Despite the promise of equal education opportunities for all students in the nation, the achievement/opportunity gap between English language learners (ELLs) and their non-ELLs peers persists. Time, effort, and resources of all kids have been invested in educational reforms to improve these students' outcomes without success (Darling-Hammond,…

Research indicates that a large percentage of students have misconceptions of the equal sign and that this can be detrimental to their mathematical pursuits as they progress through algebra. In order for students to develop a strong understanding of the meaning of the equal sign, algebra teachers must be aware of the viewpoints their students will…

In this study we explored to what extent middle school teachers were able to appropriately identify proportional situations when presented with various mathematical structures and if there were relationships between attributes of the teachers and their ability to identify proportional situations. Interestingly, there were no strong relationships…

This study is the part of a larger study on investigating Hong Kong (HK) prospective teachers' (PTs) subject matter knowledge (SMK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). In this paper, five HK PTs' and PC on teaching one topic regarding square root were investigated. The results suggest that insufficient understanding on the concept of…

Although current reform movements have stressed the importance of developing prospective middle school mathematics teachers' subject matter knowledge and understandings, there is a dearth of research studies with regard to prospective middle school teachers' confidence and knowledge with respect to quadratic functions. This study was intended to…

Today's classrooms are more diverse than ever. In fact, research shows that there will be a steady increase in Hispanic, Asian Americans, and African American students in the coming years. Therefore, differentiated instruction may be the panacea that educators are searching for. This paper commences with an introduction and then segways into a…

This paper summarizes the content and results of a workshop about the teaching of evolution presented to public middle school and high school science teachers by individuals involved both in university education and the professional development of teachers. The goals of the workshop were to: (1) provide teachers with knowledge and resources to…

An important aspect of developing science literacy for all students is developing science-literate teachers. With the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, many middle school teachers found themselves in a position where they were no longer qualified to teach middle school science. This study was designed to help science teachers…