This dissertation was an exploratory investigation of four institutions STEM endorsement programs. The investigation was done in three separate qualitative studies that explored each institution's staff and faculty views on developing and implementing their STEM endorsement programs, the views of faculty who developed and taught a STEM methods…

This action research study honors teacher-as-researcher and utilizes qualitative methods of data collection alongside emergent design to study arts-integrated teaching and learning at a mid-sized Midwestern university in a social studies methods course. The thinking and learning of both pre-service teachers and the teacher educator/researcher are…

In this survey research, I examined teacher educators' perspectives regarding music integration in their music methods courses for pre-service classroom teachers. Previous researchers have defined music integration levels and styles. In the current study, half of the teacher educators defined music integration in terms that reflected the highest…

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the impact of co-taught integrated STEM methods instruction on preservice elementary teachers' self-efficacy for teaching science and mathematics within an integrated STEM framework. Two instructional methods courses (Elementary Mathematics Methods and Elementary Science Methods) were redesigned to…

Increasingly in K-12 schools, students are gaining access to computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS). This access, however, is not always extended to students with disabilities. One way to increase CT and CS (CT/CS) exposure for students with disabilities is through preparing special education teachers to do so. In this study,…

As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience or with school employment. This course, Education…

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education has become an international focus of science education curricular reforms. However, few K-12 teachers have the background to authentically teach STEM in an integrated way. This is especially true of elementary teachers, who are often less confident or prepared to teach STEM disciplines…

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…

In this paper, we--one mathematics teacher educator and one social studies teacher educator--describe a project where we collaborated to model teaching integrated mathematics and social studies for social justice in our methods courses. Using a self-study approach, we examined our teaching and our students' learning with regards to teaching…

Preservice teachers in six sections (n = 87) of a sequenced, methodological and process-integrated elementary mathematics/science methods course were able to reconcile an issue centered on a similar area of epistemology. Preservice teachers participated in a science inquiry lesson on biological classification and a mathematics problem-solving…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiatives in the United States have surged as the demand for high-quality STEM education has escalated (Nadelson, Callahan, Pyke, Hay, & Schrader, 2009; Parry, 2011). The goal of this article is to present a description of how one STEM-focused elementary teacher preparation…

Although science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education sits at the center of a national conversation, comparatively little attention has been given to growing need for STEM teacher preparation, particularly at the elementary level. This study analyzes the outcomes of a novel, preservice STEM teacher education model. Building…