Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC)

With a one-year planning grant from the AT&T Foundation and two years of pilot funding from the Microsoft Partners in Learning (PiL) MidTier Project, NCTAF developed the Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC) project. Utilizing a common platform, Tapped In (www.tappedin.org), to support the work of three partner sites, K-16 educators are able to develop and support a variety of online learning communities to enhance the progression of teacher learning from preservice, through induction and early teaching, and beyond. A recent grant award from the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) will fund the project’s continued growth and implementation in the partner sites over the next three years. 

NCTAF’s TLINC program is a significant innovation because it represents a major change from the standard practice of preparing teachers in isolation from the schools where they will serve, and then placing them as stand-alone teachers in self-contained classrooms. TLINC provides a professional learning community that expands and enhances face-to-face mentoring with online coaching and opportunities for facilitated reflection and peer collaboration to improve teaching quality and student achievement. TLINC gives teacher candidates and novice teachers the support of an interactive network composed of their preparation faculty, their peers and colleagues, and accomplished teachers who are only a click away when they need help with student learning, classroom management, or a curriculum design problem.

The TLINC project seeks to achieve the five following outcomes in its three project sites:

1) Improved teacher retention;
2) Accelerated proficiency for new teachers;
3) Opportunities for all teachers, administrators, and university faculty to become engaged in a learning community that continues to evolve;
4) Establishment of partnership capacity-building structures and processes that assure sustainability;
5) Identification of the elements of TLINC that are the source of its power, to identify the essentials for replication and scaling.

Site Descriptions

Research, Reports, and Articles

Recent Presentations

Project Platform

For more information on the TLINC project, please contact:

Kathleen Fulton                                                        Hanna Doerr

Director for Reinventing Schools                                 Program Manager
    for the 21st Century                                              hdoerr@nctaf.org
kfulton@nctaf.org