This article describes the development of the authors' understanding of the contradictions in their mathematics teacher education practice. This understanding emerged from contrasting analyses of the impact of the authors' practices in mathematics content courses versus mathematics methods courses. Examples of the authors' work with two students,…

The purpose of this study was to examine and reflect on two teacher educators' approaches to developing preservice elementary teachers' mathematics assessment literacy. We explored the similarities and differences in preservice teachers' conceptions of good assessment practices and their critique of assessment items. We found that we, as course…

The foreign language (FL) teaching "methods" course--which serves an increasingly diverse population of graduate students with varied teaching and learning experiences, professional goals, and developmental trajectories (Allen & Negueruela-Azarola, 2010)--is often the only dedicated space for graduate student instructors (GSIs) to…

The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teachers' (PTs) ability to deliver feedback, which has been used as a process variable in identifying teacher-effectiveness and an established NASPE standard for beginning teachers. These questions guided the study: 1. Will overall feedback interactions delivered by PTs reach 45 per video? 2.…

This quasi-experimental study reports on the effectiveness of three assessment strategies for students' performance. The primary goal was to determine whether there are any improvements in students' conceptual learning when a frequent (weekly) quiz is used for grading purposes compared to using midterm and final examinations only. Another goal was…

Against the backdrop of mentor teachers' reasoning about practice, we seek to understand shifts in intern teachers' reasoning about practice during a year in which they take their final methods course in the fall and then do intern teaching in the spring. The data we analyze consist of intern and mentor teacher study group discussions of repeated…

The contributors to this special issue all seek to address the challenge of teaching research methods to political science students. This introduction aims to provide a concise framework for the various innovations presented throughout this issue, situating them in the wider literature. Particular emphasis is placed on the factors that distinguish…

The purpose of this case study was to explore the ways in which 3 different informal science experiences in the context of an elementary methods course influenced a group of prospective elementary teachers' ideas about science teaching and learning as well as their understandings about the role of informal science environments to teaching and…

In this article, the authors first reviewed related literature on possible factors that influence learning between an online learning (OL) course format and a face-to-face (F2F) course format. The authors investigated OL and F2F learning perceptions and effectiveness of a graduate-level research methods course at a Hispanic-serving institution…

The aim of this multi-case study was to explore the extent and nature of changes in elementary pre-service teachers' beliefs, attitudes, and self-efficacy toward science and science teaching as a result of participating in a science methods course. The study specifically focused on three groups of pre-service teachers based on their varying…

Prospective teachers must be prepared for their role in providing equitable access for learning high quality mathematics. Therefore, it is imperative that mathematics teacher educators provide opportunities to develop an equity-centered orientation in teacher preparation courses. In this study, we begin to address this issue by identifying what…

The practice of inclusion as a response to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act means that English teachers teach students who demonstrate a wide range of abilities in the same classroom. This qualitative study explored the developing attitudes toward differentiation of English education teacher candidates participating in a methods…

Course curriculum design using a research-teaching connection and reflective teaching is presented. The research-teaching connection is expanded to a three stage research-teaching-research cycle and reflection is expanded to include both faculty and students. Traditional disciplinary educational research was used to inform the design of the…

In her current role as an elementary science methods instructor at a small midwestern university, Dena Harshbarger wanted to help teachers restructure traditional science fairs into "science conventions" to more accurately reflect how scientists share their findings within a scientific community (Barth 2008). Traditional science fairs…

The process of teaching world religions is fraught with dispositional and pedagogical concerns for pre-service teachers. To address these issues, middle grades pre-service teachers were asked to integrate an inquiry-based approach while considering their own histlexia, which we define as an inability to articulate positions. The findings of this…