Recent reforms of initial teacher education (ITE) in the learning and skills sector (LSS) in England are standards based and emphasise subject specialism. The reforms are underpinned by objectivist epistemological assumptions which are incompatible with socio-cultural theories of professional knowledge, and ignore the diverse teaching roles and…

Teacher preparation programs are required by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) to assess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of teacher candidates. Dispositions and the personal values that support them are defined differently by NCATE and other experts in the fields of education and business. In order to…

This article describes the construction process and evaluation of the Agile Constructionist Mentoring Methodology (ACMM), a mentoring method for guiding software development projects in the high school. The need for such a methodology has arisen due to the complexity of mentoring software project development in the high school. We introduce the…

Preparing quality teachers has become a global concern as all nations strive for excellence at all levels. Yet, there is little consensus around what constitutes quality and how quality teachers might best be attained. This article takes up the issue of quality teacher preparation by exploring several pivotal questions: What might quality teaching…

Nations around the world are experimenting with ways to use salary incentives to recruit and retain teachers, fill vacancies in hard-to-staff areas, and improve student learning. These experiments come at a time when qualified teachers are in short supply and when teaching appears to be a less popular professional choice for young people. Programs…

The aim of this study was to scrutinize the assessment of teacher knowledge in a school-based course at one Swedish pre-service teacher education program. In a general education school-based course, teacher educators visited the student teachers at their school placements and met them and their school mentors in student-teaching conferences to…

At a time when learning and teaching in higher education have become the focus of increasing attention and high priority is being accorded to the attainment of excellence in teaching there is a growing concern that teaching is being reduced to the acquisition of a set of competencies. This paper will draw on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre to…

In the present study we explore changes in perceptions of our class of prospective mathematics teachers (PTs) regarding their mathematical knowledge. The PTs engaged in problem posing activities in geometry, using the "What If Not?" (WIN) strategy, as part of their work on computerized inquiry-based activities. Data received from the PTs'…

Although there have been a number of studies that have explored secondary in-service and pre-service teachers' beliefs about STS education, levels of environmental literacy, attitudes toward teaching STS or environmental issues, and/or the impact of teacher education programs on teacher beliefs and attitudes, studies involving elementary…

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effect of knowledge for teaching mathematics and teaching practice on student mathematics achievement growth. Thirty two teachers and 299 fourth grade students in three elementary schools from one school district in urban area participated in the study. Most of them are Hispanic in origin and…

In July of 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) determined that Massachusetts had violated the civil rights of its English Language Learners (ELLs) by placing them in classes with inadequately prepared teachers. Massachusetts is the contextual background for this study but it also serves as an example of the challenges across the U.S. in…

In this study, the researchers examined self-ratings from special and general education teacher candidates engaged in their culminating instructional activity prior to graduation: student teaching. Acquiring data at the end of the student teaching experience was targeted because student teaching is when teacher candidates apply the knowledge and…

The author reports on a case study investigating how one nonnative English-speaking teacher (NNEST) struggled to claim professional legitimacy as a university-level ESL writing instructor. Using Vygotskian sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986; Wertsch, 1985) and Bucholtz and Hall's (2005) indexicality principle, the author explores the…

This paper describes a study conducted with a random sample of 80 student primary teachers drawn from all four years of the Bachelor of Education (BEd) programme at a teacher education institution in Scotland, with a view to determining why there were such differing levels of engagement with an online maths assessment. The assessment was created…

There is a significant body of international research indicating that reading instruction does not consistently occur in the final years of primary schooling and progress drops-off as students move through the schooling system. This paper uses case study research to investigate the interactions and the self-perceptions of five literacy leaders,…