Presents a model for an affective component in methods courses on content area reading. Notes that the goal of the component is to help teachers develop an understanding of their current beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to reading acquisition to better accept and use content area reading instruction. Gives special emphasis to the…

Discusses two studies conducted using an interactive, multimedia-based instructional system in a mathematics methods class for preservice elementary school teachers. Interview data indicate that students were more likely to incorporate into their teaching repertoire knowledge they acquired from the system than from conventional methods. (Contains…

Examines the inductive approach to learning, which helps ensure an interactive environment where students use their language processes to learn. Preservice teachers can learn to organize their teaching inductively. Such training should include direct experience with the inductive approach, analysis of the experiences, guided practice, and coaching…

Describes how students in a general secondary methods course responded to a gender-neutral exam question by consistently assuming that the student in the hypothetical scenario was male. Describes the follow-up class discussion, noting students' assumptions, defensive responses, subconscious decision making, and awareness/nonawareness of their own…

Provides a rationale for including biography projects that represent diverse contributors to science and mathematics. Describes a biography-project assignment used in a methods course for secondary teacher preparation, discusses preservice teachers' comments about the assignment, and makes connections to current research on equitable instruction.…

States that in a methods course for elementary education majors, students are asked to keep a notebook to respond to course readings, collect writing starts, reflect on their schooling histories, and collect data from their 10-week field experience in an elementary classroom. Discusses one notebook; presents a sample ethnographic research…

Offers reflections of three professors of literacy education regarding their varied field experiences with preservice teachers enrolled in their reading/language arts methods courses. Describes each field experience and discusses its impact on classroom teachers, elementary students, college students, and college professors. Offers some general…

Reports on a course project developed and implemented with undergraduate and graduate courses in which students examine the work of effective and exemplary practicing teachers. Presents a detailed description of an approach to a reading education course that has been a very satisfying learning experience for the author and his students. (SG)

Investigates the learning of a preservice student in a field-based, literacy methods course. Finds that what counted as her situated learning was how she saw the use of certain literacy practices to be appropriate in the situation of her work, and how she saw her instructional decisions to be a means for achieving her emerging standards for good…

Presents a miniresearch project from a college geometry class for preservice mathematics teachers involving Venn diagrams for five sets. (Author/MKR)

Describes and evaluates an elementary science methods course in which the nature of science and scientific inquiry are embedded and explicitly taught. As a result of the course, incoming conceptions of science as primarily a body of knowledge changed to a more appropriate, blended view of science as a body of knowledge generated through the active…

Based on interviews with 18 professors of education, this study provides a report on the ways in which environmental education (EE) theory and practice are currently incorporated into preservice elementary education science and social studies methods courses. It further reports perceptions of faculty about the barriers to incorporating EE in…

This paper reports on a case study of the daily life of an art teacher educator. It examines the intellectual, moral, emotional, and physical undercurrents of this work and how these qualities are reflected within the daily context of the pre-service university or college-level classroom environment. To date, few research studies have examined the…

On a recent trip to a local art museum with a group of undergraduate teacher candidates, the author was impressed by the presentation made by the group facilitator. She showed the teacher candidates a slide of a painting found in the gallery and asked the students to take a few minutes to examine it and be prepared to share what they found…

In K-6 teacher education programs, a host of content methods classes make up a large portion of the preservice teacher's course load. One of those is the social studies methods course. The course helps students develop pedagogical understanding in the social studies. However, as most engaged in methods course instruction can attest, preservice…