Much has been written about collaboration and co-teaching in secondary settings, including the importance of understanding one's partner's teaching approach; determining readiness to co-teach; clarifying roles, responsibilities, and expectations; scheduling shared planning time; and effective communication, including constructive dialogue and…

The continuing trend toward increasing diversity of curriculum offered within secondary agricultural education programs is driving a change in pre-service and in-service technical training for agriculture teachers. This study looks at agriculture teachers' perceived importance of, and competence in, traditional technical competencies such as…

This article explores middle school teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and the relationship between such knowledge and teachers' subject matter preparation, certification type, teaching experience, and their students' poverty status. The author administered multiple-choice measures to a nationally representative sample of teachers and…

In this study we created, implemented, and evaluated the impact of proportional reasoning authentic investigative tasks on the mathematical content and pedagogical knowledge and attitudes of pre-service elementary and middle school mathematics teachers. For this purpose, a special teaching model was developed, implemented, and tested as part of…

Teacher education programs have met with limited success in improving teachers' understanding of the nature of science (NOS). Research suggests that such efforts could be enhanced by addressing NOS in preservice teachers' science courses. We planned NOS instruction in a physical science content course for preservice elementary teachers. Our first…

This study examined the views, and the retention of these views, of 19 preservice elementary teachers as they learned about nature of science (NOS). The preservice teachers participated in a cohort group as they took a science methods course during which they received explicit reflective instruction in nature of science. Through Views of Nature of…

This research explores and compares primary student teachers' attitudes, subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in physics in two institutions in England and Finland, using a practical physics activity and questionnaire. Teaching of physics activities was rated unpopular both in Finland and England, although English students…

What do the Internet, mobile phones, SATs, global warming, wetsuits, wind farms, laptops, recycling bins, iPods, the NLS and the Beckhams have in common? Answer: virtually no one had heard of any of these in 1986, when the first issue of "PSR" came out. The world of children and teachers has clearly changed since then. So what of "PSR" itself?…

Teachers' professional development is a lifelong learning process that should start with teaching practice, is best developed from experience and can be promoted by socio-professional interactions. Thus, a learning community of teachers might be a valuable environment for continuing professional development. This paper reports research carried out…

It has been five years since the chapter on relative velocity was first introduced into the Singapore Additional Mathematics curriculum. This paper reports some general findings on the teaching of relative velocity in mathematics classrooms and the pupils' learning difficulties on relative velocity. Some implications to the teaching of this topic…

The preparation of teachers in any discipline is a complex enterprise with an array of stakeholders serving as gatekeepers. In the May "Kappan", Sam Wineburg focused his analysis of the preparation of social studies teachers on the curriculum standards of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and on the teacher preparation…

In this article, the author describes an authoring project that familiarizes his students with writing workshops and also provides them a forum for examining key theoretical perspectives about "the relationship between print and other modalities." This project became the focus of an inquiry that addressed the following research questions: (1) What…

A cohort of students in a teacher preparation program completed questionnaires measuring their feelings of teacher self efficacy at three points in the program. Results suggest that pre-service teachers' feelings of self efficacy do improve as a result of their participation in such programs. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table. Teacher Efficacy…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are responsible for instructing approximately 25% of introductory statistics courses in the United States (Blair, Kirkman, & Maxwell, 2013). Most research on GTA professional development focuses on structured activities (e.g., courses, workshops) that have been developed to improve GTAs' pedagogy and content…

A fundamental issue inherent to education policy is whether teacher qualifications such as certification status, degree level, preparation, and experience predict student achievement. While existing research provides some direction regarding the potential importance of these qualifications for productivity in secondary schools, less is known about…