A particularly useful pedagogical strategy for beginning a dialogue with prospective teachers about the ways in which their experiences and beliefs shape their development of professional knowledge is writing impressionist tales. Impressionist tales are a form of autobiography that portrays one highly personal perspective on a significant moment…

This study investigates the effects of gender and year in program on the performance and mathematical self-efficacy beliefs of 145 pre-service mathematics teachers in Turkey. One of the main purposes of this study is to investigate how duration in a teacher education program influenced the performance and mathematical self-efficacy beliefs of…

Recently, the Department of Teacher Education and the Liberal Studies Program in the School of Education at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) collaborated in developing a Blended Liberal Studies/Teacher Education Program (BLTEP) for upper division transfer students interested in completing an elementary credential. The BLTEP…

For students in social studies methods courses, demonstration activities serve a twofold purpose: They help university students to become social studies teachers and they encourage elementary school children to learn social studies. In this article, the authors report on three social studies demonstration activities: (1) International Cultural…

The study reported in this article delineates preservice teachers' perceptions of readiness to effectively teach elementary language arts before and after a site-based methods course. Their perceptions are also compared to those of inservice teachers in public elementary schools. Results indicate that perceptions of comfort and confidence for…

As a multicultural teacher educator, the author has committed her professional life to helping future teachers understand their roles and responsibilities in working with the populations that Delpit (1995) referred to as "other people's children." Since the author is a former bilingual instructional assistant and English as a second language…

In this paper, I will discuss two related activities that I have developed for use in a college geometry course directed at pre-service secondary and elementary school teachers. These activities ask students to develop geometry on pool tables and on cones. The two activities are closely related, and both ask students to relate computer models with…

This article attempts to extend current research and development activities related to the use of technology in problem posing, to early grades mathematics. It is motivated by the authors' work with elementary preservice teachers toward this goal, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. New York State Learning Standards for K-4 mathematics…

To prepare teachers who will be able to draw on caring to build a strong foundation for their professional practices, teacher education programs must be created specifically focused toward this goal. This article discusses the use of dialogue journals in a course designed to enrich preservice elementary teachers' understandings of caring. Quite…

The purpose of this study was to examine programmatic factors that positively impact changes in elementary preservice teachers' teaching self-efficacy beliefs. Specifically, it examined the impact of science methods courses, student teaching, and science content courses on elementary preservice teachers' science teaching self-efficacy. The Science…

Perceptions of mentors' practices related to primary science teaching from nine Australian universities (N = 331 final-year preservice teachers) were gathered through a literature-based instrument. Five factors that characterize effective mentoring practices in primary science teaching were supported by confirmatory factory analysis. These…

A multiple regression analysis of the relationship between prospective teachers' scientific understanding and Gender, Education Level (High School, College), Courses in Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Astronomy, and Agriculture), Attitude Towards Science, and Attitude Towards Mathematics is reported. Undergraduate elementary…

Results from an earlier study (Hart, 2002) suggested that a group of 14 teachers participating in an alternative preparation program for elementary teachers had developed beliefs that were consistent with current thinking in mathematics education. The current study follows 8 of those teachers into their first year of teaching in an urban…

Physical education teacher education (PETE) programs across the nation wish to comply with the 10 beginning teacher standards established by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE, 2003). To help further this compliance, this article gives examples of best practices for supervising student teachers using the standards as…

The aim of this study was to explore preservice classroom teacher reflection in a physical education teaching and learning environment and to describe how the teachers' reflections related to their practices. Two preservice classroom teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Data were collected using observations, journals, documents, and…