Students and teachers inevitably enter classrooms with differing expectations and experiences; those differences provide opportunities for both conflict and growth. This article examines this phenomenon in an undergraduate teacher education course on reading instruction at the middle-school level, presents case studies of students' improvisations…

Although video cases are increasingly being used in teacher education as a means of situating learning and developing habits of reflection, there has been little evidence of the outcomes of such use. This study investigates the effects of using a coherent video-case curriculum in a university mathematics methods course by addressing two issues:…

The need to equip science teachers with knowledge, skills, and habits of mind to face the challenges of teaching science through inquiry informed this study, which analyzed the secondary science intern teachers' beliefs about inquiry before, during, and following a series of 2 consecutive science methods courses in an attempt to document the…

Curriculum analysis, modification, and enactment are core components of teacher practice. Beginning teachers rely heavily on curriculum materials that are often of poor quality to guide their practice. As a result, we argue that preservice teachers need to learn how to use curriculum materials for effective teaching. To address this concern, the…

The number of English language learners has grown significantly across the United States and this is reflected in Missouri's public school system. English language learners lack the academic achievement as compared to their peers. General education teachers are responsible for children of diverse backgrounds; children enter school with limited or…

In contrast to current education policies that conceptualize pupil learning largely in terms of standardized exam scores, we offer an alternative view, one that conceives of pupil learning as a source of insight for pupils and teachers alike. Drawing on survey data and a qualitative study of the teacher candidate experience, we explore the…

A 2-year school-based mathematics professional development program is described and evaluated after its first year of implementation. Included in this program as its first course was a unique methods course in elementary education involving both preservice students and inservice teachers who cooperatively studied and applied reform pedagogy. The…

This study examines interdisciplinary collaboration between mainstream-English and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) in-service and pre-service teachers enrolled in graduate methods courses in their respective fields. During the semester, TESOL and secondary English Education teacher candidates collaborated to develop young adult literature based…

I investigated eight preservice teachers' understandings about culturally responsive pedagogy as they participated in a writing methods course in which they tutored children from different ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds in an afterschool program at a local community center. I also investigated how these preservice…

The present study was undertaken to find ways to help bilingual preservice teachers become more aware of diversity and more questioning of methods for literacy development in order to address issues of critical literacy. Twenty-five bilingual preservice teachers, enrolled in a Spanish Reading Methods at the university tutored 25 kindergarten…

This paper describes the revision of a curriculum that was initiated to engage and sustain students' interest in the macro dimension of social work practice. Specifically, we describe how two junior policy courses, a senior macro practice course, and a research methods course were revised to include a service learning approach. This article…

This article explores PowerPoint slideshow's capacities for introducing history teachers and students to the pictorial and digital turns for representing and narrating the past. Based upon this research, the author argues that image-dominated PowerPoint slideshow provides teachers and students with a unique and powerful tool for composing and…

The intention of this article is to consider the use of narrative and rhetorical inquiry as research methods. I construct a mathematical biography of one elementary teacher trainee, Sirpa, who had performed well in her advanced mathematics course in upper secondary school. I describe her development as a mathematics teacher during teacher…

This article describes a collaboration between two faculty members, one from mathematics and the other from education, to strengthen the preparation of pre-service elementary school teachers for teaching mathematics. The model used is a learning community which combines a mathematics content course offered by the mathematics department, with a…

The beliefs of preservice elementary-school teachers regarding the use of basic calculators and "Illuminations" activities were investigated. The goals of the study were to describe preservice teachers' beliefs, identify the sources of those beliefs, and determine which interventions successfully modify them. Participants included 210…