An experienced foreign language methods instructor presents his "private history" about teaching Spanish to fifth-graders as part of an elementary school's afternoon enrichment program. (Author/VWL)

Describes an interactive English-as-foreign-language methodology course for elementary school teachers. The class used an input loop methodology, where the instructors in the methodology course model the technique they are teaching. (Author/VWL)

Describes the collaboration between the social studies and technology methods courses as they created a technology-based learning community at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Provides rational for creating a learning community, presents the different obstacles during the course, and finally discusses the needed refinements. (CMK)

Describes an experiment designed to change prospective teachers' views of what constitutes a good explanation of a mathematics topic, presenting examples of participants' explanations at three stages of the experiment using a "levels of subject-matter understanding" framework, and suggesting that to effectively teach a topic, teachers'…

This article provides an overview of a secondary art education methods course developed in response to a variety of educational directives and movements in the fields of art, education, art education, and design. Within each unit of study in this course, students engage in four learning environments--studio, information design, planning, and…

In this study, 30 students in a graduate level social studies methods course used digital historical resources to respond to a single question about the Cuban Missile Crisis: "How was the Cuban Missile Crisis resolved?" The participants were placed in three groups and each group was given a different scaffolding strategy for using online sources…

Although he may not have spoken quite as eloquently as the Bard of Avon, Ernie Page, the author's methods instructor at Penn State, once said that teaching English was less a subject and more a predicament. He was alluding to the many complexities and range of subject matter that constitute teaching the English language arts. In the 30 years since…

In this article, the author shares her experience working with preservice teachers in a hands-on museum exhibit. The preservice teachers' responses suggest that the experience of working in a hands-on museum exhibit can be a valuable part of an elementary social studies methods course. Adequately preparing elementary social studies methods…

This article describes the design and implementation of a methods course assignment that enhanced prospective teachers' understanding of teaching mathematics with technology.

Students, parents, and sometimes even teachers often believe that complex mathematics is too difficult for certain learners. But the programs described in this article demonstrate that anyone can learn, understand, and use complex math. Lesa M. Covington-Clarkson boosted the confidence of black 6th graders by teaching them to use graphing…

The establishment of the European Higher Education Area has involved specifying lists of professional competencies that programs are expected to develop, and with this the need for procedures to measure how every course within a higher education program is aligned with the program's competencies. We propose an instrument for characterizing this…

This study reports on an analysis of preservice teachers' dialogue journal entries for evidence of ways in which teachers develop conceptual understanding for writing instruction. Teachers' propositional statements were identified and coded at a specific level for three themes: (1) level of instructional scaffolding, (2) focus of proposed…

Preservice elementary teachers have been shown to generally possess poor mathematical knowledge (e.g. Goulding, Rowland, & Barber, 2002) and also strong negative attitudes toward mathematics (e.g. MacNab & Payne, 2004). Recently, national organizations have proposed interventions to address these issues (Conference Board of the…

The study investigated the changes in levels of mathematics anxiety among pre-service teachers in six different sections of a mathematics method courses for early childhood/elementary education pre-service teachers. The changes were a function of using Bruner's framework of developing conceptual knowledge before procedural knowledge and using…

The context for this investigation was an undergraduate literacy methods course taught by Cindy, the first author of this manuscript. A central course goal was to prepare pre-service teachers to provide effective literacy instruction for children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The focus of this study was an examination of the…