The main objectives in building professional learning communities are to improve teachers' professionalism and well-being, and create positive impacts on student learning. It is a question of changing the school culture. The main objective of this quantitative study was to investigate the maturity level of thirteen Finnish schools as professional…

Purpose: In professional learning communities (PLCs), teachers collaborate and learn with the aim of improving students' learning. The aim of this study is to gain insight into teachers' perceptions of their schools' changing toward PLCs and conditions which support or hamper this change. Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaires were completed…

Bringing design practices to chemistry education is gaining interest with recent science curriculum reforms emphasising design, and calls for integrated STEM education. Design is a central practice in the chemistry discipline, and could foster meaningful chemistry education. Although chemistry teachers are key in bringing design to chemistry…

This study intends to identify some key factors in creating and sustaining school-based teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) through a case study of a South Korean public high school. To achieve this, the study identified some essential infrastructure, preparation, and necessary social organization for creating PLCs. The ideal unit and…

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…

This article reports on a case study conducted in an urban post-primary school setting, which investigated a teaching and learning group, called a T&L Club, as a model of sustainable professional development for teachers. The group consisted of 18 members from a whole staff of 90 teachers and had been in existence for four years at the time of…

De-privatisation of classrooms is characterised by formal and informal invitations to colleagues to access classroom management, pedagogical approaches and teaching practices. This case study of six secondary schools examined the perceptions and practices of de-privatised practice amongst Fijian urban, rural and remote area teachers. Quantitative…

The objectives of this research were to: 1) create and specify the achievement goal of developing the innovation for enhancing the learning achievement of schools, 2) develop the potentiality of teachers and educational staffs in enhancing learning achievement of schools with the application of the ESC in coaching and mentoring, 3) monitor and…

While the current reform efforts in Bangladesh require a substantive change in how science is taught, an equally substantive change is needed in the culture of professional practice. This study will, therefore, investigate how science teachers' learning in a professional learning community (PLC) influences the ways in which participant teachers…

The present study hypothesizes that both organizational and classroom constraints mediate the chance of making instructional changes sustainable. Behind this hypothesis is an assumption that when people faces impending changes, the level of anxiety tends to increase and creates defenses which block the change. A survey of 1,876 teachers in 65…

A school subject leader (SL) is formally considered to make a difference in the educational system as a leader of a professional learning community, being responsible for the efficient and effective performance of the subject department. Since the department entails frequent and significant interactions among teachers, and organizational…

During the last 4 decades, numerous reform efforts have been proposed to improve schools. Two reforms, decentralization and teacher collaboration, seemed to coalesce by the 1990s to pave the way toward a new understanding of leading and learning in schools. In retrospect, the decentralization movement and the literature on teacher collaboration…

This document contains the second volume of the proceedings of the 28th annual conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Conference presentations are centered around the theme "Inclusion and Diversity". This volume features 65 research report papers: (1) Constructing Meanings and Utilities within Algebraic…