Modern technology has enhanced many aspects of life, including classroom education. By offering virtual learning experiences, educational systems can become more efficient and effective at teaching the student population. The "Handbook of Research on Collaborative Teaching Practice in Virtual Learning Environments" highlights program…

Can mentoring and coaching really improve professional practice? How can research and inquiry improve mentoring and coaching practice? "Mentoring and Coaching in Schools" explores the ways in which mentoring and coaching can be used as a dynamic collaborative process for effective professional learning. It demonstrates how the use of practitioner…

This article discusses the value of narrative for conceptualizing and promoting teacher research and inquiry in early childhood teacher education. The article provides an overview of essential forms and functions of narrative, paying particular attention to the contributions of narrative inquiry, which is a research framework rarely applied to…

The study reported here concerns 4 years of collaboration between secondary school teachers and academic researchers, constituting an emerging community of inquiry into mathematics teaching. In the article, the process of forming of this community is discussed, focusing on the reflective activity developed by its members as well as the tensions…

Defined as "any systemic inquiry conducted by teachers... for the purpose of gathering information about how their particular schools operate, how they teach, and how their students learn" (Mertler, 2009), "action research" is empowering and professional research done by teachers to inform and improves their own practices. Although there are many…

In this paper, we discuss our approach to teacher-researcher collaboration and how it is similar and different from other models of teacher collaboration. Our approach to collaboration employed design experimentation (Brown, 1992; Design Based Research Collective, 2003) as a central method since it yields important findings for teachers'…

Teacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this article, the authors draw on survey data collected in primary schools…

This article presents a study exploring the beliefs, knowledge, and practices of four middle and secondary science teachers participating in a collaborative curriculum action research project. Using a case study methodology, the views and practices of these teachers were described and analyzed as they investigated novel ideas about scientific…

During the past decade, researchers in special education have begun to investigate the unique and complex challenges encountered by novice special educators. These investigations have documented numerous factors in special education settings that contribute to the stresses of the first year of teaching for them, including: role ambiguity, students…

The teacher-researchers have made digital portfolios and blogging the centerpieces of their group as ways to share their research and get input from their peers. The effect of this collaborative project, the digital portfolio, on their teaching is discussed.

Researcher-teacher collaboration occurred during the design and implementation of self-management instruction for two middle school students with different disabilities and for two different target behaviors. One student with physical disabilities was taught to increase safe hall travel during school transitions, and the other student with…

The purpose of this article is to examine the teacher research movement from the perspective of three generations of teacher researchers within the context of a unique collaborative science teacher action research group. The question that guided the study was the following: In what ways do three generations of science teachers perceive their…

This article describes a 2-year study that examined the influence of collaborative inquiry on the professional growth of beginning teachers. Participants include 10 novice teachers and 2 university faculty members. Using qualitative methods, the university faculty collected data during the first 2 years of the group's progress in order to…

This how-to guide to classroom inquiry takes educators through the process step-by-step, from beginning to end, answering critical questions on developing the research plan, collecting and analyzing the data, and writing and publishing the results. Seven chapters include: (1) "Teacher Inquiry Defined" (e.g., what teacher inquiry is and how it…

This article will draw on an investigation of teachers' research in a small-scale project involving 19 schools in the North West region of England. The teachers engaged in the research were funded by a government initiative, the Best Practice Research Scholarships Programme, and were mentored and tutored by university staff. The sample is very…