There has been a focus on improving teachers' views of nature of science for decades. The method in which researchers improve views of nature of science, however, varies greatly. This study aimed to improve elementary preservice teachers' views of nature of science and nature of science instruction through a course assignment that required the…

Mathematics teacher education is faced with the challenge of preparing new teachers for ambitious instruction, but we have limited understandings of what happens within the courses where this preparation occurs. This paper draws on interview data from of a larger investigation of novices' enactment of ambitious instruction in elementary…

The literature related to warm demanding describes teachers who balance care and authority to create a learning environment that supports a culture of achievement for African American students. Embedded in this stance is sociopolitical consciousness that explicitly links teachers' care and authority with a larger social justice agenda. Drawing on…

The purpose of the study was to describe music teachers' perceptions of the benefits and challenges they experienced as virtual mentors of preservice music teachers. Each mentor was assigned a cohort of preservice teachers who were enrolled in an elementary general music methods course. Cohorts observed their mentor's teaching via Skype. Mentors…

This study explores ways in which university science courses can be infused with opportunities for pre-service teachers to design student student interactions that promote language development and content mastery. Participants included bilingual pre-service teachers enrolled in an elementary science approaches course and its school-based fieldwork…

As demographics change, our school populations are ever changing. Preservice teachers (PSTs) need to be aware of how to meet the needs of all of their future students. Teacher education programs have been charged with the duty of preparing these PSTs for the diverse school population they will encounter. This qualitative multiple case study…

The integration of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) serves to develop creative thinking and twenty-first-century skills in the classroom (Maeda 2012). Learning through STEAM promotes novelty, innovation, ingenuity, and task-specific purposefulness to solve real-world problems--all aspects that define creativity. Lisa…

This descriptive study employed mixed methods to explore preservice teachers' initial knowledge and subsequent use of explicitly taught reading comprehension strategies in primary grade classrooms during a year-long, field-based teacher preparation program. Self-Knowledge Rating Surveys, Strategy Multiple-Choice Tests, strategy logs, lesson plans,…

During the final semester of a student teaching program, 87 pre-service teachers in a dual certification (special education and elementary education) program completed a research based 22-item Perceptions of Inclusion Survey. In addition, five Special Education Directors for the six districts in which students were placed participated in…

With the teacher concerns theory (Fuller, 1969) as a theoretical framework, this study has set out to examine how physical education teacher candidates perceive their implementation of the Personal and Social Responsibility Model (Hellison, 2003) and how they actually implement it during field experience. Five teacher candidates (three female, two…

This study describes and analyses how coteaching affected undergraduate music education preservice teachers (PSTs). During an 8-week school placement, coteaching was used as a means of creating a reciprocal professional learning arrangement involving PSTs and primary school teachers. The theoretical framework draws on the Russian concept of…

The two research questions that guided this study were: (1) How do preservice teachers develop mathematical knowledge for teaching during a coordinated math methods course and field experience? and (2) What types of portfolio tasks lend themselves to documenting mathematical knowledge in teaching? Six, female, elementary (K-8) teacher candidates…

This qualitative study examines what early childhood preservice teachers enrolled in a field-based literacy methods course deemed relevant regarding teaching, literacy, and learning. This study is based on postcourse interviews with 7 early childhood preservice teachers. Findings suggest that "contextualized field experiences" facilitate…

My exploratory case study examined the use of a learning platform to facilitate constructivist teaching strategies by pre-service teachers during their student teaching and field experiences in elementary science classes. Constructivist teaching strategies include inquiry lessons and active learning techniques. Dialogue, interviews and online…

This article reports findings from a 3-year longitudinal qualitative case study conducted in three urban elementary schools that examined the ways in which local leadership supported the initiation and early development of evidence-based grade-level collaboration as a mechanism for improving student literacy learning. Findings suggest eight key…