A study examined whether instruction in collaborative skills and learning characteristics of students with mild disabilities (MD) would influence 17 preservice elementary education teachers' attitudes toward students with MD, knowledge of learning characteristics, and their instructional planning. Results found differences in instructional…

A study explored the perceptions of 14 teachers on the meaning of curricular individualization for preschool through primary-aged students with severe mental retardation. Findings indicate individualizing practices may stem from two disparate sources of understanding: institutional or local. Instructional opportunities made available to children…

Explores high school students' and preservice teachers' knowledge of light, vision, and related topics before and after commonly practiced instruction. Suggests a hierarchical structure to represent the collective conceptual knowledge of students and teachers in terms of facets and schemes of knowledge. Makes suggestions for designing instruction…

A review of research on teachers' subject area knowledge and teaching effectiveness suggests that teachers' subject knowledge influences their choice of instructional strategies, creating a positive relation between knowledge and effectiveness. Greater emphasis on breadth, as opposed to depth, of subject knowledge will best prepare teachers to…

There are two basic guiding referents in the present investigation: the teaching and learning of school-level geometry (basic concepts of Euclidian geometry and measure) and the analysis of the conceptions of prospective primary teachers in Spain. The work assumes that such conceptions appear and develop during school years, and that consequently,…

There is an apparent contradiction between the widespread moves towards a uniform and instrumentalist standards-based approach to teaching on the one hand and recent research-based insights into the complexity of effective pedagogies. The former tendency reflects a politically driven agenda, the latter is more professionally driven. Tensions…

In this article, the authors explore the notion of difficulty and the vital role it can play in the learning journey of student teachers, both with respect to their own and their students' educational maturation. Confronting today's popular but flawed American reductionist learning models, the authors explicate the opportunity for deeper learning…

This research study examined the role of instructional design knowledge in the development of teaching expertise for university teaching assistants (TAs). ID theoretically supports the development of systematic and meaningful patterns of cognitive organization that characterize teaching expertise. Therefore, it should support TAs in developing…

Purpose: The argument is that good and bad teaching are asymmetrical. Eradicating what is readily thought of as bad teaching does not leave behind the purse gold of good teaching. Good teaching is that which promotes student learning. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between bad teaching and good teaching in graduate…

This study describes the learning of researchers who engage in mathematics teacher education as an integral part of their practice. As teacher educators working with teachers on the subject of proportional reasoning, the authors reflected on teachers solutions to a standard problem and analyzed answers that would conventionally be considered…

The purpose of the study described in this article was to identify the qualities of teaching expertise that correlate with highly effective literacy instruction in grades 6 through 12. Findings draw on survey responses of secondary literacy supervisors at the local school district or state department of education level in every U.S. state. From…

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…

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are transforming the priorities of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to focus on preparing for the "new literacies." According to the Partnership of 21st Century Skills, "new literacy" is the ability to use ICTs to develop 21st…

Instructional designers believe that it is important to expose pre-service and in-service teachers to Instructional Systems Design (ISD) procedures and products so teachers can utilize them. Educational literature, however, reveals few attempts to relate instructional design theory and methods to teaching practice. This paper proposes a new…