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The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate the role of School Leaders (SLs) in building Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in schools, as well as to expand a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context.

The study involved the purposive selection of two schools affiliated with a university. The sample comprised one school leader, one academic coordinator and five teachers from each school, altogether 14 participants. The participants shared similar demographic characteristics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which were analysed thematically.

The findings of the study revealed that both schools have created PLCs to some extent and that school goals and culture were contributing factors in building these communities. Additionally, the SLs played a key role in promoting PLCs by encouraging teacher collaboration. The study concludes that SLs have the potential to strategize their actions to foster positive professional relations among teachers and ensure their well-being.

The study contributes to the literature on professional communities in Pakistan by validating a literature-driven PLC model. The model emphasizes collaboration among teachers, which can be facilitated by SLs. As such, the study implicates SLs in prioritizing the professional development of teachers to enhance student learning and achieve school success.

This study is unique in expanding a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context, with a focus on teacher collaboration as facilitated by SLs. The model has the potential for replication in other contexts and can serve as a useful tool for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore educator collaborative inquiry in the shared workspace in professional learning communities (PLCs). Specifically, this investigation was part of an ongoing investigation of well-established PLC collaborative interactions and self-directed learning of educators as part of the shared workspace as a component of school improvement.

A qualitative design was used for this investigation. Participants were purposefully selected to provide qualitative data on existent, well-established PLCs and their practice as educators in the shared workspace. Qualitative data were collected about participant perception. Data were collected from each participant by conducting semi-structured interviews, observations, and the collection of document and artifacts.

Findings from this ongoing investigation point to positive collaborative physical interactions and intellectual discourse that lead to educator learning through the collaborative inquiry process.

Theories on PLCs and educator job-embedded professional learning are unique in this paper. The concepts of PLCs and the collaborative inquiry process have been well developed but not in the context of the shared workspace. Recent literature on effective collaborative inquiry educators undergo in PLCs as a continuing professional development model provides a foundation for the work done in this ongoing case study. Sustained collaboration and continued professional development of teaching innovations as a product of the collaborative inquiry process in the shared workspace are underdeveloped as yet but further developed in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to explore shared workspace and professional learning community (PLC) interactions in schools. The collaborative culture and PLCs were parts of the school culture. The collaborative culture of each school was designed to ensure teachers share intellectual and physical contributions in learning to investigate the impact of teaching and learning on students. The workspace overlap for teachers was part of the culture of each school and a function of the PLC interactions. PLCs provided opportunities for collaboration and therefore opportunities to share intellectual and physical workspace.

A grounded theory research approach was taken to this investigation, primarily because of the common experiences of educators in schools (Creswell, 2013). Collaborative process between educators in schools was qualitatively investigated as a function of PLC interactions. In all, three communities, five schools, and 70 educators were purposefully selected to participate. Data were collected, including semi-structured interviews, observations, artifacts, and researcher field notes.

The workspace interactions include shared leadership, decision making, teaching and learning practice, and accountability measures. Attributes and characteristics of effective collaboration and PLCs greatly affect the outcomes of PLCs. An emergent framework is provided that includes attributes of effective collaboration and the characteristics of effective PLCs that merge into intellectual and physical shared workspace.

This paper focuses on the connections between PLCs, school culture, and professional educator collaboration. This paper proposes to provide a unique model called the shared workspace. The model combines the intellectual and physical aspects of group members to ensure the effectiveness of collaborative systems that promote quality practice in schools through functional PLCs as part of a positive school culture. This paper further offers extensions to the shared leadership concept (Carpenter, 2015) in how schools, administrators, and teachers should work together, thus more collaboratively through a continuous improvement process of the school as a workplace and a learning organization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how rural teachers provided a PLC by leveraging virtual technologies to connect educators of like subject disciplines from several schools, foreign and domestic.

A phenomenological case study-based approach was leveraged to investigate established vPLCs at schools (Creswell, 2013; Stake, 2010). Qualitative data were collected from multiple sources to obtain rural teacher perceptions on the impact vPLCs had on their practice (Creswell, 2013).

