Explains what inquiry-based science instruction means and points out the difficulty of creating this kind of instruction for teachers who are inexperienced in teaching. Presents a case study of a preservice teacher who explored whether it is realistic to expect preservice teachers to create and carry out an inquiry-based classroom. (Contains 38…

Explores how prospective elementary teachers (n=106) enrolled in elementary science and mathematics methods courses used algebraic reasoning to construct and describe relationships among and between variables in the context of solving a problem. Describes specific weaknesses characterized by the teachers' solutions. (Contains 17 references.)…

Used data for 3,786 students in mathematics and 2,524 in science to explore the relationship between student performance and the type of certification teachers held. Found evidence in mathematics that teachers with subject-specific training outperform those without subject matter preparation but found no poorer performance for students whose…

Investigates the content conceptions of an experienced high school mathematics teacher and links those conceptions to their role in the teacher's first implementation of reform-oriented curricular materials during a six-week unit on functions. Concludes that the teacher's well-articulated ideas about features of a variety of relationships in…

Reports on a study to discover physics student teachers' objectives for practical work in teaching physics. Participants took a course based on a unique perceptional approach. Results indicate that after attending the course, student teachers found that the practical work which they had done was very useful. (Author/MM)

Describes three actions necessary to improve teacher quality: Improve teacher preparation by deepening teachers' content knowledge and strengthening candidates' experiences in schools, hire qualified teachers, and support teacher learning. (PKP)

Analyzes narrative essays--stories of rock formation--written by pre-service elementary school teachers. Reports startling misconceptions among preservice teachers on pebbles that grow, human involvement in rock formation, and sedimentary rocks forming as puddles as dry up, even though these students had completed a college level course on Earth…

Presents some examples illustrating the importance of probability, data analysis, and statistics for the preservice mathematics teacher, and suggests ways of teaching these topics. (Contains 13 references.) (ASK)

Author recounts his career as a premier bibliographer of group work. He examines the development of his career and points out the importance of making the broad literature on group work easily accessible to practitioners. Stresses the active nature of group leadership and describes his leadership process. (Author/JDM)

Discusses some results gathered in 1997-98 from Brazilian mathematics teachers. The research was done to investigate the teachers' mathematical language as related to the concept of function. Detects a dichotomy between formal and practical language. (Author/MM)

Explores the dynamic profile of a task as interpreted by a group of six prospective elementary teachers enrolled in a college biology course. Describes the shift from a planned task to a transitional task and finally an enacted task. (Author/MM)

Examines what primary teachers actually understand about the word 'chemical' and what they do to help young students arrive at a scientific conception of chemical. Indicates three main categories of teachers' views of a chemical and discusses the effects of a professional development course on this subject. (ASK)

Survey responses from 619 of 1,126 secondary vocational teachers in Louisiana indicated that most recognized the value of information technology but rate their knowledge and skills to use it in instruction as average to below average. Many have limited Internet access. Many use self-directed methods to learn about technology. (Contains 50…

In this article we discuss efforts to design and empirically test measures of teachers' content knowledge for teaching elementary mathematics. We begin by reviewing the literature on teacher knowledge, noting how scholars have organized such knowledge. Next we describe survey items we wrote to represent knowledge for teaching mathematics and…

Martina Bergman-Osterberg came to London from Sweden versed in the theory and practice of Swedish gymnastics as taught by Per Henrik Ling (1776-1881), and introduced his system into British schools, first while working for the London School Board and subsequently by establishing the Dartford College of Physical Training. This paper examines the…