Describes tutoring experiences provided for senior methods students with college freshmen in composition and short story courses at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. (RD)

Proposes techniques to help instructors of preservice teacher education programs in social studies improve their programs. Techniques involve collecting data from the schools, determining a definition of social studies, selecting teaching competencies and instructional strategies, and assessing teachers' and student teachers' abilities to perform…

Examined mathematical methods courses as part of pedagogical training provided to prospective Chinese elementary school teachers through the analysis of textbooks and courses given at two teacher education sites. Results show that knowing, understanding, and exploring the content and design of textbooks used in elementary classrooms were greatly…

Current thinking on reflective practice in teacher education is discussed, and a description is given of how dialogue journals are used to put this philosophy into action in a content-area reading methods course for secondary preservice teachers. (IAH)

Bowling Green State University's College of Education and Allied Professions incorporated a general secondary education teaching methods course, for all teacher candidates, consisting of seminar sessions which establish a strong theoretical and conceptual base for teaching skills and provide examples of teaching behaviors essential to effective…

This article describes a portion of a long-term, action-research project investigating the teaching of an elementary social studies methods course for preservice teachers from a social justice framework. Other major foci for the course are integrated with topics related specifically to social studies teaching and learning: cultural diversity, an…

Because various definitions of inquiry exist in the science education literature and in classroom practice, elementary science methods students and instructors face dilemmas during the study of inquiry. Using field notes, instructor anecdotal notes, student products, and course artifacts, science methods course instructors created fictional…

Given a sociocultural framework of teaching and learning, argumentation and discourse become central elements of education, particularly in science education because of argumentation's key role in scientific communities. This study documents preservice teachers' perceptions of and aptitudes related to argumentation as they participated in a…

Interteaching is a new method of classroom instruction that is based on behavioral principles but offers more flexibility than other behaviorally based methods. We examined the effectiveness of interteaching relative to a traditional form of classroom instruction--the lecture. In Study 1, participants in a graduate course in special education took…

A previous study showed that elementary teaching majors enrolled in an inquiry-based physical science course developed chemistry content knowledge comparable to that of students enrolled in traditional lecture-based courses. This current study compares the views of these elementary teaching majors regarding how chemistry is taught and learned to…

This inquiry uses teacher-candidate critiques of science lessons as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of an instructor's pedagogical approach to promote teacher candidate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) in a science methods course. Three cohorts of teacher candidates enrolled in a middle-years teacher education program were…

The majority of middle school teachers are prepared in either generalist elementary programs or subject-specific secondary programs, yet researchers and teacher educators have little understanding of the ways in which these divergent pathways prepare teachers for working at the middle school level. In this study, preservice teachers from an…

As a teacher educator in a large public university, the author's methods courses are frequently comprised of both pre- and in-service teachers who are, or will be, working with culturally, linguistically, and cognitively diverse (CLCD) early language learners. It is incumbent upon the author to equip them with skills, strategies, and a sound…