An instructional program was constructed that explored the responses and perceptions of preservice elementary school teachers while finding and using characteristics to construct categories or concepts. The program integrated ideas about teaching thinking skills using computers. HyperCard and videodisk images were used to develop a program so that…

This practicum was designed to lessen the computer anxiety of early childhood education majors enrolled in General Curriculum or General Methods courses, to assist them in learning more about computer applications, and to increase the amount of time spent using computers. Weekly guidelines were given to the students, and a hands-on approach was…

Portfolio assessment is increasingly used in teacher education courses as teacher educators become aware of the importance of modeling best practice in methods classes. However, implementing portfolio instruction is not an easy task. Because this approach to evaluation is so different from previous educational experiences, preservice students…

This document details the development and implementation of a course for teacher education in Poland. The course, "The School in Democratic Society," was prepared between September 1992 and December 1993 as a cooperative effort between the Polish Ministry of National Education and the Citizenship Development for a Global Age Program of…

Teacher educators have become increasingly interested in the beliefs preservice teachers bring to their undergraduate methods courses. S. Lortie (1975) posited that the major influence in shaping future teachers' conceptions of teaching is their previous years of experience as students. A study of students in preservice reading methods courses…

College-level students' achievements may be negatively impacted because college-level instructors, though well educated and informed in their particular subject area, may not be effective classroom teachers. A study was conducted to examine the preparation of postsecondary educators to determine if methodology training is considered to be of any…

This paper presents the course outline of a methods course for elementary education majors that is based on the structure of the Florida Sunshine State Standards pertaining to science. This structure provides education majors with the vertical scope and sequence of public school science education. The focus is on pedagogical knowledge beyond the…

An important topic presented in introductory statistics courses is the estimation of population parameters using samples. Students learn that when estimating population variances using sample data, we always get an underestimate of the population variance if we divide by n rather than n-1. One implication of this correction is that the degree of…

Professors in a Communication Arts methods course for preservice and inservice elementary school teachers sought to move the content of the language arts curriculum from a direct instruction to a whole language model. A transformation came about as one professor realized that her efforts to enthusiastically convey the importance of authentic…

A case study narrates the development of one preservice teacher enrolled in a composition methods course that was based on inquiry, reflection, collaboration, and theory-building. Much of the course content centered on exploring, extending, and even transforming future secondary English teachers' beliefs about writing instruction and assessment.…

It is not difficult to find information describing how enterprising teachers use telecommunications in their classrooms; however, it is very difficult to find studies describing how teacher education institutions can (or should) employ telecommunications. Two hundred and twenty nine students (all were enrolled in a methods/curriculum course) were…

The content of elementary school reading methods textbooks spanning approximately 100 years was analyzed to note patterns of emphasis for selected topics. Four to six books were chosen for analysis from each of six time periods: 1890 to 1930, and each of the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s. Each book was evaluated with a checklist of 17 major…

A study analyzed the experiences of 10 student teachers, 5 of whom taught in a traditional program and 5 of whom taught without cooperating teachers. The study's purpose was to gain insight into factors influencing views and actions of student teachers and to determine why they did or did not correspond to views they expressed after participating…

This paper describes the results of several teaching experiments in the teaching Studio of The University of Dayton's Learning-Teaching Center. The Studio is a state-of-the-art classroom with a flexible seating arrangements and movable whiteboards and corkboards for small group discussions. The Studio has a communications system with a TV/VCR…

Intended for use by educators of preservice speech communications teachers, this description of a methods course is geared towards high school and college level pedagogy. The philosophy of the guide rejects the typical textbook style, in which generalizations are given to students as unqualified positive statements rather than made objects of…