Investigated the value of a team-taught, integrated, elementary-level methods course. Student teacher surveys indicated that it was a beneficial learning experience for all which enabled students to see connections across content areas and understand how to explore subjects through inquiry and a unifying theme. Many students reported feeling…

Describes one use of the World Wide Web in support of learning in a chemistry methods course for preservice teachers at the University of Montreal. Discusses an assignment involving a treasure hunt on the Web. (Author/CCM)

Terms like "enquiry-oriented" and "research-based" teacher education have been used to describe a general approach to teacher education that emphasizes the development of prospective and practising teachers' knowledge, skills and disposition to adopt an enquiring stance to their work. The inclusion of research in teacher education curricula has…

Two studies investigated the effectiveness of a course in career planning for psychology majors. Study 1 used a quasi-experimental design. Students who completed a corequisite research methods course in the year before the department added the careers course to the curriculum served as a comparison group. Analyses showed that students in the…

This study investigated the extent of knowledge professors reported in regards to gifted and talented education. Participants were college professors and instructors (N = 62) from 4-year teacher preparation institutions who taught elementary-education methods classes. All participants were employed in Mid-Continent Research for Education and…

In this article, the authors describe their efforts to assess prospective K-8 teachers' knowledge of proportional reasoning. Based upon their analysis of prospective K-8 teachers' work on a mathematics performance task, they discuss the implications for preparing prospective teachers to teach proportional reasoning to their students. In general,…

Coteaching as a form of situated learning supports early induction into science teaching. A coteaching model for secondary science methods students and what has been learned from this model is described. Secondary science methods students in pairs were placed with a science teacher to begin teaching as peripheral participants. A cooperative…

Uncovering issues of school safety, both perceived and real, requires research that probes students' perspectives. This paper tells the story of a comparative research project initiated in an English education methods course. The study was conducted in two high schools and utilized mapping and surveying to determine students' perceptions of school…

In this article, the author shares her experience in successfully teaching elementary students how to create a tornado using a guided-inquiry approach. The guided-inquiry approach is a form of teaching in which the teacher poses the question, but lets the students decide how to answer the question. Students were so excited about the process they…

This study sought to assess the influence of an intensive social studies teacher preparation program on the belief of a cohort of graduate preservice teachers. In particular, it sought to determine whether the participants' methods courses, field experiences and student teaching led to changes in their beliefs about teaching and learning social…

This study investigated the mathematics beliefs and content knowledge of 103 elementary pre-service teachers in a developmental teacher preparation program that included a two course mathematics methods sequence. Pre-service teachers' pedagogical beliefs became more cognitively-oriented during the teacher preparation program with these changes…

One prominent issue in contemporary special education is that teaching techniques found by research to be effective in improving the educational outcomes of students with disabilities are not routinely implemented. One way to enhance teachers' use of research-based practices is to disseminate information on effective teaching techniques in ways…

Drawing on extant theorizing and research on reflective teaching, this paper discusses the impact of an innovative methods course designed around the activity of student teachers' reflections on their own classroom discourse, for their understandings of the connections between theory and practice. Situated in the context of foreign language…

Preparing special educators who are knowledgeable about evidence-based interventions for teaching reading to students with reading difficulties and who are capable of using curriculum-based assessments to monitor student progress and differentiate interventions is vital to the success of current school reform efforts. The primary purpose of this…

This study explores the extent to which an activity used in an elementary science methods course affected the preservice teachers' content knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy. The participants were 172 students enrolled in five sections of elementary science methods. Students participated in a 9-week investigation on life cycles using…