Purpose: Mentoring supports children, adolescents and young adults on their career paths and presents an important extracurricular educational format. The COVID-19 pandemic created a strong impetus for the deployment of virtual mentoring programs (VMPs), in which mentors and mentees communicate completely or predominantly through information and…

This study analyzes mentor teachers' perceptions of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) professional development in STEM informal learning spaces and the support needed to nurture practices of CRP. Additionally, the study investigates culturally relevant professional development's (CRPD) influence on mentor teachers' transference of CRP theory into…

Education is a perpetually evolving field, especially with the rapid advancement of technology and the upsurge of the globalization phenomenon (Crawford and Kirby 2008). Students need to become familiar with social interactions that they will eventually encounter in the future. However, in order for students to effectively participate in…

Faced with school closures in the spring of 2020 due to COVID-19, middle level teacher candidates were left with no way to finish their field experiences. The challenge continued into the fall with many schools providing only virtual learning and some not allowing visitors on campus. This article describes the steps one university middle level…

In 2020, STEM training programs across the country were challenged to provide support to students during a nation-wide shutdown of research institutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Five U.S. high school science internship programs funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, with a history of collaboration, developed innovative…

Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine and Comprehensive Cancer Center coordinate in-depth research immersion STEM programs to engage high school students in biomedical research and encourage pursuit of careers in health-related research and clinical care. Due to COVID-19, the 2020 programs were delivered entirely virtually. Student…

The purpose of this paper is to share a model of a principal preparation program that is socially responsible. The program is collaborative with two departments at the Texas A&M University College of Education and Human Development: Educational Administration and Human Resource Development and Educational Psychology (Bilingual Education). The…

This article presents exploratory research into an education-based virtual mentoring provision, the Virtual Professional Learning and Development (VPLD) program, and uses the Elements of Value Pyramid to help frame findings in a way that highlights the participants' (mentors' and mentees') perceived value of working together. Participants were…

The future of faculty development rests, in part, on forming guided "communities of practice" to foster the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), which may enhance both scholarly productivity and pedagogical effectiveness. This article will discuss University of North Georgia's SoTL Academy, which bridges geographic and scheduling…

As enrollments in cyber charter schools grow, it becomes increasingly important to understand how parents engage in their students' learning. Researchers have hypothesized that parental engagement is even more critical when online students learn from home, but few researchers have examined parents' engagement behavior--especially parents of…

This article reports on the cognitive and affective development of students being mentored in virtual reference interview skills by professional librarians. The authors present a case study which examines the impact on student learning resulting from librarian mentor participation and collaboration with students on a course assignment. This study…

In a North Texas school district, students taking online courses in a variety of subject areas were not successfully completing courses at the district's expected levels. The district pays for courses and student support while remaining financially responsible to the community and programmatically to students' online success. Students'…

Far from being dusty old relics who are guardians of the book, embedded librarians need to be proactively leading students through the digital maze of the virtual library. Working with students more than 7,000 miles away changed perceptions of how to teach and learn, and how people interact online. We will share how as embedded librarians we…

In this chapter, the authors draw on their experiences with working in building virtual communities of teachers and a pilot program to examine the prospects for increasing consistency in the effectiveness of new teacher support through online networks. Although not intended as a substitute for high-quality face-to-face mentoring experiences,…

This paper presents the longitudinal learning journey of two educators who participated in the Virtual Professional Learning and Development programme (VPLD) between 2010 and 2013. Each participant's story of change describes the process and outcomes of their involvement in a future-focused environment of virtual mentorship supported by a tailored…