Learning to teach elementary science well is not only a goal for preservice teachers. This article describes a partnership that has led to an on-site science methods course in an elementary school library that blends pedagogical instruction with practical classroom time to the benefit of inservice and preservice teachers. In the course, both sets…

Integrating curriculum provides rich opportunities for students to focus on relevant applications to the real world and make meaningful connections across different disciplines. This article attempts to go beyond common discourse and platitudes by offering specific examples, showing we--an ethnomusicologist and a mathematics educator--attempted to…

This piece focuses on increasing writing instruction for secondary English teacher candidates in the form of integrating reading and writing. Often, teacher candidates are not sufficiently prepared in university coursework to teach writing and are left to rely on formulaic writing that merely prepares their students for the end-of-year tests.…

In 1991, the AACU issued a report on improving undergraduate education suggesting, in part, that a curriculum should be both comprehensive and cohesive. Since 2008, we have systematically integrated our research methods course with our capstone course in an attempt to accomplish the twin goals of comprehensiveness and cohesion. By taking this…

Although social justice is a core value of social work, it can be more difficult to integrate into a research methods class. This article describes an assignment developed for a BSW one-semester research class that served the dual purpose of educating students about social justice as well as qualitative research. Students were instructed to…

We describe the Science Semester, a semester-long course block that integrates three science courses and a science education methods course for elementary teacher education majors, and examine prospective elementary teachers' developing conceptions about inquiry, science teaching efficacy, and reflections on learning through inquiry. The…

This article explores one element of collaborative practice: the integration of English language learner-focused instruction and discussion in a secondary English methods course. Drawing on the authors' expertise, they examine revisions made to a secondary English methods course to better address the academic and individual needs of diverse…

On a recent trip to a local art museum with a group of undergraduate teacher candidates, the author was impressed by the presentation made by the group facilitator. She showed the teacher candidates a slide of a painting found in the gallery and asked the students to take a few minutes to examine it and be prepared to share what they found…

Describes how several elementary teacher educators are learning to practice what they teach by integrating methods courses. This involves taking action to coordinate what occurs in each course and integrate what they do and how they do it, with a focus on interdisciplinary instruction. The process of learning to integrate methods courses involves…

Children love observing seeds change as they germinate and grow into tall healthy plants, but how can teachers make investigating plants an exciting and immediate event? Microscopy might just be the answer. Although most students have seen flowers, not many have looked closely at their various structures or seen their colorful designs only…

The Learning Community program at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh brings together four individual teacher education methods courses in an integrated block with clinical field experience. The program provides teacher educators the opportunity to integrate their instruction with other courses and contextualize the learning of students with…

Four full days of classroom instruction, devoted to the modeling of effective curriculum integration, were designed for preservice elementary school teachers. The unit was the result of a conviction on the part of teacher educators that children learn best when learning is not separated into forty-minute periods of math, social studies, language…

Describes the collaboration between the social studies and technology methods courses as they created a technology-based learning community at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Provides rational for creating a learning community, presents the different obstacles during the course, and finally discusses the needed refinements. (CMK)

Describes an integrated methods course in a small university, including evolution of the course, topics covered, descriptions of student assignments and activities, procedures used in student evaluation, and student opinions of the integrated course. An appendix contains the outline of topics and student activities. (15 references) (Author/MKR)

This project was designed to develop a model for teaching general music methods for elementary/early childhood education majors using musics of diverse cultures as discrete and infused entities, integrated across the curriculum. The proposed model's primary goal was to develop student awareness of sources of culturally diverse music and related…