Leading as boundary crossing: How teacher leaders lead across a professional learning network in Shanghai China

This paper explores how teacher leaders enact leadership practice across a regional learning network, Master Teacher Studios, an officially initiated teacher learning program in Shanghai. It investigates the leadership strategies that are employed for cross-boundary endeavors in the network. The concepts of boundary and boundary crossing, as expounded by Wenger and others, are used to guide an examination of the process of teacher leadership enactment across a network, which is elucidated as interpreting the boundaries, selecting/designing boundary objects, and participating in communities of practice. The paper fosters an understanding of teacher leadership practice as boundary work in a network context, and delineates a process of teacher leadership enactment, as well as the importance of teacher leader identity in the process.

Are you a team player or a personal pinner? situating pinterest as part of teachers’ online and offline professional learning networks

Pinterest, a popular social networking site, is used as a resource by educators across all grade levels. We take the perspective that Pinterest acts as a professional learning network (PLN) and interrogate the ways that teachers share resources within online/offline PLNs. Eighty-eight teachers responded to a survey that asked about their social media use as well as their sharing of Pinterest resources with their professional colleagues. Building from the media use typology, we developed the Peer-to-Peer Pinterest Sharing Typology to describe types of sharing, finding that most respondents indicated that they did not share resources, others shared if forced to, and some shared as a way to enhance collegial collaboration. This research expands limited empirical work on both Pinterest as a PLN and on how learning and resources from online PLNs cross into school-based ones. This work will be of interest to those who seek to understand how social media sites play a role in teacher professional learning.

The Promise of Protocols in the Virtual Classroom

Learner engagement in online learning environments tends to be erratic and dependent upon the learners themselves, not necessarily fostered by the macrostructures that house the virtual classroom. Protocols—which the authors term microstructures—can bring engagement strategies traditionally seen in face-to-face classrooms to the virtual world of online adult learning. This chapter explores how the use of microstructures supports learner-centered engagement, illustrated through a case study of a successful virtual professional learning network. This chapter also introduces the concept of accountability for participation, its role in creating engaged learners, and how microstructures can foster the psychological safety required for high levels of engagement and performance in the virtual classroom.

Operating educational networks in Northern Ireland: the EQI shaped professional learning network

This paper reports on the operation of the DCU Shaped Professional Learning Network (DCU SPLN), an initiative of the Centre for Evaluation Quality and Inspection (EQI) at Dublin City University. The DCU SPLN was initially established in Belfast, Northern Ireland as part of the Erasmus+ Project, 'Polycentric inspections of networks of schools', the focus of which was to provide an assessment of the potential of polycentric inspection as a tool for improving school effectiveness and outcomes. The cluster has now grown to 140 schools organised in regional clusters throughout Northern Ireland. The paper provides examples of the impact of the network on policy and practice in Northern Ireland. Firstly, it has a Hearts and Minds driving force that is centered on the ethical use of first-hand evidence to drive school improvement and associated action research. Secondly, it is underpinned by the existence and support from external agencies, in this case, researchers at EQI. Thirdly, the professional development provided to schools by EQI and subsequent adjustments by participants and advisors had a direct ongoing positive impact on improving the actual quality of learning in individual schools. Finally, one of the key learning points was the gradual transfer of responsibility for professional learning provision from the EQI researchers to the leaders and teachers involved in the cluster. The paper concludes with drawing some general conclusions about the role of networks in educational practice.

Educators' Participatory Practices and Development of Professional Identities in a Twitter Online Professional Learning Network (PLN)

Twitter, a popular social networking application, is being recognized as a tool for changing how people share their knowledge and experience, as well as collaborate with one another. Twitter is being recognized for not only how people network with one another, but as a multipurpose learning tool. Originally designed as an application where users could update and share their statuses with friends, Twitter has become an essential tool for learning and developing online communities. Various studies feature Twitter's potentialities to promote the work of K-12 teachers. Within these studies, Twitter (1) enables educators to interact with other educators besides those in their own school districts, (2) decreases different kinds of isolation in workplaces, and (3) provides personalized and collaborative communities as well as PLNs.

Exploring the potential of collaborative teaching nested within professional learning networks

PurposeThis research investigated whether structuring an inquiry-oriented professional learning network to include school-based co-teaching partners would amplify educators' success in taking up and adapting evidence-based understandings and practices as meaningful in their contexts. Our research questions were: (1) What conditions did educators identify in the PLN overall that supported their co-construction of knowledge and practice development together? and (2) How did including co-teaching partners in the PLN help participants to mobilize knowledge and/or practices in the contexts where they were working?Design/methodology/approachA qualitative case study design was used because of its potential to examine how and why questions about complex processes as situated in context (Butler, 2011; Yin, 2014). A case study methodology allowed us to collect and coordinate multiple forms of evidence (i.e. interviews, teacher reflective writing, classroom artifacts, field notes) to examine both how conditions created within the PLN supported learning and how co-teaching partners were mobilizing what they were learning in their school contexts. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and data was analyzed abductively through an iterative and recursive process (Braun et al., 2018).FindingsConditions within the PLN overall that participants identified as supportive to their knowledge mobilization and practice development included: having a shared focus, feeling accountability to the group, collaborative enactment of practices within the PLN, large group sharing and debriefing, sustained cycles of collaborative inquiry, affective support, valuing diversity and drawing from expert others as resources. Participants also identified the benefits that accrued specifically from working with co-teaching partners. In addition, findings showed how the degree to which partners engaged in rich forms of collaborative inquiry could be related to their learning and situated practice development.Originality/valueFindings show the generative potential of inviting co-teaching partners into a PLN to engage in collaborative inquiry with others. PLNs offer the benefit of engaging with educators from outside of one's practice context, which enables pushing their thinking in new directions. Our findings add to the literature by revealing how in situ knowledge mobilization can be amplified when educators participating within a PLN are also working through cycles of inquiry with a co-teaching partner. Overall, this study offers a PLN model where teachers have built-in support for knowledge co-creation and mobilization both within and outside of their school contexts.