teacher education – Dr. Barbara Brown

I’m excited to share a new special issue on Teacher Leadership in the International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership, which I had the privilege of co-editing with Dr. Sharon Friesen. This collection brings together eight articles that explore how teacher leaders influence school and system improvement across diverse educational contexts.

Authors highlight teacher leaders as influencers, and professionals who drive meaningful change, strengthening teaching, learning, and collaboration within their schools and beyond.

This special issue offers a rich view of how teacher leadership is involving in different global contexts and how teachers enact leadership in ways that shape professional learning cultures and educational innovation.

Read the full issue here – https://journals.sfu.ca/ijepl/index.php/ijepl/issue/view/255

#TeacherLeadership #EducationalChange #ProfessionalLearning #SchoolImprovement #EducationalLeadership #Research

Brown, B., & Thomas, C. (2020). Technology used to support learning in groups. International Journal of E-Learning and Distance Education, 35(1), 1-26. http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/1158/1802

Abstract: Across disciplines, researchers recognize that working together in a small group can be a challenging learning activity, particularly in an online course where group members meet remotely. This 2-year, design-based research study focused on improving group work in both online and blended sections of an undergraduate course for pre-service teachers. Surveys were completed by instructors (N=15) and students (N=361) at three different junctures during the course to learn about how technologies were used by students and instructors to support group work. Interviews were also conducted at the end of the term to gather in-depth descriptions about the types of technologies and how they were used by students and instructors to support group work. Findings indicated that students and instructors selected a combination of technologies, including institutionally supported and mainstream applications such as shared workspaces to coordinate, track, and monitor group progress. Students and instructors also described using communication technologies to manage group challenges related to scheduling, communicating, and integrating tasks into the project. Findings contribute to our understanding about how technologies were used to support process and product when working on a group assignment