Some professional learning communities (PLC) are successful, and others are unsuccessful leading to questions about which characteristics of a group of people are important to the success of the community. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the factors contributing to the presence of a community of practice between…

Members in online communities of practice (CoPs) take advantage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to exchange practical or work-related knowledge in asynchronous online environments. Practical knowledge represents individuals' mental models allowing them to interact with the environment and perform tasks. With ICTs, practical…

In 2016, a Midwestern state legislature passed the Read by Grade Three law that mandates students who are not proficient readers at the end of third grade to repeat the third grade. The problem is that teachers struggle with implementing effective instructional interventions, and they acknowledge their lack of experience with effective…

Increasingly, policymakers, school and school system leaders are turning to Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) as a means to achieve bottom-up educational improvement at scale (Brown and Poortman, 2018). Likening the leadership challenges of establishing PLNs to conquering a labyrinth, this paper draws on extant literature to explore one key…

Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University and founding president of the Learning Policy Institute, is a longtime leader in education, an expert on professional learning, and an influential researcher and policy advisor. She has been leading President Joe Biden's education transition team,…

This paper explores how cross-institutional Peer Observation of Teaching (PoT) provided a structured opportunity for professional conversations by which observers and observees shared and developed their perspectives on teaching experience and skills. Such professional conversations offer opportunities for both parties to gain a perspective on…

Teacher collaborative learning is key in teacher professional development. Yet, how teachers learn in cross-cultural professional development settings remains largely unexplored. This paper examines the case of a Chinese mathematics teacher who learned through addressing various challenges when teaching in an English school in a China-UK exchange…

This study explores the value of co-creative play spaces for faculty professional learning and development. Data are drawn from the researchers' coauthored publications, which utilized arts-inspired data generation modes. The pluralist methodological route and analysis results in design elements for professional learning captured through rich…

Lesson study (LS) is a professional development practice that has mainly remained conducted by elementary, secondary, and preservice schoolteachers. However, in recent years, different studies have explored its practice among higher education (HE) faculty members. This article presents the first systematic review on LS among HE faculty members.…

Teacher agency plays a vital role in professional learning. The revealing practice indicates its fluidity in the process of collaboration. Research suggests that learning through interaction happens by engaging teachers. However, the role of teacher agency remains unclear at a systemic level. This article reports a yearlong ethnographic study of…

Purpose: This research investigated whether structuring an inquiry-oriented professional learning network to include school-based co-teaching partners would amplify educators' success in taking up and adapting evidence-based understandings and practices as meaningful in their contexts. Our research questions were: (1) What conditions did educators…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers perceived the experience of participating in the professional learning opportunity of collegial visits (CVs) as a facilitator of teacher self-efficacy (TSE) and collective teacher efficacy (CTE) in the Northeastern United States. The research questions that guided this…

Collaborative leadership is an effective organizational model, yielding opportunities for teachers and benefits for schools; however, challenges exist when teams execute collaborative leadership. The purpose of this action research study was to investigate and improve the experiences of teachers working in a school with collaborative leadership.…

The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of teachers regarding their continued professional growth. This research explored teacher professional learning through lesson study as it embraces growth for both teachers and students through collaborative conversations. This study aimed to examine the effects of lesson study professional…

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the impact of four cross-institutional teaching enhancement projects (TEPs), a relatively new form of professional collaboration. The focus is on the impact at departmental, institutional and cross-institutional levels because such impact is the main reason for establishing cross-institutional TEPs.…