Used the lesson preparation method and interviews to investigate preservice physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge, focusing on their knowledge of pupils' conceptual difficulties with temperature and heat. Results found a relationship between conceptual difficulties preservice teachers expected their pupils to have and conceptual…

Science teaching orientations, defined as teachers' knowledge and beliefs about the purposes and goals for teaching science, have been identified as a critical component within the proposed pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) model for science teaching. Because of the scarcity of empirical studies in this area, this case study examined the nature…

There has been a growing emphasis within educational literature on the need to encourage all learners to think critically about whatever they are studying. There were concerns that this aim was not being achieved in a degree program for VET tutors. One purpose of the study was to quantify the extent of critical thinking in one cohort of VET…

This paper addresses the role of teaching in the preparation of future faculty members. I begin by discussing that graduate students and future faculty do not feel most TA experiences prepare them for the demands of college teaching. Graduate students, as well as other teachers, need various knowledge and skills to be successful, and Shulman's…

This study reports on teaching practices in science classrooms of Indonesian lower secondary schools in rural areas. Using six schools from three districts in the province of Kalimantan Selatan as the sample, this study found that most teaching practices in science classrooms in rural schools were teacher-centred with students copying notes.…

The Swiss national curriculum for upper secondary schools requires geography to be taught according to new paradigms concerning subject contents and learning methodology. Today, nearly 10 years after the new curriculum was enacted, the question arises whether the paradigmatic changes were acknowledged by geography teachers and integrated into…

The co-authors have been co-Principal Investigators on two large-scale National Science Foundation-funded teacher enhancement projects for the past eight years. One of the projects focused on middle and high schools and the second focused on the elementary school. The design of each was different, reflecting the differing natures of the…

Teacher education programs are being encouraged to collaborate with K-12 partners to develop and implement contextually rich field experiences that integrate methods course instruction with public school practices. As a result, we outline four models of integrating methods instruction and field experiences and raise the question "How does the…

Providing support focused on real challenges is critical in retaining highly qualified new science teachers, but the field lacks a systematic description of these teachers' needs. The authors of this article examine the areas that science teachers are expected to understand: (1) the content and disciplines of science; (2) learners; (3)…

To explore issue-specific barriers to teaching environmental issues, the authors investigated secondary science teachers' perceived current and preferred teaching levels for 23 environmental issues and perceived barriers to teaching the selected issues. Subjects in this graduate project were 41 secondary science teachers self-selected to answer a…

This paper discusses the need for the renewal of teacher education programs in Finland in order to bring practicing professionals into contact with new knowledge and ideas. To inject new knowledge requires a theoretical understanding of the mechanism of professional change and the process of evaluating professional development. The central factor…

The purpose of this research study was to examine the level of elementary education majors' science content knowledge; pedagogical knowledge; and pedagogical content knowledge in order to evaluate the effectiveness of a new teacher preparation program for undergraduate students with a science area of concentration, developed as part of the Quality…

Lee Shulman's model of pedagogical reasoning and action is related to his theory of pedagogical content knowledge and includes the following components: comprehension; transformation (preparation, representation, selection, and adaptation and tailoring to student characteristics); instruction; evaluation; reflection; and new comprehensions. The…

This case study report provides information that can be useful in implementing rational changes in mathematics teacher education. Considering teachers' thinking about a specific mathematical topic, such as functions, allows one to better understand the broader domain of teachers' mathematical thinking and its influence on teaching and learning.…

The research reported here examined constructs of field dependent or real-world versus field independent or text-driven modes of instruction. It was argued that the level of pedagogical clinical knowledge and reflective thinking among prospective Afro-American teachers differed not only in mode of instruction but in level of instructional emphasis…