Pre-service teachers often express a strong desire for more practical experience in teacher education, which requires teacher educators to consider new, meaningful opportunities for field experiences. This paper aims to bridge the gap between two 'practice worlds' - university teacher education and school practice - based on the example of the…

Background: The theory and practice divide is a persistent conundrum in teacher education. Moreover, foundation phase literacy teacher education is no exception because such graduates are expected to acquire knowledge and skills to address the challenges of the classroom. Objectives: This article focuses on the application of an integrated…

One of the major issues confronting education in Arizona and across the United States has been the consistent low performance of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in comparison to their peers as evidenced by the disparity of the achievement gap at every level in the educational pipeline. A contributing factor has been the lack…

This article describes the implementation of a service-learning project, which was infused into a child development course. The project linked family child care providers, their licensing agency, and 39 preservice teachers in a joint effort to develop a parent handbook to be used by the providers in their child care businesses and to support…

The social influence role of teachers and their awareness of their responsibilities towards society are as important as their subject matter and pedagogical knowledge. As a multilevel learning environment, teacher colleges should place significant emphasis on enhancing teacher candidates' social responsibility attitudes, knowledge, and skills. To…

This action research study examined the experiences of a heritage speaker of Spanish who was training to become a Spanish teacher within a Spanish Education program that was in the process of transforming the traditional, front-loaded and theoretical methods course into a practice-based approach to teacher education. The goal of this…

Engaging students in valuable undergraduate research can be an arduous task to craft outside of the regular schedule of both staff and students. This paper describes a successful research experience that was part of an ongoing methods class for undergraduate pre-service education students. Participants simultaneously engaged in community service…

This paper discusses the effects of the use of service learning in pre-service teachers (PSTs). This methodology has been applied for two academic years at a Spanish university, providing a direct service for children with special educational needs (SEN) through motor and expressive games. We used Butin's model for the analysis of data collected…

Service learning is a widely accepted method for preservice teachers to gain knowledge about the communities they may someday serve. Critical multicultural service learning is commonly used to help preservice teachers explore issues of inequality, power, and manifestations of social reproduction in school systems, and is intended to foster…

This study documents the effects of service-learning as it was introduced and brought to scale in an introductory undergraduate course in Reading Foundations for students seeking to become early and middle childhood education teachers. Participants included multiple cohorts of students in multiple instantiations of the course taught with and…

This paper discusses Service-learning within an Australian higher education context as pedagogy to teach about inclusive education. Using Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) model of the rhizome, this study conceptualises pre-service teachers' learning experiences as multiple, hydra and continuous. Data from reflection logs of pre-service teachers…

Research in teacher education suggests that field experiences in community settings can offer pre-service teachers a context for understanding the link between theory and practice. This paper documents the experiences of pre-service educators participating in a service-learning experience at a Children's Defense Fund Freedom School in the…

This article describes Heart to Heart Art, an after-school program developed for homeless children and youth at the YWCA in Spokane, Washington. Pre-service teacher candidates from a local university create meaningful activities that engage homeless students in visual art, music, drama, cooking, and community service. Heart to Heart Art was…

The authors have discovered that working in a writing center setting within the classroom provides pre-service teachers with an opportunity not only to work with student writers one-on-one but also to experience a model of best practice in teaching writing. In this article, the authors describe a program, focusing on the partnership they have…

Research has called for courses to be developed that provide preservice teachers opportunities to actively engage their pedagogies under construction in order to effectively translate their beliefs into sound instructional practice. This article presents research that examined how a service-learning writing tutoring program affected preservice…