Career and technical educators have long recognized the fact that a highly skilled craftsperson is not necessarily a highly skilled instructor of that craft. In the belief that the key to a productive, efficient workforce lies in high quality training for journeymen and apprentices, the Carpenter's International Training Fund (CITF) partnered with…

Biotechnology is an expanding area of scientific and community interest, one that it is important students understand because of its potential to impact on them and their communities. The issue for teachers and science and technology educators is how to provide learning experiences in this area. This paper draws on classroom-based research to…

Educators are continuously challenged to increase their pedagogical effectiveness when teaching adult learners. Neo-Piagetian theory and research, based on Piaget's classic work, provides promising concepts and tools to help educators enhance their pedagogical knowledge and competence when teaching adults. Consequently, through research findings…

This paper describes the frameworks and cognitive tools that have been developed to enhance practising teachers' pedagogical content knowledge in primary school technology education. The frameworks evolved from our research that firstly examined existing teaching practices, secondly enhanced formative interactions and thirdly enhanced summative…

This study reports on student experiences in an inquiry-oriented elementary science methods course. Students in this course designed and conducted an independent investigation, and then adapted that investigation to develop an inquiry-oriented lesson and a corresponding performance assessment. Students' written reflections expressed increased…

A three-year institute called "The Lodge Pole River Project" was designed to change educator perceptions of American Indian historical geography and encourage the creation of balanced and culturally sensitive American Indian K-12 curriculum. This project offered unique opportunities to assess a geography institute's impact upon teacher knowledge…

Broad support exists within the science education community for the incorporation of socioscientific issues (SSI) and argumentation in the science curriculum. This study investigates how content knowledge and morality contribute to the quality of SSI argumentation among high school students. We employed a mixed-methods approach: 56 participants…

In this journal issue, the authors of the focus articles have provided a suite of very stimulating and thoughtful articles. The overarching purpose of this research is to explore the application of principles derived from the view of validity proposed by Kane (2004) to their research on issues related to the measurement of mathematical knowledge…

The authors of this volume's stimulus papers have taken on the challenge of developing measures of teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT). This task involves multiple decisions and considerations, including: (1) How does one specify the body of knowledge being assessed? What warrants are offered for those choices?; (2) How does one…

In this investigation I focused on a process of activities of a particular group of teachers and learners. Basic skills in mastering mathematical concepts were addressed. The focus was on concept formation in the geometry classroom. The methodology involved an educational case study as a form of inquiry to investigate spatial sense. Evidence was…

Many children with disabilities attend Catholic schools, but the resources to serve these children adequately are limited. Teacher assistants are increasingly being used to meet this need by assisting students with disabilities in regular classrooms. The authors maintain that such assistants can be effectively used in Catholic schools for this…

Teacher knowledge has been of theoretical and empirical interest for over two decades, and development of measures is overdue. The researchers represented in this volume have been breaking new ground by developing a measure of mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) without guiding precedents, and in the face of differing perspectives on teacher…

Operating from multiple literature bases in cognitive psychology, mathematics education, and theoretical and applied psychometrics, Schilling, Hill and their colleagues provide a systemic approach to studying the validity of scores of mathematical knowledge for teaching. This system encompasses an array of task formats and methodologies. The…

The author offers some thoughts on commentator's reactions to the substance of the measures, particularly those about measuring teacher learning and change, based on the major uses of the measures, and because this is a significant challenge facing test development as an enterprise. If teacher learning results in more integrated knowledge or…

A two year study investigating the state of pre-service teachers' (PTs') (n=224), teachers' (n=18) and students' knowledge (n=123) of Grade 7 geometry (using the van Hiele theory (1986) and acquisition scales of Gutierrez, Jaime & Fortuny (1991)) is reported. Results indicate that both teachers and PTs fail to reach the expected level of…