies that explore a very popular trend in art museum adult education in the last decade--partnerships with medical schools to offer critical professional development in visual observation. Each case study describes a critical perspective in the development and implementation of this programming trend: that of…

This case study examines how a group of early career school leaders used a particular model of professional learning, the Critical Friends Group (The School Reform Initiative, 2010), to continue to learn about leading. More specifically, this study offers an in-depth look at how the use of a structured conversation or protocol, designed to build…

As the body of high quality young adult literature (YAL) continues to grow, what role might these texts play in professional development for educators? This article describes ways in which schools can develop book study programs that use this literature to promote meaningful dialogue and understanding of contemporary adolescent issues. Based on…

This paper reports on the initial outcomes from the end of the fourth year of a 5 year research and professional development project to improve chemistry teaching among three cohorts of chemistry teachers in Manitoba, Canada. The project responds to a new curriculum introduction advocating a tetrahedral orientation (Mahaffy, "Journal of…

This paper presents the development process of a "praxeology" (theory-of-practice) for supporting the teaching of proofs in a CAS environment. The characteristics of the praxeology were elaborated within the frame of a professional development course for teaching analytic geometry with CAS. The theoretical framework draws on Chevallard's…

In this paper, the need to assist university teachers in thinking carefully about what they are teaching, and how this relates to and coheres with their own professional development, is outlined. The underlying argument being made is that any efforts designed to extend and encourage scholarly teaching require us to consider the faculty experiences…

Difficulty securing adequate professional development (PD) has long been a barrier to the effective implementation of educational technology. Concerns about the dearth of PD for helping teachers integrate technology into their instructional practices raised nearly 25 years ago appear to still hold true despite repeated calls for increased…

In 2004 and 2007, the American Physiological Society (APS) Trainee Advisory Committee (TAC) conducted surveys of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators in physiology to identify topics and issues important to those trainees. Two major trends emerged from the data. First, trainees in 2007 expressed somewhat greater interest…

There are many recent changes to the practice of counselling and psychotherapy in Canada. Newly established statutory regulation of psychotherapy in Ontario and Quebec, and new legislation in the province of Nova Scotia protecting the title "counselling therapist," are examples of an emerging trend in Canada that seeks to clearly define…