"Professional Learning Community: Emergent Literacy" was developed to support preschool teachers through collaborative learning experiences in a literacy professional learning community (PLC). PLCs are a form of professional development in which small groups of educators with shared interests work together with the goals of expanding…

Children entering kindergarten and grade 1 vary greatly in their emergent literacy skills. Because preschool teachers can help set the foundation of literacy skills related to school readiness, one way to address those gaps is to build teachers' capacity to apply evidence-based strategies in their language and literacy instruction.…

"Professional Learning Community: Emergent Literacy" was developed to support preschool teachers through collaborative learning experiences in a literacy professional learning community (PLC). PLCs are a form of professional development in which small groups of educators with shared interests work together with the goals of expanding…

In this article, we studied the developmental trajectories of three teachers as they integrated GroupScribbles (GS) technology in their classroom lessons over a semester period of about 5 months. Coherency diagrams were used to capture the complex interplay of a teacher's knowledge (K), goals (G) and beliefs (B) in leveraging technology…

Research exploring the possible link between quality of argumentation and content knowledge is not straightforward. Some studies suggest a positive relationship (e.g. Dawson & Schibeci in "J Biol Educ" 38(1):7-12, 2003) while others do not (e.g. Zohar & Nemet in "J Res Sci Teach" 39:35-62, 2002). This study examined the…

This paper is concerned with the conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for teaching about the nature of science. In contrast to the view that science teachers need to develop a specific "PCK for nature of science," an alternative, more comprehensive notion of PCK for science teaching is suggested. The point of…

This article presents an Australian perspective on the issue of standards-based education and the place of students of English as an additional language (EAL) who are working within mainstream schools. Beginning with an overview of the various standards documents that impact the lives of teachers and their students in mainstream Australian…

Modern technology increasingly creates new challenges in various professional development and practice. However, in teaching, the mere adoption of new or innovative technology is not enough to meet the students' learning needs and opportunities. Technology alone could not sufficiently bring about the desired changes in students' competencies and…

The purpose of this research is to determine pre-service mathematics teachers' skills in the development of activities. The research was carried out using the case study which is descriptive method. For the collection of data, 57 pre-service mathematics teachers' in their final year secondary math teachers' education department…

With the increased use of standardised mathematics assessments at the classroom level, teachers are encouraged, and sometimes required, to use data from these assessments to inform their practice. As a consequence, teacher educators and researchers are starting to focus on the development of analytical tools that will help them determine how…

This study assessed the quality of preservice primary teachers' written arguments in a socioscientific argumentation task. Five Australian preservice primary teachers took part in a science content course incorporating explicit argumentation instruction, and numerous opportunities to engage in argumentation. The quality of their written arguments…

Improving mathematics instruction is an essential issue many school leaders are encountering as they feel increased pressure to ensure high-quality learning for all students. Key responsibilities of school leaders in leading mathematics improvement include observing instruction and providing teachers with feedback. If school leaders fulfill these…

This paper reports on a portion of a research study that examined the development of 43 preservice elementary school teachers' conceptual understanding of place value, and highlights the experiences of one middle-performing preservice teacher. After participating in a research-based constructivist unit of instruction in place value, the findings…

We taught a group of experienced in-service primary school mathematics teachers the notion of mathematical model, in order to foster the interdisciplinary mathematics teaching in primary school. In particular, we developed an exercise in which they were supposed to construct a mathematical model on the basis of primary school mathematics. We found…

This article presents an overall exploratory comparison of two specific pre-service teacher preparation programmes at two research-intensive institutions of higher education in the USA and Romania. The main conclusions suggest that US and Romanian teacher candidates differ very little in their ratings of their respective programmes in terms of…