Teacher collaborative teams build relationships comparable to teams that met face to face as part of a similar PLC and PD experience. Participant reflections in this investigation showed that rural educators favored face-to-face meetings; however, vPLCs provided similar teacher experiences to that of the face-to-face PBL model. Results indicated that educators recognized virtual collaboration just as valuable a tool for enabling PLCs than face-to-face collaborations while still offering similarities to improved teacher practice.

The research was limited to teachers in rural settings in the USA (Texas) and in the Dominican Republic. The research was limited to teacher perceptions of change, and observed changes as part of their participation in a research-based virtual PLC model. The research was limited to the school setting over an academic year.

The findings from this study have practical implications for rural teachers and school implementation of a professional learning community model.

The promise provided by this study is that vPLCs may provide opportunity for rural schools to provide a job-embedded professional development model (Croft et al., 2010) for otherwise isolated teachers (Barrett et al., 2015).

The purpose of this study is to explore mathematics teachers' collaboration within their professional learning communities (PLCs), and to gain insight into how the teachers developed their collective efficacy through it to focus on improving student learning.

Using a qualitative approach, data were collected from three high-performing secondary schools, mainly through semi-structured in-depth interviews with the Heads of Mathematics Unit. For explication and triangulation purposes, focus group interviews with the mathematics teachers and students and document analysis were also conducted.

The findings indicate that PLCs were the vessel through which a culture of disciplined teacher collaboration was fostered. More importantly, this culture encouraged teachers to participate in reflective dialogues that became a driver for their learning, and eventually led to their changed professional practice for improved student learning. The collaborative setting within the PLCs allowed teachers to pool their resources, knowledge and individual expertise to identify their student learning focus, and administer and measure their student intervention strategies. This collaborative professional learning reduced professional isolation, and as a result, improved teachers' collective pursuit of professional growth to impact student outcomes.

The aim of this qualitative study was to provide a detailed description of the teachers' collaboration within their PLCs based on the researchers' interpretation of how the participants make sense of their PLC practices and experiences. Hence, findings are indicative, and not definitive. In addition, the Heads of the Mathematics Unit, and the mathematics teacher participants in this study illustrated salient aspects of subject subcultures, where their beliefs, norms and practices were non-generic, or specific only to their subject context. Therefore, the implications to practice were built from commonalities shared only among the mathematics units.

This is a study in a Malaysian context that provides empirical evidences that are concerned primarily with the process of teachers developing their collective efficacy through disciplined collaboration within their PLCs.

In professional learning communities (PLCs), teachers collaborate and learn with the aim of improving students' learning. The aim of this study is to gain insight into teachers' perceptions of their schools' changing toward PLCs and conditions which support or hamper this change.

Questionnaires were completed by a total of 2.111 teachers from 15 Dutch secondary schools for three years. With the use of multilevel regression analyses, the research questions were answered.

Although the development of a school toward a PLC seems to be a slow process, the findings demonstrate the influence of school conditions on this development. Human resource management (HRM) stands out, as this school condition has a direct and longitudinal effect on the change.

The main recommendation is to embed PLC elements in HRM policies such as facilitating teachers to collaboratively work and learn and aligning teachers' professional development with schools' vision and ambitions.

PLCs have been studied occasionally in longitudinal in-depth case studies or in large-scale, cross-sectional research. This large-scale longitudinal study provides insights into the sustainability of schools as PLCs and the school conditions that are associated with sustainability.

Whilst professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely explored at the school level, they have received less attention at the departmental level. The study takes the variance between departments and the role of departmental teacher leaders into consideration, and the relationships amongst departmental-level PLC dimensions, two types of teacher leadership (TL) and individual teacher self-efficacy are investigated.

The sample consisted of 907 teachers from 81 departments in Chinese schools. The associations between the studied variables were explored through a multi-level analysis approach.

The results show that two specific characteristics of departmental PLCs, namely reflective dialogue (RD) and collective responsibility (CR), exhibit a positive correlation with individual teacher self-efficacy. Additionally, the findings indicate that teacher transformational leadership significantly predicts teacher self-efficacy, whereas teacher instructional leadership (IL) does not emerge as a significant predictor. These findings may be attributed to the contextual factors of Chinese teachers' collective work and the practice of teacher leaders.

