The purpose of this teacher-practitioner research study was to examine how elementary teacher candidates engaged in sensemaking about the learning process within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and to further examine how they engaged in sensemaking about NGSS teaching and curriculum development. Interviews and course artifacts from 14…

Research studies focusing on schools and teachers' capabilities to teach and develop students' health literacy (HL) are few. Of the research that currently exists, teachers face difficulties when teaching health education to enhance students' critical HL levels, with only one study examining preservice teachers (PSTs). The aim of this study is to…

This study aimed to determine the perceptions of preservice elementary mathematics teachers about creating and evaluating real-life connections in story problems. The study was conducted according to the case design. The study group consists of 35 preservice teachers taking Mathematical Connection Teaching course. Study instruction was used as a…

Learning in diverse settings during pre-service teacher training equips future primary teachers with the knowledge and skills to teach in authentic learning environments later in their work lives. This experience helps to meet the varying needs of their future students who have increasingly diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds with…

The paper investigates the potential of utilizing artistic creation as an alternative task for assessing students in a non-artistic course within higher education. Eighteen postgraduate students of the Department of Pedagogy and Primary Education of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, after attending a six-hour course in…

Over the past several decades, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have placed an emphasis on inquiry-based science and mathematics instruction in elementary school. While inquiry-based science and mathematics instruction can support student learning and engagement, teacher preparation programmes have experienced challenges in preparing…

As we prepare teachers to provide students with opportunities within STEM education, authentic experiences should guide the instruction. Unfortunately, due to the novel integration of engineering into national reform documents, there is a dearth of documentation on elementary preservice teachers' engineering ideas as they align with student goals…

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…

The purpose of this pilot study was to engage pre-service elementary teachers in a semester-long project to deepen their quantitative reasoning skills when working with real-world data. Over three semesters, all pre-service elementary teachers enrolled in mathematics content courses focusing on K-8 mathematics topics had to collect, analyze,…

There is a strong focus to connect theory with practice in initial teacher education (ITE). This discussion paper explores how we shifted teaching modes and assessment tasks in light of the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) when digital technologies were unexpectedly catapulted to the main delivery mode for the preparation of future teachers. During…

As students learn to problem solve in authentic situations, they must also develop metacognitive tools to manage and regulate their problem-solving process. To foster process-focused metacognition utilized by mathematical thinkers and problem solvers, inquiry-based learning classroom practices and an adapted version of portfolio problems were…

This research was conducted on two groups of pre-service elementary teachers (PSETs) (N = 38) in a pre/post within-subjects design. Participants were asked to critique, create, and evaluate the use of virtual reality (VR) classroom applications during a three-stage intervention. Pre/post questionnaires assessed the change in attitudes toward using…

Pre-service teachers are mostly trained with traditional methods in their institutions and as a result, they do not become competent in technology integration in education. To successfully integrate technology in education, it is necessary for teachers to have knowledge of the content and the pedagogical techniques to teach this content with…

The use of cases has been promoted as a promising instructional method for creating authentic learning environments. However, the development and implementation of the best instructional strategies for effective use of cases still require further research. This paper addresses some of these gaps by proposing an emergent instructional model to be…

This article reports on how pen pals can be incorporated into the literacy classroom for engagement and motivational interest. The authors describe a study in which focused, interactive pen pals were implemented in a third-grade classroom, and the influence this practice had on students' writing. Incorporating pen pals during writing instruction…