This manuscript provides an overview of the findings of an ongoing qualitative exploratory study that examined how preservice and inservice teachers in two different online education courses (ED 600 and ED 500) developed an understanding of the multifaceted issues that affect diverse learners. The study also investigated the instructors’ reflections about their courses through their individual journals. An analysis of the study participants' Discussion Board posts and interactions online revealed how the Discussion Board forum was used as a critical, reflective space for participants' to engage in self-reflection and to exchange and challenge one another's ideas. The journals also revealed the instructors' overall aspirations for the course, and their role in cultivating an online community in their courses.

While parent involvement has been shown to have positive academic outcomes for their children, for structural changes to be made, parents have to go from being active to taking on a more activist role, thus “stoking the flame” of the norm. Parent advocacy and empowerment groups play a vital role in the transformation of parent activists, yet their contributions are often overlooked in the literature on parent involvement. Using Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth Framework, findings from this qualitative study examine how a parent empowerment group embraced the cultural assets and strengths of Black parents, served as the spark to engage them in the educational reform process, and built a platform for them as activists. This research expands conceptualizations of parent involvement to include activism and asserts parent advocacy and empowerment groups as vital stakeholders in educational change.

This essay discusses the EdD Program design and qualitative research course sequence at Drexel University, a private, non-profit institution. This large program admits up to 140 EdD students annually with approximately 100 attending fully online and 40 attending hybrid offerings at the main campus and at a satellite program in Washington, DC. The essay features a qualitative course observation activity designed by Janesick (2011) to be used face-to-face and details how the activity has been adapted for virtual delivery at East Coast University. As a literature review revealed a paucity of published works on teaching observation qualitatively, the authors seek to contribute to the knowledge base with particular emphasis on faculty teaching in an online program. Based upon the East Coast University faculty’s use of this observation activity, students develop increased understanding of the roles of perception and perspective in qualitative observation.  

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