The roles and responsibilities of teacher leaders change as schools, districts, and states adopt new policies, procedures, and initiatives. However, little qualitative research has been conducted about how teachers develop leadership skills, particularly during preservice preparation programs. The purpose of this single case study was to explore how a community of practice prepared college graduates to be teacher leaders. The conceptual framework was based on the concepts of situated learning, communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation. Four graduates from a state teaching program were purposefully selected as participants. Data were collected from multiple sources, including initial and follow-up interviews with program graduates, observations of their leadership activities in public schools, archival data, and program documents. Analysis consisted of multilevel coding, category construction, and determination of emergent themes and discrepant data to inform key findings. Findings suggested that the Southern State Teaching Program prepared its graduates to serve as teacher leaders through situated learning opportunities and the development, practice, and refinement of skills necessary for leading others. The program also offered peripheral participation in the program and the teaching profession. Implications for positive social change include the potential for including teacher leader development programs at the preservice level, which may ultimately improve teacher retention and student achievement.

This study is a qualitative examination of second language (L2) learning processes by four advanced learners of Japanese in the community of a summer intensive full-immersion program in the United States. Using L2 socialization theory as a theoretical framework, this study conceives of L2 learning as a process of social participation in a community of practice and examines L2 learning processes by four learners, focusing on the dynamic interplay between the affordances of the social community and the agency of the individual learners. The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) It investigates the ways in which the four learners exercise their agency to pursue their goals of learning Japanese and (b) it documents how the different ways in which the four learners exercise agency form different trajectories of learning and create different experiences of L2 socialization. This study has adopted an ethnographic case study approach to the investigation of research inquiries. Through the analyses of data obtained from multiple sources, including interviews with the four learners, observations of their engagement in the community of practice of the summer intensive full-immersion program, their audio-recorded conversations with other members of the community, and various artifacts, this study explores the role of L2 learner agency in the process of L2 socialization and describes in depth their experiences of learning Japanese from their emic perspectives. The case studies of the four learners have highlighted the different ways in which they engaged in the community of practice, understood their tasks of learning Japanese, interpreted the affordances of the social community, negotiated the meaning of their participations, defined and redefined their sense of self, and eventually achieved their L2 learning goals. The findings suggest that the richness and effectiveness of a social environment are not characterized by the physical and academic affordances of a social community alone; rather they are constructed in a dynamic relation between the affordance structure of a social community and the L2 learners' agency in the pursuit of the joint enterprise of making L2 learning happen. With regard to the role of L2 learner agency, the study has foregrounded the important role of the aspirations of the four L2 learners for personal transformation and negotiation of the meaning of self of the past, the present, and the future. The findings suggest that L2 learners' diverse and complex social and personal desires for learning an L2 may not be able to be explained using the notion of investment (Norton, 1995, 2000) alone. Since the SLA debate initiated by Firth and Wagner (1997, 2007), SLA research has begun to reconceptualize L2 learners as socially situated beings with diverse needs, wants, and identities. This study presents four portraits of L2 learners who engaged in the enterprise of learning Japanese, as a means of contributing to this reconceptualization, and explores for these four learners what it meant to learn Japanese in the summer of 2010.

In 2012, National Research Council published a new science education framework that explains the science practices and its importance in understanding the process of knowledge development. The students were expected to engage in all the practices by grade 12. All science teachers need some kind of support to improve their understandings of these science practices (NRC, 2012). An important key component of engaging teachers in scientific investigations is to have the teacher participate in a research laboratory experience (NRC, 1996). Research Experiences for Teachers programs (RET) serve as a promising form of professional development to achieve this goal. These programs allow teachers to experience scientific inquiry. The context of the study was a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program supported by National Science Foundation It was located in an United States university Environmental Engineering program. There were five preservice and ten inservice teachers in this research. In addition, there were six professors and eight graduate students who served as mentors. Each teacher worked with a specific professor and graduate student mentor in their research projects that are related to the management of the nitrogen cycle, provision of clean water, or urban infrastructure improvement. Also, four professors from engineering and science programs were interviewed to find out what each science practice means to them. The research design of this study was mixed methods that combined quantitative and qualitative research approaches into a single study. In this study, two teachers were selected for the case study based on their experiences and improvements. The study utilized different data sources such as surveys, interviews, observations, and documents. Each research question was addressed based on the results of overall analysis of all the teachers, as well as the results of each case. To find out whether there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-, mid-, and post teacher surveys, repeated measures ANOVA was used for each item. In addition, for the items that showed a statistical difference a Tukey test was conducted to find -which surveys -were significantly different from each other. Also, partial eta squared effect size was calculated for each item. Professor and graduate students' surveys were analyzed by a repeated measures ANOVA and Tukey tests. All interviews were transcribed by the researcher. The data from the interviews were coded and analyzed using a qualitative analysis software. In order to analyze the data in the observations, coding of the qualitative data procedure was employed. The teachers' poster presentations were evaluated by using the researcher-created rubric that has the criteria for each expected part of the poster presentation. The findings of this research suggest that teachers have naive understandings of science practices before they participate in an RET program because they do not have opportunities to learn what those practices mean. The findings also suggest that the teachers still have naive understandings after they participate in an RET program. This is a very important contribution to the literature, in that it is difficult for the teachers to teach those practices in their classrooms if they do not have complete and appropriate understandings of what those practices actually mean. The findings also indicated that teachers' participation in the RET program helped them to improve their abilities to engage in science practices but they need more experience, knowledge, and abilities to engage in the specific practices where they had least improvements. The analysis also indicated that the teachers who actively engaged in the science practices, had productive discussions with the graduate student mentors and participated the quick lessons they gave, read the literature for their research, used new techniques and methods, and participated in the research group meetings improved more on the abilities of engaging in science practices compared to the teachers who did not have the opportunity to participate in the practices because of the structure of their projects, had low interest, and received most of the information directly from the graduate students.

