This article addresses educators' ethical responsibility for recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of African American students with disabilities. It opens with a brief overview of multicultural education and continues with a three-pronged model for addressing multicultural competencies: awareness, knowledge, and skills. Strategies for…

Examines the efficacy beliefs preservice teachers bring to methods courses in science and mathematics and the changes in their beliefs as a result of the enriched experiences of methods courses. Contains 22 references. (DDR)

Contends that two standard approaches to assessing coaching expertise (behavioral assessment and assessment of coaches' knowledge base) are flawed because they cannot adequately improve coach development. The paper reviews literature from other areas of cognitive psychology that offer more promising directions and makes recommendations for…

An interview with Susan Loucks-Horsley, director of professional development at the National Research Council's Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education, explores the importance of good teachers, deficiencies in professional development, rural problems, the importance of high academic standards, how the newer standards differ…

Investigated what middle and high school master health educators considered important regarding content, skills, and experiences for preparing school health educators. Surveys indicated that both groups considered the most important priorities to be: awareness/use of various instructional techniques; skill in working with parents; knowledge of…

A study involving 114 educators of students with profound and multiple learning difficulties, interviews with 20 head teachers, and observation in four British schools, found student assessment was largely informal, Individualized Education Programs were often lacking in detail, and about one-third of teachers had no special education…

This commentary provides an overview of federal initiatives to prepare teachers for working with students with disabilities, federal education legislation supporting equity and access, and remaining challenges for preparing teachers to work in inclusive environments. The need to ensure that students are meaningfully included is stressed. (Contains…

Provides an overview of an educational partnership that aims to develop successful strategies for teaching and using science investigations, to explore the effects of the British National Curriculum on current practice, and to make recommendations for its future development. (DDR)

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…

Examines difficulties caused by the two-context nature of preservice teacher education, describing a Scottish program in which classroom teachers collaborate with university faculty to plan and present university classes. Interviews with participating teachers indicate that teachers feel confident about their role and believe they could share a…

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,…

The purpose of this study was to understand how teachers and graduate-level scientists negotiated differing knowledge bases to work together to improve science teaching and learning. Partners' coparticipation in and dialogue about pedagogical decisions and actions were analyzed. Three theoretical representations of dialogic interactions emerged…

The transition from generic mentoring to specific mentoring practices can provide a stronger focus for developing preservice primary teachers (mentees) in subject-specific areas. Constructivist theory and a five-factor model towards specific subject mentoring are proposed as ways to develop mentees' teaching practices. Firstly, constructivist…

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…

This study explored whether and how teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching contributes to gains in students' mathematics achievement. The authors used a linear mixed-model methodology in which first and third graders' mathematical achievement gains over a year were nested within teachers, who in turn were nested within schools. They found…