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The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective evaluation of the concept of the teaching commons as presented by authors Huber and Hutchings and to summarize expected outcomes from participation therein.

An appraisal of the book The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons is presented to explore the conception of the teaching commons. This review addresses the definition of the teaching commons and explores the establishment of, and participation in, the teaching commons as a means of advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning and for improving student learning.

A fundamental premise is developed suggesting that the development and utilization of a teaching commons will improve teaching and learning through the provision of a defined safeplace for conversations about teaching and learning and specific avenues to share information about teaching innovations for improving student learning. Sustained faculty engagement in a teaching commons must be supported by formalized institutional recognition and appropriate rewards.

A practical resource for faculty members involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning and for administrators developing teaching and learning centers or resources for utilization by faculty members.

This review examines the definition and establishment of a teaching commons for improving the scholarship of teaching and learning at the college and university levels.

Outlines a series of initiatives at both national and institutional levels which suggest that British higher education is becoming more serious about improving the quality of university teaching. National initiatives include the Teaching Quality Assessment exercise, the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme and the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning. The establishment of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education is also briefly highlighted. At the institutional level initiatives include the creation of more effective units or centres to promote learning and teaching, many of which intend to offer teacher development programmes accredited by the new Institute for Learning and Teaching. Such units also provide a valuable range of workshops, consultancy and project support in order to help universities improve their understanding of the practice and the theory of teaching in higher education. Many such units also promote research, especially action research, into university teaching and learning.

This chapter highlights the close relationship between the wellbeing of faculty and students in higher education and the quality of teaching and learning. Improving teaching and learning is crucial for promoting the wellbeing of both faculty and students. As such, instructional leadership, an approach that focuses on enhancing teaching and learning, should be a priority for higher education leaders. However, the involvement of higher education leaders in instructional leadership is often limited. Therefore, a customized version of instructional leadership that considers the unique priorities, characteristics, and norms of this specific educational context should be implemented in higher education to prioritize the improvement of teaching and learning and, consequently, enhance the wellbeing of faculty and students.

Despite the positive impact of professional learning communities (PLCs) in improving teaching practices, many teachers still struggle to effectively integrate information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their teaching and learning. Drawing from human capital theory and spillover effects, this paper examines how teachers PLCs can facilitate ICT integration.

Using a qualitative methodology, the researchers designed a phenomenological study. From semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 15 selected secondary school teachers from four selected secondary schools in Tanzania.

The study revealed that teachers use various strategies to enhance ICT integration in teaching practices, namely, community collaboration, practice-based approaches to ICT integration and the utilization of digital learning tools in instructional practices. Furthermore, the results showed several constraints on the ability of teachers’ PLCs to encourage ICT integration. These constraints were divided into three parts, i.e. major challenges at the macro, meso and micro levels.

The paper has the potential to inform policy and practice, particularly in the area of PLCs. Also, it helps to better understand the changing practices with ICTs through PLCs when there are insufficient resources for ICT integration.

To support teachers in using ICTs in their instructional practices, it is essential to build their capacities through PLCs to increase their confidence and competence in ICT integration.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate an in-service training (INSET) programme for improving the quality of English language teaching in Zanzibar’s secondary schools. Specifically, there were two objectives: i) to explore the teachers’ views on the zanzibar improvement students prospect (ZISP) training programme in improving the English language teaching techniques in secondary schools in Zanzibar and ii) to find out the organisational support provided to teachers when they are using the skills and knowledge acquired from the ZISP teaching programme.

The study used a qualitative research approach, particularly the case-study design. It used interviews to collect qualitative data that was analysed thematically. Twelve English language teachers from seven secondary schools who had benefited from the ZISP teaching programme and five headmasters from five schools participated in the study as respondents.

The study found that the ZISP training programme equipped teachers with pedagogical skills useful for preparing lessons and materials, using technology in teaching and providing timely feedback to students. In terms of support, teachers receive materials and motivation from various organisations.

This study focused on ordinary teachers and headmasters. Nevertheless, other studies could use classroom observation, focus group discussion, document review or survey questionnaire to evaluate the impact of the programme and look at how the skills obtained are used in the teaching and learning of the English language. In addition, this study involved 12 participants who were teachers and headmasters, respectively. Other studies could include students, their families, employers and non-teaching staff. This would provide a holistic view of how the stakeholders perceive the INSET programme.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the benefits and organisational support teachers receive after participating in the INSET training programme in Zanzibar. Thus, teachers need regular exposure to INSET so that they improve the quality of their teaching.

Quality management systems are being used more frequently in educational institutions, although their application has generated a certain amount of disagreement among education experts, who have at times questioned their suitability and usefulness for improving schools. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this discussion by providing additional knowledge on the effects in educational institutions of implementing quality management systems. Specifically, this study investigates teachers’ and managers’ perception of the impact that quality management systems have on one essential dimension of schools, the teaching–learning processes, with impact being understood as sustained medium- and long-term organisational change.