Early childhood classroom mentor teachers are often left with little support and guidance as they assume the role of teacher educators. The purpose of this collective case study was to explore how a community of practice comprised of pre-K mentors and a university program coordinator supported the development of shared and individual understandings about how to effectively supervise preservice teachers. Utilizing key tenets of sociocultural theory, four pre-K mentor teachers from two public schools in the Southeast participated in an online and face-to-face community of practice facilitated by a university program coordinator. The pre-K preservice teachers (n=6) were secondary participants in this study. Across twelve weeks, the evolution of collective and individual knowledge was chronicled through interviews, online discussions, face-to-face exchanges, and classroom observations. Audio-tapes from meetings and interviews were transcribed verbatim. Data analyses involved iterative cycles of coding, moving from open coding to process and pattern coding. Through this process, data displays and conceptual memos were created and informed the analyses. Findings from this qualitative study illustrate how the mentors’ processes of coming to know were developed within a complex web of relationships from which they re-envisioned their roles as pre-K teachers. As the mentors negotiated the meaning of mentoring, they engaged in recursive cycles of reshaping their identities through questioning, hypothesizing, and sharing lived experiences. New identities as educators of both children and adults emerged as they considered the role of mentoring as a tangible object to be closely studied, negotiated, and operationalized. The mentors left this study acknowledging that while mentoring was difficult, complex work, it was worthy work.

<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <p align="left"><font face="Arial">The study analyses the relationship between experience, participation and learning and seeks to establish how the experience of adult learners can be mobilised through active participation and how situational conditions can either facilitate or inhibit participation and learning amongst the learners. Another dimension of the study seeks to establish what caregivers learn and the processes through which they learn and how such learning contributes to changes in behaviour and relationships. In this study, the nature and dynamics of learning amongst adult learners in the NCTP programme at community level is explored as an example of socio-cultural theory and situated learning which hold that learning results from participation in various socio-cultural situations &ndash / the act of participation is seen as crucial in the learning. The study focused on a group of 10 learners in the National Certificate Training Programme for community health workers who are also caregivers in the Nokuthembeka Home-based Care Programme in New Crossroads in the Cape Town metropole and used a qualitative research design and interpretive approach to understand the situations in which they learn. An interpretive approach allowed for deeper insight into the socio-cultural contexts that influence the social interactions of caregivers with peers as well as their learning. In the study I argue that the experience of caregivers forms a critical resource and the foundational basis for learning.</font></p> <p>&nbsp / </p> </font></p>

Social media has created a two-pronged dilemma for the journalism world. On one side is an attack of the basic notions of identity and authority for an age-old profession while on the other side supporting journalists by making available an endless amount of new tools and resources for them to work with. This thesis establishes and examines the online community of practice that has formed in the crosshair of the two sides, where the future of newspapers is a hotly debated subject. Using innovative data collection, the conversations of 20 experts is studied qualitatively through computer mediated discourse analysis to examine and explore the debate while providing consideration of the key issues to allow for an in-depth study.

The purpose of this study is to learn about the professional development practices of physiotherapists working in long-term care homes in Ontario. A survey was created based on relevant literature and piloted for this study. The survey included both quantitative and open-ended questions. 44 Physiotherapist responded, which represents approximately 10% of physiotherapists working in long-term care in Ontario. The results indicate that physiotherapists are isolated from their physiotherapist peers and lack access to communities of practice, professional socialisation, professional culture and social regulation. Although physiotherapists’ interactions with interprofessional teams added breadth to their knowledge, these interactions did not enhance their profession-specific skills. Many physiotherapists are seeking professional community and social supports in healthcare settings outside of the long-term care context. The implications of this study are that physiotherapists, their professional associations, and their college must understand the importance of professional socialization in learning, and ensure that physiotherapists working in long-term care have access to and seek such social support. Physiotherapy service providers in long-term care should provide mentoring, support and opportunities for social learning for their clinicians. Finally, long-term care homes and the Ministry of Health and Long-term care need to ensure that policies provide a better definition of the role of physiotherapists in long-term care.

