Early childhood teachers had to restructure instruction when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and instruction was completed online. The problem was that early childhood teachers faced challenges using developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) in online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to…

The purpose of the qualitative descriptive study was to explore how elementary and secondary math teachers describe their understanding of the positive or negative factors affecting the creation of effective collaboration regarding transitioning student outcomes in a large southern California school district. The conceptual framework for the study…

In a time of growing teacher shortages, Black teachers are rapidly and disproportionately leaving the profession. Drawing upon their interviews with 30 Black teachers in the California Bay Area, Jessica Lee Stovall and Tara R. Sullivan provide insight into what it will take to keep Black teachers in the profession. The interviews depict both the…

This study examines opportunities for teacher professional growth and innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data, including responses to both closed and open-ended questions, were collected from 276 elementary-school teachers who taught online in two school districts in California. Quantitative and qualitative analyses document the…

The importance of teacher collaboration and professional growth are highlighted by their inclusion in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In ESSA, it is recommended that teachers are provided with opportunities to collaborate and participate in learning communities. The purpose of this action research study was to address the problem of…

In this collaborative, multi-voice paper we tell the story of our design collaboration. By describing the process of one design team of teacher educators, we offer a template of what it means to center teachers' lives and experiences as we design professional development with and for them.

This self-study focuses on two teacher educators' (from the United States) exploration and examination - with the help of two critical friends (faculty from China) - of the benefits and challenges associated with cross-cultural collaboration. The teacher educators designed and implemented a virtual collaborative cross-cultural, fifteen-week…

Traditional teacher professional development (PD) programs frequently lack sufficient face-to-face preparation time to adequately support the implementation of evidence-based pedagogical strategies in classrooms, with teachers citing insufficient preparedness and training time for new methods. To investigate potentials for online PD methods to…

This case study explored Spanish-speaking educators' perceptions and experiences of dual-language immersion (DLI) professional learning (PL). The study aimed to understand how PL offerings could best support and meet the needs of DLI Spanish teachers' best practices in the target language. The perceptions and experiences of seven Spanish DLI…

Purpose. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to discover the approaches teachers use to create collective teacher efficacy (CTE) while teaching online at one elementary school located in Southern California. Methodology. A case study design, using semistructured interviews, was used to answer the following central research question: How…

The topic for this research was co-teaching and collaboration between those working in education. The problem addressed was obstacles to co-teaching and how it hindered co-teaching practices in an isolated small school district in rural California. The conceptual framework included social constructivism, collaboration, co-teaching, teacher…

The purpose of this pilot study is to understand the impact of Family Group Conferencing (FGC) on the collaboration among general education and special education teachers, teachers' attitudes toward family outreach and perceived outcomes of preschool students with and without disabilities enrolled in inclusive classrooms during distance learning.…

The success of implementing Common Core State Standards (CCSS) depends not only on the extent to which educators deeply understand the new standards but also on the expectations, values, and resources that support their readiness for making necessary instructional change. Educators' understanding of and beliefs about CCSS may largely drive their…

The pandemic has exacerbated teacher attrition in California with 88% of the hiring demand in high needs areas of education (Darling-Hammond et al., 2018). The shortage of credentialed teachers has increased the need to fill positions with intern teachers who have limited or no teaching experience. This is most prevalent in special education,…

Effective mentor-mentee pairings tend to increase mentees' efficacy and motivation, bolster commitment, enhance instructional quality, and positively enhance student achievement. In response to situations in which school-provided mentoring is not possible or where music mentees receive a school-assigned, non-music mentor, an increasing number of…