Teaching is a complex task shaped by many external and internal influences, including the beliefs held by individual teachers. This study sought an understanding of the impact of field experiences on the beliefs developed by preservice science teachers. The participants were students in an undergraduate science education methods course that…

This study investigated the gap that exists between the technological knowledge and skills preservice teachers possess and their confidence in using them to successfully integrate technology in their classrooms. Specifically, this study addressed whether a model of instructional delivery using the integration of technology practices into the…

In this article, I argue that the social studies methods course is an appropriate place to practice and reflect upon doing democracy. I review the literature on kinds of citizens the methods course might support. I consider pre-service teachers' prior and present experiences with doing democracy. I pose a framework for doing democracy centered on…

An integrated mathematics and science methods course was designed to focus on the knowledge, skills, and beliefs of teacher candidates. Teacher candidates were involved in experiences that would prompt them to consider the influence of their experiences on their beliefs, the influence of their beliefs on their instructional decisions and the…

This study describes a classroom action research activity regarding a group of elementary school teacher candidates' perceptions of good mathematics problems. A questionnaire containing 20 problems was given, and the candidates were asked to rate the quality of each problem on a 5-point scale. The results revealed that the majority of the teacher…

In order to assess whether students fully grasped the six teaching standards in the "Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics" (NCTM, 1991), the researcher had each student submit peer evaluations of the team lessons that were taught in a Methods and Materials of Teaching Mathematics in the Middle Grades class during the Fall semester of…

This study investigated perceptions of mathematics teaching effectiveness among elementary preservice teachers with high and low levels of mathematics teacher efficacy. Participants in this study included four elementary preservice teachers at a mid-sized university in the southeastern United States who had just completed a mathematics methods…

Slow motion animation ("slowmation") is a new teaching approach that uses a simple animation process to engage learners in creating their own comprehensive animations of science concepts. In this paper, preservice elementary teachers used slowmation, a form of stop-motion animation, to make models of science concepts and take digital…

A research-based framework for teaching science is a heuristic tool used to help preservice teachers conceptualize many complexities of teaching while making explicit the strategy to use a research-based body of professional knowledge to inform instructional decision-making (Clough, 2003, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association…

While recent research has begun to explore how social studies teachers are responding to a standardized curriculum and its accompanying high-stakes tests, little is known about how teacher education programs are preparing their pre-service teachers for a world in which state curriculum standards and standardized testing often determine the content…

Research has called for courses to be developed that provide preservice teachers opportunities to actively engage their pedagogies under construction in order to effectively translate their beliefs into sound instructional practice. This article presents research that examined how a service-learning writing tutoring program affected preservice…

This is the report of a qualitative emergent-design study of 2 different Web-enhanced science methods courses for preservice elementary teachers in which an experiential learning strategy, labeled "using yourself as a learning laboratory," was implemented. Emergent grounded theory indicated this strategy, when embedded in a course organized as an…

In this paper, the author describes a partnership between the preservice elementary education students and preservice art education majors at a local university in Georgia. The goal of this partnership was to implement an interdisciplinary curriculum in the general classrooms of nearby Boulevard Elementary School. The educational objectives of the…

This author recognized that she needed to revisit her preservice teachers' practicum experience to reassess her goals, ideas, and priorities regarding how to provide a quality teaching and learning experience of her preservice teachers. As the author reflected on the practicum experience, she identified the missing link--reciprocity. The practicum…

When the faculty of the Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies Department at Western Illinois University were asked to develop an online research methods course several years ago, the author was skeptical. How could anyone possibly teach the complexities of research over the internet? The author's face-to-face course focused on helping students…