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This paper aims to report on the decisions two teachers made about how to engage with a five-year school–university collaboration that used professional development (PD) to foster changes in language instruction for teachers of multilingual learners.

A longitudinal case study was used to examine the experiences of two teachers to provide insights into classroom-level decisions and changes in instructional practices.

Changes in instructional practices occurred when teachers made active, engaged choices about their own learning and teaching in the classroom. Teacher learning did not follow a consistent trajectory of improvement and contained contradictions, and early decisions about how to engage with PD affected the pace and nature of teacher learning. Through personal decisions about how to engage with PD, teachers adopted new instructional practices to support multilingual learners. Positive changes required extended time for teachers to implement new practices successfully.

This collaboration points to a need for long-term PD partnerships that value teacher agency to produce instructional changes that support multilingual learners.

PD can play a key role in transforming literacy instruction for multilingual learners. Teacher agency, including the decisions teachers make about how to engage with professional learning opportunities and how to enact new instructional practices in the classroom, mediates the efficacy of PD initiatives. This longitudinal case study contributes to the understanding of effective PD by presenting two contrasting case studies of teacher agency and learning during long-term school–university collaboration.

This paper aims to explore how teachers’ choice of text, centering of student voices and collaboration with the community around a language arts curriculum impacted the engagement and learning experiences of 85 11th and 12th-grade refugee background students designated as English language learners.

A qualitative self-study framework that inquired into the assumptions about teaching and learning and the roles as social justice educators framed this narrative paper. Student journaling and teachers’ reflection logs and observations of class dramatization during a lesson unit on the play Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry formed the research text and informed the thematic analysis and findings of this study. The lenses of culturally sustaining pedagogy and a third space helped unpack the vantages of student voice and community engagement in the curriculum.

In a unit whose central text was chosen based on students’ racial and ethnic identities and their interests, they actively engaged in class and role-played as teachers, generating content that fostered their linguistic repertoires and critical discussions in class. Collaboration with community partners boosted the teacher’s agency with the curriculum and created a model of collaboration and learning for the class.

Student voices and community engagement in learning are powerful tools for designing culturally sustaining pedagogies.

The demographics of rural America are rapidly changing and concerns about mental health are growing. This study examined relationships between individual, family, and community factors and depressive symptomology among rural low-income Latina and non-Latina White mothers.

The sample for this study was drawn from the study, Rural Families Speak about Health. Data from interviews with 371 rural low-income mothers (36% Latina; 64% non-Latina White) were analyzed and descriptive and multivariate analyses were performed.

One-third of mothers experienced clinically significant depressive symptomology; non-Latinas experienced twice the rate as Latinas. Limitation in daily activities due to poor physical health predicted clinically significant depressive symptomology among both groups. Among non-Latinas, high levels of financial distress and lack of healthcare insurance predicted clinically significant depressive symptomology, and use of WIC and high levels of healthful eating and physical activity routines were protective factors. Age, single marital status, unemployment, transportation barriers, food insecurity, and inadequate health insurance predicted clinically significant depressive symptomology among Latinas.

Program administrators should consider factors associated with depression among specific populations as they design programs and services.

Factors not accounted (e.g., nativity of mothers) should be explored to more fully understand predictors of depressive symptomology among rural Latina and non-Latina mothers.

This original research considers how the relationships between individual, family, and community factors and depressive symptomology differ between rural low-income Latina and non-Latina White mothers. The authors discuss potential factors and outcomes related to depressive symptomology and provide suggestions for research, programs and services.

Studies media convergence in Canada, arguing it has always been a possibility as change is not a consequence of new technologies but a shift from efforts to prevent cross‐media combinations, to initiatives that promote this aim. Sums up that media reconvergence and the information highway are at the top of the communications policy agenda, but how it will involve is unclear.

Covid-19 pandemic has affected all sectors in the economy. Among them, education sector is one of the most influenced fields. This chapter presents a case of a faculty in a state university in Sri Lanka which underwent a transformation toward online teaching, learning, and assessment mode with the Covid-19 pandemic. The unexpected conversion to online mode impacted many parties, and among them, the lecturers and students were mostly affected within universities. The author explored the perception of students and lecturers on this unexpected compulsory transformation and identified how they perceive this new normal in teaching, learning, and assessment. In addition, the benefits and challenges faced, and the pre and post views on online experience were also studied. An online survey with students and a series of interviews with lecturers were exercised for data collection. The views that students have on online learning were different among the various study program levels, and the benefits and challenges faced by the different student groups also varied. Further, the lecturers had different perceptions on teaching the different level programs and subjects. These aspects are discussed in detail throughout the chapter, and at the end, suggestions for making the online mode more effective are presented.