Canada has distinct contemporary faith communities that differ from western and European counterparts. Unfortunately statistics tracking denominational allegiances give little insight into the daily intricacies of collective religious practice. The purpose of this study is to contribute towards filling a gap within scholarly research on the lived culture and experiences of contemporary religious communities within Canada. This study examines the pattern of culture-sharing within a non-denominational faith community as lived and practiced in Ottawa. Through autoethnography, this study asks why members attend and how members view the use of popular culture video clips within church. Individual and collective religious identities are constructed through observations, interviews and material artifacts gleaned through participant observation from January 2011 to December 2011. The results show that within the church, a community of practice is built around shared parenthood and spiritual journey. Members place importance on children, on providing support of all kinds for one another, and on keeping religion relevant. Reasons for attending are echoes of the patterns of culture-sharing: members enjoy the feeling of community, the support, the friendships, the play dates. Participants view popular culture video clips played within church as one aspect of an overall importance placed upon relevance. Mutuality of engagement results in members experiencing their lives as meaningful, it validates their worth through belonging, and it creates personal histories of becoming within the context of a community of practice. Future research recommendations include further study of other contemporary faith communities within Canada, with investigation into the possibility that communities of practice may be what the churched and unchurched are seeking.

The notion of social capital (SC) is increasingly used as a framework for describing social issues in terrestrial communities. For more than a decade, researchers use the term to mean the set of trust, institutions, social norms, social networks, and organizations that shape the interactions of actors within a society and that are considered to be useful and assets for communities to prosper both economically and socially. Despite growing popularity of social capital especially, among researchers in the social sciences and the humanities, the concept remains ill-defined and its operation and benefits limited to terrestrial communities. In addition, proponents of social capital often use different approaches to analyze it and each approach has its own limitations. <p>This thesis examines social capital within the context of technology-mediated communities (also known as virtual communities) communities. It presents a computational model of social capital, which serves as a first step in the direction of understanding, formalizing, computing and discussing social capital in virtual communities. The thesis employs an eclectic set of approaches and procedures to explore, analyze, understand and model social capital in two types of virtual communities: virtual learning communities (VLCs) and distributed communities of practice (DCoP). <p>There is an intentional flow to the analysis and the combination of methods described in the thesis. The analysis includes understanding what constitutes social capital in the literature, identifying and isolating variables that are relevant to the context of virtual communities, conducting a series of studies to further empirically examine various components of social capital identified in three kinds of virtual communities and building a computational model. <p>A sensitivity analysis aimed at examining the statistical variability of the individual variables in the model and their effects on the overall level of social capital are conducted and a series of evidence-based scenarios are developed to test and update the model. The result of the model predictions are then used as input to construct a final empirical study aimed at verifying the model.<p>Key findings from the various studies in the thesis indicated that SC is a multi-layered, multivariate, multidimensional, imprecise and ill-defined construct that has emerged from a rather murky swamp of terminology but it is still useful for exploring and understanding social networking issues that can possibly influence our understanding of collaboration and learning in virtual communities. Further, the model predictions and sensitivity analysis suggested that variables such as trust, different forms of awareness, social protocols and the type of the virtual community are all important in discussion of SC in virtual communities but each variable has different level of sensitivity to social capital. <p>The major contributions of the thesis are the detailed exploration of social capital in virtual communities and the use of an integrated set of approaches in studying and modelling it. Further, the Bayesian Belief Network approach applied in the thesis can be extended to model other similar complex online social systems.

Recuperating Composition’s lore in postdisciplinarity in order to illustrate the polyvalent, multidirectional positionality of our practices, this study argues that Composition’s lore, as it functions in a community of practice, helps locate and address various challenges with the cultural displacement that burgeoning scholars experience as they critically negotiate their practices within the expectations of the academy. Bridging the communities of writing teachers in classrooms and writing centers in a demonstration of institutional polyvalence, this ethnographic study’s participants suggest the reflexive influence of postdisciplinary lore in the cultivation of authority and practitioner identity. As one point of access to this cultural negotiation, the transmission and application of myth contextualizes lore as cultural phenomena affecting both professional and pedagogical development in graduate student teachers and tutors. This study concludes that the reflexivity offered in postdisciplinary sites of cultural engagement encourages a negotiated, recursive power relation between the institution and the practitioner, thus creating multiple, malleable sites of authority and agency within disciplinary culture.