Reflective practice is foundational in what preservice educators should know and be able to do as noted in professional preparation standards for Early Childhood Education (ECE) and Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education (EI/ECSE). Reflection aids preservice educators in connecting course content with field and clinical experiences…

Faculty in an Educator Preparation Provider developed a system of instruction and assessment of professional dispositions that spans the teacher candidate's academic career. The system includes a quantifiable rubric to measure professional dispositions, with actionable behavior indicators for candidates and their supervisors to follow. This system…

Words and labels used about a person inevitably have an impact, whether intended or unintended. This article discusses the need for intentional and overt, critical reflection and discussion in higher education regarding the language faculty and students use. The authors provide language examples commonly used in courses that could have varied…

Peace education provides for the development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions appropriate to effective peacebuilding. Therefore, the development of curriculum in degree programs which builds bridges by which students in conflict resolution/peace studies classrooms may cross over to the field of conflict transformation and peacebuilding may…

In the context of an arts-integration course in an elementary education program, preservice teachers used tableaux (i.e. frozen scenes) to portray field experience moments in two ways: (1) as remembered events, and (2) as projected possibilities. Using video and photographs of the tableaux, we traced the students' enactment of activist stances and…

Federal legislation (Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act, No Child Left Behind) mandates access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. As a response, K-12 schools are moving to coteaching models with increased frequency (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008). However, preservice teachers…

Preservice teachers spend significant time in schools, observing, tutoring children, and learning to teach. On-site field experiences introduce aspiring teachers to life in schools, and are especially important for teachers who take their first teaching positions in urban schools. However, most preservice teachers spend little time in the…

In this paper, the author discusses the major components of a junior level pedagogy course for elementary education majors learning to teach mathematics. The course reviews content and knowledge of the teacher candidates and introduces methods and materials for teaching elementary mathematics using the Standards or benchmarks from the National…

In this paper, I report the results of a 4-year study into how my students learn to become mathematics teachers during the combined 15-week methods and field placement course I teach. At the start of most weekly methods class meetings, groups of three or four students reported their critical incidents to each other, and then chose one incident to…

The Mathematics Department of the Stichting Opleiding Leraren (SOL) is responsible for the education of secondary school mathematics teachers in the Netherlands. This education takes four and a half years, and includes one year of professional preparation. The program trains teachers to reflect on their experiences by means of directing their own…

Explores how social foundations might inform the core required educational psychology course in teacher education, describing undergraduate students' common perceptions of social foundations as required but insignificant, illustrating how this might occur in educational psychology as students are engaged in the normative and critical perspectives…

This paper discusses email journaling for those hoping to become a teacher. The author discusses an innovative format she designed for journal entries that revolutionized her field experience supervision practices and those of other supervisors with whom she has shared this format. It has vastly improved the quality of the teacher-candidate's…

In spite of the relatively long history of formalized music teacher preparation in the United States, surprisingly little research has focused on the question of how teachers learn to teach music. The authors of this article have proposed a theory of situated learning, building on the idea of apprenticeship. Several models of music teacher…

A description is given of the Social Studies Professional Semester at the State University of New York at Albany, a program attempting to provide the elements necessary for the development of reflective teaching. The 16-week program is designed to reduce the separation between clinical field experiences and professional education studies for…

This paper first examines how the graduate institute of teacher education at Bank Street College of Education, New York, has worked to foster reflective practice over time and across program components. It examines the mission and structures that have been enacted to this end and identifies ongoing challenges encountered. The paper first discusses…