Amid the implementation of new curriculum standard regarding statistics and new recommendations for preservice secondary mathematics teachers [PSMTs] to teach statistics, there is a need to examine the current state of PSMTs' common statistical knowledge. This study reports on the statistical knowledge 217 PSMTs from a purposeful sample of 18…

This study examined pre-service elementary teachers' change in their understanding of fraction operations while taking a mathematics methods course. Specifically, their explanations and justifications for common algorithms for multiplication and division of fractions were coded using an existing framework (SOLO; Biggs, 1999) for the assessment of…

Mathematics teacher education has been criticized, both internally and externally, for failing to identify shared practices and goals within teacher preparation programs. Work has begun to address this criticism at the elementary level but less exists at the secondary level. This paper reports on a national survey with responses from 116 secondary…

A solution to the problem of preparing teacher education students to develop curricula that focus on multiculturalism is to help them develop the ability to infuse multicultural children's literature and young adult literature into the elementary and secondary school curriculum. Teacher educators must do more than expose their pre-service and…

This study attempted to explore the relationship between elementary teacher candidates' conceptions of the nature of science and their consequent conceptions of teaching science. In order to measure patterns and trends in how elementary teacher candidates define the nature of science and the teaching of science, an open-ended qualitative…

Accountability proponents have been so preoccupied with "how" to secure compliance that they have scarcely paused to consider the educational worth of the full range of academic subjects for all students. The framers of national standards in U.S. history, for example, fail to raise as even a possibility that multiple years of required…

William Perry argued that adult development can be marked by a progressively refined set of questions focused on how Authorities like teachers can support multiple right answers and still maintain that there are wrong answers. When prospective English teachers view right and wrong answers as relativistic, they seem to view themselves as…

This paper describes a model for utilizing national science reform initiatives in an elementary science methods course. By focusing particularly on Project 2061 benchmarks, the reform movement initiated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), teacher candidates were able to successfully analyze, integrate, and utilize…

Fifty-seven elementary education students enrolled in methods courses were asked to respond to an open-ended questionnaire to identify what knowledge and skills had been learned as a result of participating in field experiences required in the courses. Students provided 516 individual statements, with 245 being knowledge statements, which included…

This paper presents the course outline of a methods course for elementary education majors that is based on the structure of the Florida Sunshine State Standards pertaining to science. This structure provides education majors with the vertical scope and sequence of public school science education. The focus is on pedagogical knowledge beyond the…

This study investigated whether or not students apply educational theory to practical situations when they are involved in a learning process that starts from their own educational experiences and "Gestalts," the holistic unity of knowledge, feelings, values, and meanings linked to concrete situations encountered before, and colored by…

Although it is not yet common practice, case studies are beginning to be used in undergraduate music methods classes. One fruitful approach is the use of case studies as a means of nurturing reflective practice through cooperative learning activities. This paper describes and presents support for the case method of instruction through a review of…

A common belief among teacher educators is that different academic backgrounds may influence student entry level and rates of matriculation through the curriculum. This report describes a study using a "pretest/posttest" method to evaluate student academic progression, and to determine variance in scores between two groups of graduate students…

Preservice teachers must see appropriate instruction in action; they must see content in conjunction with process. Content, process, and active student involvement are necessary for the creation of new cognitive structures that are congruent with the view that reading is an interactive-constructive process. Three types of literacy course…

This study revealed some of the factors that influence preservice elementary teachers' instructional planning in word problem solving by examining preservice teachers' conceptions of how to teach word problem solving. Twenty-one interviews of preservice teachers were conducted before and after the mathematics methods course and the protocols were…