An established tool for collating secondary teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (Loughran's CoRe) has been adapted for use by tertiary educators. Chemistry lecturers with a range of levels of experience were invited to participate in workshops through which the tool was piloted, refined and applied. We now present this refined tool for the…

Some boys thrive in school; many do not. There is a growing consensus that many boys' scholastic performance is failing to keep up with the new knowledge economy. As troubling as this trend in boys' scholastic performance may be generally, school troubles are neither universal nor normative. The intriguing fact is that some boys in most schools…

Developing and writing assessment items that measure teachers' knowledge is an intricate and complex undertaking. In this paper, we begin with an overview of what is known about measuring teacher knowledge. We then highlight the challenges inherent in creating assessment items that focus specifically on measuring teachers' specialised knowledge…

The goal of this study was to investigate understanding of in-service elementary school teachers in Taiwan about number sense, teaching strategies of number sense and the development of number sense of students. Data were gathered through interviews of nine elementary mathematics teachers, regarding their understanding about number sense. The data…

This paper describes a case study focusing on the subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and beliefs about science teaching of student teachers in Turkey at the start of their university education. The topic of interest was that of teaching chemical reactions in secondary chemistry education. A written test was developed which…

Teachers often engage in curricular planning by critiquing and adapting existing curriculum materials to contextualize lessons and compensate for their deficiencies. Designing instruction for students is shaped by teachers' ability to apply a variety of personal resources, including their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This study…

The purpose of this study was to determine perceptions of participants in the 2007 National Agriscience Teacher Ambassador Academy (NATAA) toward integrating science into the agricultural education curriculum. NATAA participants felt that students are more motivated to learn, better prepared in science, provided more opportunities to solve…

The purpose of this study was to discover themes or concepts, generated from the collected data, that formed building blocks of grounded theory in the study of secondary school social studies teachers' perspectives. This research study was conducted in Jordan, where secondary school social studies teachers were interviewed regarding their…

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 require that students with disabilities be included in statewide assessments and general education accountability systems, thereby placing increased demands on special education teachers. At issue is how new teachers are prepared to respond to…

This study investigated whether undergraduate teacher education students were prepared to teach their students in both an academically stimulating and culturally sensitive way. During the fall of 2003, student teachers were asked to complete two open-ended questions about diversity. The students were working on certificates in either the preschool…

The purpose of this study was to determine the competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities) required of effective Agricultural Science teachers both inside and outside the classroom as perceived by preservice and inservice teachers and to suggest ways that preservice teachers can gain those competencies prior to entering the teaching…

In the past, evaluation of teacher performance often focused on generic behaviors related to common instructional strategies (Medley, Coker, & Soar, 1984). More recently, educational researchers and test developers have focused more on teachers' subject matter knowledge as tested through tools like the Praxis and California's Single Subject…