<p> This multiple-case study examined three teachers&rsquo; formal and peripheral engagement across multiple years of a three-year, professional development project. Collaborative support focused on applying the standards for effective pedagogy to the redesign and implementation of elementary instruction, in an effort to increase equity and inclusion for all diverse learners within general education classrooms. The complex contexts of teaching within psychosocial school systems influenced teachers&rsquo; active and limited engagement in a variety of collaborative support activities. Negative intersubjective perceptions generally influenced limited engagement. Long-term participants sought active engagement in collaborations perceived to support continually improved instruction, while responding to their challenging contexts, and relevant to their instructional obligations and classroom needs. Examination of longitudinal data revealed a substantive process of cyclical collaborative support through which teachers engaged collaboration to process and prioritize relevant challenges, explored ideas to apply effective pedagogy in the redesign and implementation of instruction, observed improved classroom outcomes, and sought further opportunities for continual improvement. Ongoing engagement in this cyclical process of collaborative support helped teachers mediate the influence of complex challenges across the teaching profession. Conditions that sustained long-term engagement included an iterative process of redesign for collaborative activities, which enabled support to be most responsive to teachers&rsquo; available time, and most relevant to teachers&rsquo; observed classroom needs and instructional obligations. In addition to proximal propinquity, psychosocial propinquity with the standards for effective pedagogy and trusted collaborators, along with engaging activities perceived to provide positive, collegial support, had significant influence on participants&rsquo; active, ongoing engagement. Administrator involvement during the third and final year of the project influenced significant changes in the design and delivery of collaborative support, including mandated and structured expectations for participation. This led to intersubjective perceptions of increased challenges, negative collegial interactions and an interruption of support provided across the first two years of the project when there had been no administrator involvement. Implications suggest future professional development should take the complex psychosocial contexts that influence teachers into account and respond flexibly to teachers&rsquo; capacity to engage while focused on relevant obligations and classroom needs.</p>

<p> Research on the "why" of collaborative learning is fairly extensive for a disciplinary focus that is comparatively young. Research on one critical aspect of collaborative learning, group work, has focused more on group functionality once they are together, as opposed to determining the most pedagogically sound method for forming the groups and determining their composition. The formation and composition of groups in a learning environment presents unique challenges. Structured as a phenomenological study, this study was not designed or intended to produce generalized solutions, it was designed to see what could be learned from the lived experience of seven full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty teaching an undergraduate class and utilizing group work. </p><p> Group work is an established part of the educational experience and considered a critical component of a collaborative learning model (Hoadley, 2010; Slavin &amp; Cooper, 1999; Strijbos &amp; Weinberger, 2010; Webb, 1982; Webb, Troper, &amp; Fall, 1995; Yeh, 2010). Although learning collaboratively promotes "higher achievement than competitive and individualistic learning situations" (Johnson, Johnson, &amp; Stanne, 1986, p. 383), it can also create more problems than its use might solve (Johnson &amp; Johnson, 1999; Linn &amp; Burbules, 1993). </p><p> Even though some of the benefits of effective and functional group work have been documented, the formation and composition, and support of student groups, is often wrought with complicated and time-consuming problems. Problems will always vary, but some of the more common examples include: the group member who does not do his/her share (or any) of the work; general resistance by students to working in groups; or pairing group members who do not have appropriate skills or work styles to complete the learning objective. </p><p> There are many things to consider when determining if group work is the appropriate pedagogical approach. This research is predicated on the understanding that the instructor has already determined that group work is the best pedagogical approach for the assignment, project, or class in question. </p><p> Although there are some fundamental differences between working in groups or teams in-person versus online, the location of the group work was treated as another variable in the decision-making process of the instruction leader. Technology used by the instructor for the group formation and composition process is discussed briefly here, but the focus of this study was not about how instructors implemented their decisions, but why they made those decisions in the first place.</p><p>

<p> This qualitative, descriptive case study addressed the research question: How is learning experienced in tough cases aimed at accelerating expertise in a cognitively complex work environment?&nbsp;The time it takes to develop expertise in many professional domains is problematic for industrialized societies. As the baby boom generation transitions from the workforce, they are leaving behind a smaller, less experienced pool of workers to replace them. Accelerated expertise theorists have proposed tough cases as a way of speeding the development of expertise. Tough cases are rare situations that convey novel learning challenges by requiring learners to make plans and decisions in the face of ambiguous and interacting data (Klein and Hoffman, 1992). Expertise can be particularly difficult to develop in cognitively complex work environments. Cognitively complex work environments are &ldquo;systems composed of psychological (cognitive), social, and technological elements, all embedded in a broader team, organizational, and social context&rdquo; (Hoffman &amp; Militello, 2008, p. 216). The study explored the learning process from the perspectives of learners, tough case leaders, and organizational leaders supporting the use of tough cases at the research site. Data were collected through observations of five tough cases and interviews before and after cases with participants and organizational leaders. Themes were inductively developed. The study had eight findings: 1) Tough cases are dynamic learning experiences that are interactive and concrete, while simultaneously confusing and disorienting; 2) the use of real events and complex problems grabs learner attention and interest; 3) making and defending quick decisions draw out learner beliefs and theories, stimulating focus and a tremendous sense of enthusiasm; 4) the practice of eliciting decisions by cold-calling puts learners on the spot, mimicking the stress of high stakes situations common to cognitively complex work environments; 5) role-playing throughout the case forces participation with the learning environment while reducing stress by making the learning experience more enjoyable and entertaining; 6) individual reflection and observation provide continual opportunities for re-examining decisions; 7) interaction and dialogue during role-play expose learners to other ways of thinking and lead to refinement of their mental models; and 8) hearing "the rest of the story" at the end of the case provides an opportunity for learner self-assessment and can build their confidence. The study concluded: (1) the tough case learning process incorporates both experiential and social cognitive learning in a single process; (2) the tough case learning process is substantially different from learning processes proposed in the expertise development literature; (3) tough case learning is a departure from processes described in the adult learning literature; and (4) tough case learning leverages everything considered foundational about adult learning. The study offered recommendations related to theory, practice, and future research.</p>

<p> This study explores the factors that shape students&rsquo; experience with instructional choices in classroom-based settings, and the role of instructional choice design in positively influencing student engagement and the development of self-regulation skills among high school students who attend an urban high school in the Mid-Atlantic Region, referred to as Aspiration High School. A range of cultural, structural and human resource factors are found to have a limiting effect on students&rsquo; experience with quality instructional choices in school, and as a result, limits their opportunities to practice and develop the self-regulation skills necessary for navigating choices at levels of complexity that mirror the world beyond school (Winne &amp; Perry, 2000; Winne &amp; Hadwin, 1998; Winne, 2001). Teachers and students of Aspiration High School were surveyed to gather insights on their experiences of and perceptions on choice in learning. Two teachers engaged in a series of collaborative lesson design cycles that involved choice-based lesson design, implementation with observation, lesson debriefs, and student work analysis, as well as pre and post student interviews and focus groups. This study identified five elements of high-quality choice designs, and argues for quality choice design as an important mechanism for cultivating learner engagement (Katz &amp; Assor, 2007), developing interventions to support self-regulatory skill development among learners, and nurturing pedagogical shifts among teachers toward more learner-centered designs and practices.</p><p>