Describes a process used at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to select undergraduate students for acceptance into elementary teacher education. Candidates work in small groups to meet creative challenges that demonstrate the presence or absence of certain desired characteristics not reflected by standardized test scores or grade point…

When a class of future teachers rated the nation's schools, local schools received higher grades than schools nationally. A follow-up essay disclosed that 97 percent of these college seniors obtained their information from newspaper, magazine, or television coverage. If 75 percent of Gallup Poll respondents gave local schools passing grades, media…

An ETS adult-literacy study, ignored by the media, showed that teachers' prose, document, and quantitative literacy was higher than that of most other professionals. Administrators scored lower than teachers in all three literacies. Meanwhile, a highly publicized Home School Legal Defense study glorified privileged students' predictable test…

Data suggest that self-selection is weeding out the poorer students in the teacher education program at Western Washington University. The grade point average of freshmen, although declining for the university as a whole, is rising in teacher education. (Author/JM)

An education major enrolled in a mathematics education course ponders confusing definitions of "multiplication" functions in dictionaries and in a handout on Euclid. This student teacher wants to teach elementary students what multiplication really is, not just impart an algorithmic skill. (MLH)

The Commonwealth Teacher Training Study conducted shortly after World War I and the activities of the Commission on Teacher Education from 1938 to 1944 addressed the problems of recruiting and motivating higher quality education majors. The findings of these studies could prove highly relevant to today's concerns in teacher education. (PGD)

Describes the essential characteristics, development, implementation, and anticipated benefits of an innovative New Jersey program that will allow local districts to hire and train for certification prospective teachers who have college degrees and subject area expertise. (PGD)

A survey of 381 female college students with interests or majors in elementary- or secondary-level teaching found that college experience did not change or broaden their career goals. Further, the percentage who expected career goals to become secondary to familial goals increased the farther ahead they predicted their futures. (RW)

Education majors need an updated field experience aimed at studying adolescents from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Visiting a local shopping mall on a Friday night to observe teens in their natural habitat is entertaining and enlightening. By surveying kids, college students can find out what teens value and examine their own…

The drive to eliminate undergraduate teacher education programs raises problems. Discusses the hostile climate of opinion expressed about teacher education in many colleges and universities. (MD)

Using ingenuity and an IBM grant, an assistant professor of special education paired 40 teacher education students in her methods courses with middle-school writing partners from the teachers' classes for moderately handicapped students. Using electronic mail, the pairs communicated often on various topics. Friendships developed, along with…

Presently a contradiction exists between form and function in teacher education. Although creativity and self-awareness are voiced as goals for teachers and their students, teachers are all too often educated by means of lectures, a form which holds quiet attentiveness rather than intellectual aggression a chief value. In their own classes,…

Novice teachers who perform student teaching in exemplary schools only are inadequately prepared for classroom circumstances found in typical city schools. Preparation programs should place students in model classrooms in typical schools; provide a "dual school" experience, alternating model schools with more typical ones; or assign…

Describes a teacher educator's experience at offering a course for graduate education majors called "Religion and the Public Schools." Classroom discussions were free-ranging, and students expressed views and insights concerning course materials in journals. Many students questioned whether religious studies could be taught…

Illustrating with a real-life problem involving a 12th-grade math teacher's decision to fail a college-bound minority student, this article shows how case studies enhance preservice teachers' learning and awareness. In the classroom, teaching strategies, evaluation methods, and decisions about students' lives are inextricably entangled with a…