Virtual Professional Learning Communities: Teachers’ Perceptions of Virtual Versus Face-to-Face Professional Development

Research suggests that professional development that engages teachers in instructional inquiry over an extended time through collaborative professional learning communities (PLCs) is effective in improving instruction and student achievement. Still, most professional development is offered as short-duration workshops that are not effective in changing practice. Barriers to the implementation of PLCs include lack of shared meeting time and a shortage of teachers who share the same subject areas or common goals and interests. Convening teachers from multiple districts can alleviate this problem, but teachers are reluctant to travel for meetings due to time and cost restraints. Video-conferencing software offers a solution to these barriers while serving to foster the sense of community needed for PLCs to be effective. The researchers describe the use of Virtual PLCs in which two groups of teachers met monthly for one school year to collaboratively analyze evidence collected as part of their teacher inquiry plans. With help from a facilitator, these groups developed a relationship similar to other groups meeting face-to-face as part of the same professional development program. Analysis of the reflections of teacher-participants and facilitators revealed that teachers prefer face-to-face meetings, but that the virtual and face-to-face meetings provided teachers with similar social interactions in the PLC experience. The findings suggest that teachers perceive videoconferencing as an effective tool for facilitating PLCs when distance and time are practical barriers to face-to-face meetings. Practical considerations for developing and facilitating virtual PLCs are also discussed.     

ALL THIS AND HEAVEN,TOO? A DIVIDED LIFE,BUT ONLY ONE ME!

As is true of so many women professionals, Joyce Tsunoda recognizes that, although shefulfills multiple roles,she is "only one me." Inthis accountingof a typical 1-month period in her hectic career, Dr. Tsunoda re ects on the philosophy that allows her to keep her many "selves" together and focused. In both her personal and her professional lives, Joyce Tsunoda dwells in the international realm. Her children and grandchildren are divided between Hawaii and Japan. Her professional responsibilities include heading a statewide system of seven community colleges spread over six islands, yet also handling international responsibilities for the 10-campus statewide University of Hawaii System of which the Community Colleges are a part. This article recounts a one-month period during which Joyce traveled from Hawaii to Japan, back through Hawaii to the East Coast of the mainland United States, and home once again to Hawaii. Her Japanese heritage, combined with her American upbringing, proves to be a two-edged sword as she experiences both her "grandmother" role and her professional role in Japan. Through all the travel and the many personal and professional demands on her time, she steers her true course by remembering life's many Ls: leading, listening, liking, learning, letting go, and language of the lullaby.     

The Effectiveness of Direct-Instruction and Student-Centered Teaching Methods on Students' Functional Understanding of Plagiarism

ABSTRACT

To improve students' functional understanding of plagiarism, a variety of approaches was tried within a comprehensive information literacy program. Sessions were taught as a “module” inside a required communications skills class at a private university. Approaches taken included control, direct-instruction, and student-centered sessions. Students were taught content and definitions regarding plagiarism, what circumstances or instances constitute plagiarism, where to go for help in avoiding plagiarism, and what constitutes appropriate paraphrasing. Pretest and posttest scores indicated that no approach performed significantly better than the others; however, even though students improved across all methods, they nonetheless showed the need for more hands-on practice.     

Best Practices in Chat Reference Used by Florida's Ask a Librarian Virtual Reference Librarians

Chat reference has presented a unique set of problems for reference librarians. Lacking the visual and auditory cues of face-to-face or telephone reference interactions, librarians providing service for the virtual desk have developed digital techniques and resourceful maneuvers to help them navigate this new frontier. Still, many chat librarians find it difficult to conduct a meaningful transaction using just words, software components, and a mastery of online resources. Technical and communication problems further complicate their efforts. However, virtual reference librarians are rising to the occasion and engaging in exemplary chat transactions that conform to the highest standards of service.     

Languages of Female Colonial Authority: The educational network of the Ladies Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, 1813-1837

This article focuses on the way women in the network surrounding the British and Foreign School Society Ladies Committee used constitutional, familial, religious and educational languages to claim an authoritative role for themselves in the development of education for non-Western women and girls. It highlights some of the ambiguities of colonial power for British women educators, which were implicit in women's self-representation of themselves as authoritative and their depictions of the non-Western female 'other'. It argues that in the two-way relation of metropole and periphery, the notion of the universal 'rational' mother employed within the network constituted an early 'professionalisation' of motherhood in relation to non-Western women, which worked to confirm the authority, responsibility and the 'Britishness' of British women themselves.     

Public perception of early childhood language policy in Ghana: an exploratory study

This article explores current public perceptions in Ghana about the National Literacy Acceleration Programme (NALAP), a mother tongue-based bilingual medium of instruction (MTB-BMoI) policy for early childhood education. The researchers conducted an exploratory study of public reactions towards the Minister for Education’s statement on revamping the program made at the Shared Prosperity Forum held in Accra, Ghana. The article includes an overview of the history of early childhood education language of instruction (LoI) in Ghana and the rationale for the NALAP. Conversations with education officers and parents about their views on the NALAP were analyzed. The findings reflect strong negative feelings about the program among many Ghanaians who express a preference for English-only LoI. The paper discusses the importance of bilingual LoI in early childhood as well as the need to obtain public support, especially among parents, to facilitate full implementation of the program in Ghana. Recommendations for public engagement are proposed.     

Shameful interest in educational research

ABSTRACT

This article considers ontological conceptualizations of shame-interest as experienced in educational research. Shame has frequently been reported in research as a property of the autonomous individual: the shame of the participant to share with the researcher, and the shame of the researcher to reflexively eliminate. Shame-interest is re-theorized here as a generative research event, as intra-action, as one simultaneous movement in the ongoing present. We attempt an ethical shift from a reflexive stance to fluxing movements of response-ability and co-consequence in order to encourage socially responsive educational research, informed through the conceptual resources of psychologist Silvan Tomkins, and feminist philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Theory is threaded through a series of personal research vignettes to illustrate our thinking through ways shame-interest materialized within research events. Shame is re/conceptualized as a contestable composite feeling entangled with interest that allows an alternate non-reductive and ethical approach to educational research. We amplify our researcher responsibility, and our shame, by placing ourselves as entangled with the research ‘problem’ under investigation.