Peter Sullivan and colleagues present a report on an initiative at a Victorian primary school which embraced opportunities offered by purposeful collaborative professional learning communities. They utilised a form of Japanese Lesson Study as part of their approach. There are three parts to the story of this initiative: (1) a description of the…

There has long been international consensus amongst policymakers and researchers that schoolteachers need to pursue professional learning throughout their careers. While researchers and educators continue the rich conversation about what "forms" of professional learning are valuable and why, policymakers are intent on prioritising only…

This article reports on how mathematics teachers connect face-to-face and virtual professional learning communities by expanding the notion of lurker and broker within both environments. Through an analysis of 18 interviews with K-12 mathematics teachers, categories of participation are presented to describe the nuances between the ways…

Implementing inclusive education requires on-going commitment to teachers' professional learning. One way of implementing professional learning is to develop learning communities based on Lave and Wenger's ideas of situated learning and learning as social practice. Learning communities, drawing on models of Professional Learning Communities and…

As additional preparation while teaching for the K-12 medium of instruction, the Korean Ministry of Education has actively promoted diverse professional development (PD) programs to promote English teachers' "Teaching English through English" (TETE) implementation. This study explored Korean K-12 English teachers' self-efficacy about…

Student-driven "deep learning", teachers as "coaches" and "activators of learning" and positive student-teacher relationships are all part of the changing and significantly innovative educational landscape which requires considerable pedagogical change in teaching and learning processes. Teacher professional learning…

Professional learning community (PLC) is a current "buzz" term in business and educational contexts, seemingly referring to anything from decision making committees to regular meeting groups or collegial learning teams. This paper explores the concept of a PLC within three significantly innovative schools, based on an examination of the…

This paper reports on a 10 week vocabulary focused intervention based on the Word Generation program (Snow, 2002, 2010; SERP, 2011) in primary and secondary schools, which demonstrated clear improvements, particularly with students who are EAL/D learners. Teachers across English, Science, Maths and Social Sciences developed professional learning…

This paper is based on a research project designed to cultivate teachers as creative writers and as teachers of creative and critical writing. The project involved both primary and secondary teachers from eight schools located in Sydney, Australia. It documents the evolution of an open-ended research project that aimed to accommodate the needs of…

This research is a part of a national project to identify effective sustainable and embedded use of ICTs leading to improved educational outcomes. The project identified six schools and conducted a qualitative case study analysis out of which eleven successful strategies were reported. One of these strategies was observed at a primary school and…

Systemic splits between pre-compulsory and compulsory early years education impact on transitions to school through discontinuities in children's experience. This paper presents data from a critical participatory action research project about transitions between pre-compulsory and compulsory early education schooling in Australia. The project aim…

The Swan Valley Cluster of schools for the Make It Count project identified the professional learning of teachers and teaching assistants as a key factor in improving numeracy outcomes for urban Indigenous children. Initial training for assistants began in late 2010 and took the form of workshops based on a modified First Steps in Mathematics…

Many primary pre-service teachers (PSTs) who are enthused by tertiary courses that espouse and model a socio-constructivist approach to teaching mathematics, revert to a traditional approach when they encounter mathematics teaching during professional experience. An intervention was designed to translate the initial pedagogical intent of four…

This paper describes a school's participation in a project designed to support critical reflection of teachers' beliefs about best practice in early childhood education, and how these beliefs and practices intersected with shifting policies and trends in the broader early childhood field. The "Professional Learning" Project (PL project),…

The use of journals by students while on placement is a well-accepted strategy for encouraging reflection on practice, with the use of online blogs for this purpose potentially providing additional benefits through shared reflection and peer support. The aim of this study was to explore the effectiveness of an online blogging activity by teacher…