Reports of flipped classrooms across areas in the field of ESL are rare, and those that address the complexities of ESL teacher education, particularly the methods course in which procedural knowledge is privileged over declarative knowledge, are even rarer. This paper uses a design-­-based research (DBR) approach to explore the flip of an ESL…

In this action research study, we describe the implementation of a program to infuse technology in general methods courses as a requirement of a teacher preparation program. Results from teacher candidate focus groups revealed successes and dilemmas of infusing technology into the courses. Candidates ably described prospective use of elements of…

This article reports empirical evidence about the influence of a pre-service methods course on preparing aspiring and practicing content teachers to work with adolescent bilingual learners in secondary schools. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the extent to which participants developed abilities to plan instruction and to think complexly…

Teacher education preparation programs must adapt to changing science education reform movements that identify notebooking as an effective means to increase children's' science process skills and content knowledge. This study addresses the question, "What are the structures and thinking processes that teacher candidates utilize when writing…

As a proposed solution to the issues plaguing urban schools in the United States, Teach for America (TFA) continues to garner national attention and attract an increasingly competitive pool of applicants from the nation's most elite colleges. In fact, TFA has become the nation's largest provider of teachers to low-income communities and…

In this essay, the author offers her experiences teaching a methods course at the University of Missouri, St. Louis (UMSL), "U.S. History for the Secondary Classroom" (History 4013), in order to foster discussion of how history educators might find ways to close the gap between history content and pedagogy. The author focuses…

Despite more than a decade of groundbreaking research on the advantages and need for more historical thinking and historiography in middle and high school history classrooms, many students continue to receive only modest exposure to these teaching concepts and related strategies. Research indicates that middle and high school students who are not…

Lev Vygotsky's revolutionary ideas have extended knowledge on the process of education--in particular, on mediating learning through language--for over 40 years. The zone of proximal development strengthened a new paradigm for learning and instruction, one which others, such as Bruner, formulated into the concept of scaffolding. Action research…

Fifty-five American preservice elementary teachers' personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE) beliefs, science anxiety (SANX) levels, and common science misconceptions were investigated during a science methods course. A significant increase in the PSTE scores and a slight--but statistically insignificant--decrease in the SANX scores were detected…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the integration of Okala curriculum into Interior Design coursework. Okala, as a teaching package, is utilized extensively in industrial design education. However, this study examines the expansion and insertion of Okala modules in an existing interior design curriculum. The Okala modules included…

The teaching force in the United States of America is still predominantly white and monolingual. Yet, the U.S. population is rapidly becoming culturally and ethnically diverse. As a result, white teachers have expressed doubt in their efficacy in teaching students whose cultures are different than theirs (Helfrich & Bean, 2011). The purpose of…

This study examined students' views on a blended learning environment designed for 29 in-service teachers in Singapore enrolled in an educational research method course. Their self-report data highlighted that students' prior knowledge and the amount and difficulty of content covered in the course affected the effectiveness of blended learning…

This qualitative case study explored preservice teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about disciplinary literacy as they engaged in a blog project with middle-school students to discuss historical texts. Twenty-eight PSTs, enrolled in a semester-long social studies methods course and participating in the blog project as a course assignment, constituted the…

This article highlights two key problems of practice the author faced as the instructor of an elementary literacy methods class for Teach for America corps members in a large, northeastern city during an era characterized by strict state and district control: the deficit perspectives the corps members held of their students and the lack of…

Designing assessment rubrics has become an important pedagogical practice for lecturers in the Wits School of Education (WsoE) in the recognition of writing as a valuable tool for teaching and learning across disciplines. This paper describes and reflects on the process of adapting the SOLO taxonomy (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes)…