Reading for Pleasure (RfP) acknowledges the importance of reader engagement and the role of the teacher as a reader of children's literature. The foundational work of the Teachers as Readers (TARs) programme successfully illustrated the impact of RfP activities on student learning. Previous studies of teachers' reader identities have shown a…

League of VetaHumanz uses a nationwide network of university-community partnerships to provide veterinary STEM learning experiences for children who are more likely to lack access to enriching, supplemental educational opportunities due to systemic barriers based on their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. To include participation beyond…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) play a prominent role in today's society. At the same time, studies show that the gap in science performance between students from lower socioeconomic background and students from a more advantaged background is wide. Studies further show that role models can have a positive effect and the…

The call for more males to work with children in their formative years remains prevalent in education discourse across the globe. Assertions that these men will positively address boys' poor behaviour and underachievement, as well as serving as father figures and role models for boys, continue to fuel international policy making and shape media…

This study explored student teachers' (mentees) and their mentors' perspectives of the mentoring during initial teaching practice in Ghana. Guided by the framework of mentor as role model, peer support and sponsor, a 15-item questionnaire (Mentoring Support Scale) -- premised on four factors -- was combined with two open-ended questions to gather…

The present qualitative study aimed to investigate how school garden-based science pedagogy improves students' attitudes toward science learning, particularly in under-resourced urban school districts. The findings of this study suggest that the implementation of school garden-based science pedagogy can positively impact elementary students'…

Teachers serve as gatekeepers to the implementation of curriculum in their classroom (Thornton, 2005). Their beliefs about a topic and the wider political environment can influence what they teach. To this end, our goal was to investigate whom preservice teachers identify as heroes and why, which heroes should be included in the curriculum, and…

Black male teachers (BMEs) make up less than two percent of the entire educator workforce in the U.S. (Clark, 2020; DeRuy, 2016; Eng, 2020; Oakley et al., 2009), and in Florida, Black male elementary teachers (BMETs) comprise about 1.5% of all educators (FLDOE, 2022). Stephens et al. (2019) shared that all children benefit from experiences with…

This article explores how university learning and the period of school placement can contribute to identity development understood as a dynamic and evolving process. From this perspective, we understand the teacher's professional identity as an ongoing process of interpretation and re-interpretation of experiences that are shaped in professional…

This article discusses an innovative family literacy project that was implemented in a community setting. Male trios consisting of a male significant figure, a struggling reader in elementary school, and a pre-service teacher were created. The goal was (a) to develop the student's motivation to read by using a male reading role model and allowing…

This paper presents a novel approach to teaching how vaccines work in the body, and introduces a community outreach project and activity we piloted with youth. Our Nuestra Ciencia program addresses scientific misconceptions among bilingual elementary school children in engaging and scientifically accurate ways. Utilizing analogies and…

Practice-based teacher education (PBTE), an approach to teacher education that privileges authentic experiences and is centered around the acquisition of a set of core practices, has seen an increase in popularity in recent years. The goal of PBTE is to cultivate preservice teachers (PSTs) who are 'advanced beginners' in a variety of pedagogical…

This research was carried out to determine pre-service teachers' perceptions of "peace". This was a qualitative research based on case studies scenarios and document analysis. The sample of the study consists of 180 teacher-candidates studies in the social sciences and primary education at a state university in the Aegean Region of…

The purpose of this study was to explore two sophomore pre-service teachers' processes of professional orientation in the same teacher education program in the US with emphasis on their identity construction. The pre-services teachers were asked to reflect on their "identity" and articulate "who they are" as becoming teachers…

We examine the long-run impacts of having a same-race teacher. First, we leverage data from the Tennessee STAR class-size experiment to show that black students randomly assigned to a black teacher in grades K-3 are 5 percentage points (7%) more likely to graduate from high school and 4 percentage points (13%) more likely to enroll in college than…