The responses were analysed and classified into a set of sub-dimensions linked to quality management processes in a total of 29 Spanish primary and secondary education schools that have used such systems for at least three years.

The results showed that, according to the respondents, the following sub-dimensions were improving as a result of implementing quality management plans: teaching and learning processes, the analysis of student results, tutoring, consideration of attitudes and values and assessment processes. Conversely, quality management systems did not seem to have a clear impact on the teaching methodologies used by teachers or on family involvement in student learning. In fact, the perceived impact in these sub-dimensions varied among teachers of public and private schools as well as when comparing different regional autonomous communities.

As the main objective of a school is to guarantee student learning, one of the essential purposes of school quality assurance systems is to perform all the activities aimed at ensuring high levels of student performance.

Previous studies found that principals must be involved in both instructional leadership and organizational management, yet they did not explain how the former supports the latter. To narrow this gap in the available research-based knowledge, the current study explored the contribution of organizational management to instructional leadership.

This study was qualitative in nature. The study participants were 28 principals of elementary schools in Israel. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis, based on coding, aimed to cluster the eight organizational management functions according to how each function supports instructional leadership.

The present study revealed that the eight functions of organizational management support four main aspects of instructional leadership: (1) Developing a positive learning climate; (2) Improving teaching quality; (3) Realizing the school instructional vision; and (4) Enabling instructional leadership.

The findings of this study reinforce the argument that although instructional leadership is the critical component of effective school leadership, it should be supported by other frameworks.

At a small liberal arts university in Western New York, a second-year accounting professor and a fully tenured education professor worked together to develop a model of sustained mentoring across an entire semester with the goal of helping the accounting professor improve his teaching. The model was put to practice in a freshmen managerial accounting class during the spring 2011 semester. It involved frequent observations (roughly one-third of the classes) and immediate follow-up communications. Control over all decisions remained with the accounting professor at all times. The results were positive and substantial for all parties. The students reported better learning during in-class time. The accounting professor added to his “tool belt” and gained greater confidence in his teaching ability while the education professor reenergized his career by extending the body of his life’s work to include higher education.

The paper aims to disseminate solutions to common problems in student evaluation processes. It proposes that student evaluation can be applied to quality assurance and improving learning and teaching. The paper presents solutions in the areas of: presenting outcomes as performance indicators, constructing appropriate surveys, improving response rates, reporting student feedback to students and student engagement as a feature of university quality assurance.

The research approach of this paper is comparative case study, allowing in-depth exploration of multiple perspectives and practices at seven Australian universities. Process and outcome data were rigorously collected, analysed, compared and contrasted.

The paper provides empirical evidence for student evaluation as an instrument of learning and teaching data analysis for quality improvement. It suggests that collecting data about student engagement and the student experience will yield more useful data about student learning. Furthermore, findings indicate that students benefit from more authentic inclusion in the evaluation process and outcomes.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further and apply to their own university contexts.

The paper includes recommendations at the institution- and sector-wide levels to effectively use student evaluation as a university performance indicator and as a tool of change.

This paper fulfils an identified need to examine student evaluation processes across institutions and focuses on the role of student evaluation in quality assurance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel improved teaching and learning-based algorithm (TLBO) to enhance its convergence ability and solution accuracy, making it more suitable for solving large-scale optimization issues.

Utilizing multiple cooperation mechanisms in teaching and learning processes, an improved TBLO named CTLBO (collectivism teaching-learning-based optimization) is developed. This algorithm introduces a new preparation phase before the teaching and learning phases and applies multiple teacher–learner cooperation strategies in teaching and learning processes. Applying modularization idea, based on the configuration structure of operators of CTLBO, six variants of CTLBO are constructed. For identifying the best configuration, 30 general benchmark functions are tested. Then, three experiments using CEC2020 (2020 IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation)-constrained optimization problems are conducted to compare CTLBO with other algorithms. At last, a large-scale industrial engineering problem is taken as the application case.

Experiment with 30 general unconstrained benchmark functions indicates that CTLBO-c is the best configuration of all variants of CTLBO. Three experiments using CEC2020-constrained optimization problems show that CTLBO is one powerful algorithm for solving large-scale constrained optimization problems. The application case of industrial engineering problem shows that CTLBO and its variant CTLBO-c can effectively solve the large-scale real problem, while the accuracies of TLBO and other meta-heuristic algorithm are far lower than CLTBO and CTLBO-c, revealing that CTLBO and its variants can far outperform other algorithms. CTLBO is an excellent algorithm for solving large-scale complex optimization issues.

The innovation of this paper lies in the improvement strategies in changing the original TLBO with two-phase teaching–learning mechanism to a new algorithm CTLBO with three-phase multiple cooperation teaching–learning mechanism, self-learning mechanism in teaching and group teaching mechanism. CTLBO has important application value in solving large-scale optimization problems.