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This paper is a thinking piece that examines, from the viewpoint of a Canadian pracademic, working through two definitions of pracademic, a collaborative relationship between academics and practitioners and a person engaged as a practitioner and researcher. Two aspects of a pracademics scholarship is discussed, wide awakeness and praxis. The purpose of the paper is to make the case that it is pracademics who are well suited and attuned to questioning, challenging, and disrupting the ordinariness of the everyday, to envision new possibilities, and who take responsibility for mobilizing the educational community to undertake meaningful social change within an education system. A case is provided to illustrate wide-awakeness and praxis in practice. A case is provide to illustrate how wide-awakeness and praxis present themselves in practice.

This paper considers the work of pracademics from Galileo Educational Network, located within a research-intensive university, who research and lead design-based professional learning. Drawing upon a design-based approach to guide design-based professional learning and design-based research, I highlight the ways in which wide-awakeness and praxis work themselves out in practice.

Drawing upon the two aspects of wide-awakeness and praxis, creates a liminal space for pracademics to engage with practitioners to undertake stubborn and persistent problems of practice to create important educational improvements. A key to engaging in transformational change through collaborative professionalism is to engage in sustained design-based professional learning led by pracademics.

This thinking piece offers the perspective of one Canadian pracademic who shows how pracademics are uniquely positioned to take on the work of transformation, agency, and social change.

This paper examines current issues related to technology integration and provides a contextual framework with which school principals can undertake new leadership responsibilities in this area. Selected examples of successful technology integration are provided to inform current technology leadership practices. The leadership goals, competencies and responsibilities needed in order to achieve this preferred future are described. In the final section, the authors draw on professional experiences as researcher and teacher/leader to build and expand on a five‐part leadership model currently in use by a large urban school district to interpret multiple dimensions of technology leadership for principals. Ways in which this framework can serve as a guide for school leaders as they develop technology competencies, implement professional growth plans, work with their community, and provide daily technology leadership, mentorship and advocacy for teachers in an elementary school are discussed.

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the role of an inquiry-based approach to learning in a pre-service teacher education program. All students enrolled in an educational technology course during the winter 2013 and 2014 semesters completed an inquiry-based learning project related to their future teaching practice. Through blog postings, an online survey, and a face-to-face focus group the study participants indicated that this approach to learning is useful when teachers provide a big picture orientation, use clear guidelines, scaffold the process, ensure that students make careful and informed topic selection, facilitate weekly technology instruction related to the project, and incorporate digital storytelling to convey the results.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research within the multidisciplinary programs. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions within multidisciplinary programs. The chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where students learn “how-to-learn” – where increasingly higher levels of self-directed learning is fostered – and where students grow in the three key areas of learning: cognitively, emotionally, and socially. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL, if designed and implemented properly, can be an important approach to enhancing and transforming teaching and learning.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should serve as an incubator where students are part of a learning community and where they are encouraged to grow cognitively, emotionally, and socially by taking increasing responsibility for their own learning.