This research contributes to the existing literature by addressing the variance between departments and uncovering the impacts of departmental PLC dimensions on individual teachers. Furthermore, two TL styles at the departmental level are differentiated, and their distinct influences on teacher self-efficacy are further analysed.

This study aims to develop a synthetic knowledge repository consisted of interrelated Web Ontology Language.

The ontology composes the main framework to categorize data of product life cycle with eco-design mode (PLC-EDM) and automatically infer specialists’ knowledge for data confirmation, eventually assisting the utilizations and generation of strategies toward decision-making

(i) utilization of a novel model with ontology mode for information reuse cross the different eco-design applications; (ii) generation of a sound platform toward life cycle evaluation; and (iii) implementation of the PLC-EDM model along the product generation process.

It cannot substitute an evaluation tool of life cycle. Certainly, this model does not predict the “target and range” and/or the depiction of the “utility module” that are basic activities in life cycle assessments as characterized through the international organization for standardization regulations.

As portion of this framework, a prototype Web application is presented which is applied to produce, reuse and verify knowledge of product life cycle.

By counting upon the ontology, the information conducted by the utilization is certainly semantically represented to promote the data sharing among various participants and tools. Besides, the data can be verified against possible faults by inferring over the ontology. Hence, a feasible way to a popular topic in the domain of eco-design applications extension in the industry.

The goals are: to lean on rigid modeling principles; and to promote the interoperability and diffusion of the ontology toward particular utilization demands.

To be a writer, one must write. Research shows when teachers write and identify as writers, they transfer their writing practice into their classroom, positively impacting their students' writing development. Shifting instructional practices or identities requires educators to self-determine a gap in order to take on transformative learning experiences, such as mentoring, professional development, or modeled learning. Often professional development is chosen by administrators for educators to shift their instructional practice, ignoring a teacher's curriculum-maker role, and best-loved self identity. This narrative inquiry analysis details one teacher-writer in a creative writing professional development residency as she supports educators with a goal to transform educators into teacher-writers. This chapter includes the small step successes and systematic struggles the author faced as she modeled the writer's craft and writer's workshop strategies with her teachers. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the important role teachers have to decide, navigate, and discover their own best-loved self-teaching identity.

The paper models the effect of spatial clustering on various dimensions of inter-firm competitive rivalry among port logistics firms using Porter's five forces model.

A survey-based quantitative approach is adopted to collect data from logistics firms, which are directly or indirectly dependent on the Port of Melbourne in Australia. A structural equation modelling (SEM) technique is used to examine the theorised relationships between various dimensions of inter-firm competitive rivalry and the tendency of spatial clustering of logistics firms in the vicinity of Port of Melbourne.

The results indicate that the inter-firm competitive rivalry increases significantly when logistics firms are spatially clustered. This effect is further augmented when they cluster around the port. Co-location of firms near the port tends to increase “bargaining power of buyers”, whilst indirectly affecting “competitive rivalry” via “threats of substitutes”. This indicates that co-location enhances the bargaining power of buyers through the greater availability of substitute services that in turn promotes competitive rivalry among firms. However, co-location has an insignificant effect on “barriers to entry” and “bargaining power of suppliers”. Low entry barrier thus favours high competitive rivalry among firms. Hence, this paper validates the Porter's cluster and five forces models that confirm the positive effect of port logistics clusters (PLCs) on bargaining power of buyers and indirect effect on competitive rivalry partially mediated through threats of substitutes.

This study provides empirically grounded evidence for firms to evaluate co-location decision choices and help buyers and sellers to devise business strategies to enhance inter-firm competitive rivalry and bargaining power.

This is the first systematic attempt to empirically validate Porter's five forces model in the context of PLC. Furthermore, the conceptualisation of PLC concept both as spatial and functional constructs (i.e. dependency on port) is novel. This study thus has broadened the meaning of cluster from a geographic entity to a more useful functional construct to reflect inter-firm dependencies.