This article examines the use of narrative identity analysis of the life-story theory approach to guide the career paths of middle grades teachers. It presents the views of middle grades teachers and education students on the integral role of narrative and on the impact of life-story approach in their careers and their identities. It explores how…

This study presents a qualitative analysis of the knowledge teachers in one professional development course used to reason about proportional relationships with double number lines. We work from the knowledge-in-pieces perspective to consider the existing knowledge the participants did or did not invoke when learning to reason with this…

Teacher educators have the task of identifying skills most needed by pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. The purpose of this study was to describe teacher concerns over different stages of teacher development. A three-part instrument consisting of a teacher concerns statement, a Likert-type scale of concerns and demographic data was…

Given the dearth of research on elementary education majors' experiences in middle level endorsement programs (Anderson, 2009), and the shortage of teachers aspiring to work with young adolescents, this case study examined the topic to provide insight into the experiences of preservice elementary education teachers. Specifically, this study…

For decades, music teachers have shared the dread of writing formal lesson plans, yet most know that planning yields better instruction. Why does this disconnect continue? The common argument that music teachers make is that teaching music is fundamentally different from teaching other subjects. Lesson plans are written to pacify supervisors and…

Modeling inter-disciplinary teaching and learning practices within a critical pedagogical framework has produced powerful learning outcomes for graduates of the Primary/Middle Bachelor of Education degree at the University of South Australia. This paper explores the notion of how best to prepare beginning teachers to work with students in their…

Researchers conducted a mixed-methods study with 21 undergraduate university students majoring in education to determine their ability to recognize the motivational factors and 21st-century learning skills associated with digital games. Results suggest that students in the study were able to detect the learning skills embedded in games. The…

University mathematics education courses do not always provide the opportunity to make connections between advanced topics and the mathematics taught in middle school or high school. Activities like the ones described in this article invite such connections. Analyzing concrete or particular examples provides a better grasp of abstract concepts.…

This study examined whether a quality professional development course, "Infusing Technology", influenced the use of technology by elementary and middle school teachers in West Virginia. "Infusing Technology" was designed to help school-based team learning communities use technology in their instruction while engaging students…

The study explored the influence of university-based teacher education courses on pre-service middle and high school teachers' experiences with multicultural themes in a secondary science alternative certification program. Eight participants (N = 8), six women and two men, volunteered to be a part of the study that took place over a period of four…

Using an explanatory mixed methods design, this study uses the National Standards of Quality for Online Courses to measure the extent to which teachers in a blended middle school and a fully online supplemental high school are designing quality online learning environments for students. As a part of fully online graduate coursework, graduate…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires that all teachers be certified within the content areas that they teach. However, attracting and retaining highly qualified science teachers in rural school districts is particularly difficult due to limited resources and geographic and professional isolation. Science professional development programs could…

In K-12 classrooms, as well as on the college and university level, the incorporation of digital games has played a vital role in the educational system. While introducing teachers to new fields, these digital games have been designed and implemented for the classroom and have shown positive results at a variety of educational levels. Cases on…

In most teacher education courses, instructional strategies are merely listed and explained. Students rarely have the opportunity to see these strategies in use until they become student teachers. What better way to teach secondary instructional strategies to pre-service teachers than by modeling these strategies using teacher education content?…

This paper reports on a study conducted on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2005 database. The purpose of the study was to examine predictors of student achievement using middle school mathematics teacher professional development items as criterion variables, such as the number of mathematics courses taken, the number of…