This naturalistic inquiry explores the lived experience of five teachers through the first of a two-year professional development (PD) focused on environmental systems, outdoor education, pedagogical content knowledge, and building a community of practice. Qualitative data include participant interviews, participant journals, and researcher field…

In this paper, we summarize the findings of a research synthesis specifically related to the geometry and measurement content knowledge of elementary/middle school preservice teachers. Findings from this synthesis show that preservice teachers have weak conceptions in geometry and measurement content knowledge. However, instructional strategies…

As school districts create systems to identify, monitor, and assess teacher effectiveness, they consider a variety of sources, including observations of teaching practices and analysis of student assessments. A new voice--student perceptions--has emerged as a valuable source of information. In many districts, leaders are collecting data from a…

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is the teacher's ability to pedagogically adapt content to students of diverse abilities. In this study, we investigated how teachers' adaptations of instruction for individual students differed when teaching stronger and weaker instructional units. We used functional analysis (Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003) of…

This qualitative study examined the link between content knowledge and classroom practice from the perceptions of two university lecturers. The study was contextualized at a higher education institution in South Africa where the two university lecturers were lecturing to a second year undergraduate teacher trainee class (n = 78). The research was…

Research on the relationship between teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. To extend this literature, we administered an in-depth survey to new math teachers in New York City and collected…

This paper constitutes an attempt to explore trends, issues and challenges that emerge when three different cohorts of pre-service teachers debate contemporary issues in science education at the University of Botswana. Apart from the author's experience of teaching the course, the impetus for this study also comes from a growing interest in the…

Whilst there continues to be debate regarding the influence of the "CSI effect" upon the criminal justice system, there appears to be a general consensus that the popularisation of work within the field, particularly through a number of "procedural cop shows", has fuelled an explosion in the number of young people choosing to pursue a career in…

This study explores the extent to which a teacher elicited students' mathematical reasoning through the use of challenging tasks and the role her knowledge played in doing so. I characterised the teacher's knowledge in terms of a "local theory" of instruction, a form of pedagogical content knowledge that involves an empirically tested set of…

This article contributes to this special edition of "Technology, Pedagogy and Education" by looking at beliefs about knowing and learning held by 15 teacher educators with longstanding involvement in the Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education. Beliefs were challenging to identify but were ascribed to participants through…

Learning progressions are the successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about an idea that follow one another over a broad span of time. This review examines the research on science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in order to refine ideas about science teacher learning progressions and how to support them. Research published…

Teacher professional development activities in the USA take many forms from half-day workshops that focus on particular topics or classroom techniques to long term course work that offers university level credit. With few exceptions, the primary goal of such activities is to enhance the teachers' classroom effectiveness and improve student…

The purpose of the study was to identify the components of holistic school pedagogy as identified by a sample of Finnish secondary school teachers and students from two schools. Holistic pedagogy concerns the development of the whole student and acknowledges the cognitive, social, moral, emotional and spiritual dimensions of education. The data…

This study examines teachers' attitudes toward pedagogical changes regarding various teaching strategies concerning students, content, and the teacher's educational orientation. Teachers' attitudes toward such changes are examined at different stages of their professional development. The research question is: To what extent do teachers at…

The majority of teacher education programs in North America require elementary-teacher candidates to complete separate courses in curriculum subject areas. This model to teacher education limits candidates' readiness to engage in interdisciplinary teaching and focuses preservice curriculum on content-specific pedagogies rather than on general,…