To strengthen students' preparation for engaging in field learning, an innovation was implemented to teach and assess foundation-year students' performance prior to entering field education. An Objective Structured Clinical Examination informed the final evaluation of students' performance in two companion courses on practice theory and skills.…

Few studies have examined the impact of mastery learning on mastery goal structures or even on students' motivation more generally. In this study, we examined one middle school that implemented a schoolwide mastery learning system, conducting interviews with a sample of administrators (n = 3), teachers (n = 4), and students (n = 9) to determine…

This study examined the challenges that pre-service teachers faced when implementing inquiry and their perspective on how to overcome them. The data sample was 55 pre-service teachers (PSTs) enrolled into two sections of a science methods course in a private university in North Texas. The data sources consisted of inquiry-based lesson plans, PST…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS, 2010) as the latest initiative in the ongoing effort of educational reform in the United States reinforces the need to build the capacity of teachers as leaders and change agents. As such, graduate teacher leadership programs function to support and develop teacher leadership praxis. Although studies of…