Describes a literacy autobiography assignment used as the first writing assignment in a methods course for preservice English/language arts teachers to model some strategies for literacy teaching and to encourage reflective thinking. Discusses the kinds of information and insights the autobiographies can reveal, and notes benefits of the…

Explores the changes in one student teacher's thinking about the nature of scientific investigations during her participation in an elementary science methods course assignment. Concludes with a discussion on the movement in this student's view of scientific investigation and the challenges and value of the assignment in a science teacher…

Finds that a mathematics methods course provided preservice teachers with knowledge and experience concerning the use of technological aids (calculators, computers, etc.). Finds also that preservice teachers (1) learned mathematical content through their experiences using technological aids; (2) were concerned over difficulties incorporating these…

Explores the perspective that teacher education programs should assess their effectiveness on how well they nurture beliefs that are consistent with their philosophy of learning and teaching study. Reports on a study with preservice elementary teachers participating in an alternative certification program for teaching in an urban setting.…

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…

Writing is a recursive and complex set of cognitive processes that can be taught effectively to students with disabilities. Employing an adapted cognitive theory of writing, a broad view of what constitutes evidence, and the support of a variety of assistive and internet-based technologies, we developed a writing instructional program to meet the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of peer-generated feedback versus visual feedback in inspiring preservice physical education teachers to produce reflections that are more critical than technical. The participants were junior-, senior-, and graduate-level health and physical education majors enrolled in an instructional…

This study examined the professional preparation of Italian teachers in New Jersey through the lens of Cooper's (2004) investigation in Georgia, which determined how K-12 foreign language teachers perceived and evaluated the effectiveness of their professional preparation. Unfortunately, however, that report did not have an Italian representation.…