The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) sets standards for the teaching profession and certifies teachers who meet those standards. Currently there are NBPTS-developed standards for 27 fields, such as age range (e.g., early childhood, adolescence, young adulthood) and content area (e.g., English/language arts, middle…

This article details problems and instructional approaches intended to promote preservice teachers' understanding of the reasoning underlying whole number multiplication. (Contains 9 figures.)

Many schools that prepare teacher candidates for certification are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which requires six standards for accreditation based on the following categories: (1) Candidate, Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions; (2) Assessment System and Unit Evaluation; (3) Field Experiences…

This study examined the level of teachers' sense of efficacy among beginning teachers in Sarawak, Malaysia. It also sought to investigate whether there is any difference in beginning teachers' sense of efficacy in relation to gender, race and types of teacher preparation program. The study was conducted by using the teacher sense of efficacy…

For more than 60 years, the health education profession has worked to develop, implement, and refine guidelines for preparing and training health educators. Among the seminal works documenting this dedication to, and quest for, quality assurance in professional preparation and practice are guidelines for professional education of health educators…

A brief review of the history of pedagogical content knowledge reveals various definitions and conceptualizations of the construct, as well as some conceptual problems. A new conceptualization--teacher pedagogical constructions--is offered to address some of the problems associated with PCK. Seven assertions that comprise the new conceptualization…

Process-oriented inquiry can help preservice and inservice early childhood teachers implement constructivist science education in their own classrooms. In this article, we discuss the basic elements of process-oriented inquiry applied to early childhood science education, show how we foster the development of process-oriented inquiry teaching…

This study examined awareness of equivalence and relational thinking exhibited by 30 preservice elementary teachers in order to assess their initial preparedness to engage students in these two important aspects of early algebraic reasoning. Findings indicated that preservice teachers collectively demonstrated an awareness of relational thinking…

Beijing's Xicheng district is one of the earliest comprehensive experimental zones for sustainable development in China. Very early on, the district government and the education bureau proposed environmental education for all the primary and secondary school students in the district and have attached great importance to and provided support for it…

Preservice elementary school teachers' fragmented understanding of mathematics is widely documented in the research literature. Their understanding of division by 0 is no exception. This article reports on two teacher education tasks and experiences designed to challenge and extend preservice teachers' understanding of division by 0. These tasks…

Advantages of using classroom observation as another measure of teacher performance include: (1) It is applicable to jobs where performance measures based on outcomes are hard to develop or where outcomes cannot be assigned to an individual person; (2) It ensures that important aspects of performance that go beyond measured outcomes, such as how…

This study investigated the relation of teacher characteristics, including ratings of teacher quality, to classroom instructional variables and to bilingual students' literacy and oral language outcomes at the end of the kindergarten year. Teacher characteristics included observational measures of oral language proficiency, quality, and classroom…

In many schools and districts, teacher evaluation is poorly conducted, or even disparaged or ignored altogether. This handbook advocates a new approach to teacher evaluation--a cooperative effort undertaken by a group of professionals. Evaluation can reassure teachers that they are doing good and valued jobs, give security and status to…

This study examined whether the reading, writing, and mathematics skill statements derived for the Praxis I Basic Skills Assessments and the Pre-Professional Skills Test (PPST) are considered by educators to be important for entry-level teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students. The study is based on a survey of 833 teachers, administrators,…

This longitudinal study examined the development of expertise as a situational and contextual process among nine student teachers during their 3-year enrollment in a kindergarten training college in Finland. The research report is based on observations of student teaching, interviews with the student teachers, and student teacher diaries.…