This article highlights the work of a culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) Professional Development School (PDS) initiative aimed at promoting teacher candidates' abilities to understand and work effectively with elementary-aged Micronesian students in Hawai'i. Findings from this research reveal that a PDS centered on CRP improved teachers'…

During semester-long courses in inclusive methods and beginning reading instruction, pre-service teacher candidates participate in weekly tutoring sessions with elementary students in grades K-5. We outline principles identified for effective service-learning and describe how to embed them to integrate community service. We discuss…

Preservice teachers often hold deficit views about the students they will teach and their communities. These limiting beliefs can result in lower expectations of and poor outcomes for the students, and need to be addressed in all areas of teacher education, including mathematics courses. The assignment described in this manuscript provides an…

This qualitative multiple-comparative case study investigates (1) The reported experiences and impressions of four pre-service teachers (PTs) on practicum placement in four different classrooms (grades 1-9) where a new Steps to Inquiry (SI) framework was being utilized to support students conducting open inquiry; (2) The relative dispositions of…

In many innovative science content professional development (PD) courses for teachers, science concepts are situated within pedagogical contexts, or in other words, science content is incorporated within contexts relevant to teaching and student learning. Pedagogical contexts are often used because they are believed to be engaging for teachers and…

Lack of time for teaching science in traditional classroom placements in the United States has led some science teacher educators to provide practice teaching time for elementary education students in informal science settings. The purposes of this study were to describe the culture of one science methods course taught in conjunction with a K-7…

We describe an inquiry-based course in physics and chemistry for preservice K-8 teachers developed at California State University Fullerton. The course is one of three developed primarily to enhance the science content understanding of prospective teachers. The course incorporates a number of innovative instructional strategies and is somewhat…

In this study a survey instrument was developed to test elementary teachers' attitudes towards incorporating manipulatives in their math lessons frequently. Though the benefits of using math manipulatives has been reported, there seems to be a disconnect between the benefits of manipulative use and the number of teachers integrating them in their…

Connecting K-6 student outcomes with teacher preparation programs remains a critical need for the field. Even while educators have begun to sort through and document outcomes for teacher interns relative to national standards, the task of connecting performance to K-6 student outcomes has been little documented. In this interview study, the…

A classroom teacher's unique perspective is valuable when considering students for gifted and talented programs. We developed a series of 11 student profiles to measure 290 preservice and 95 in-service teachers' attitudes and asked them to indicate how strongly they believed the students in the profiles should or should not be recommended for…

Despite the long history of the study of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), two facts remain obvious. First, there are almost as many conceptions regarding the definition of PCK as there are researchers interested in it. Second, it is largely unclear which methods enable teacher educators to best prepare teacher candidates to use PCK. Recently,…

Two Heads Are Better than One: The Factors Influencing the Understanding and Practice of Classroom-Library Collaboration proposed to identify the factors involved in educating future K-8 classroom teachers about collaboration for instruction with school library media specialists (SLMSs). This longitudinal study monitored the growth of teacher…

It is important to use rich problem-solving tasks to develop students' understanding of important mathematical ideas (NCTM 2000). Rich tasks are complex, nonalgorithmic, and nonroutine, requiring reasoning, problem solving, and communication of thinking. Evidence has shown that using rich tasks in student-centered classrooms is especially…

A debate over the quality of teacher education programs has been ongoing for nearly 100 years. The most current round in this debate started with "A Nation at Risk" (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) and has escalated in recent years to involve an increasing number of participant-constituents, each of whom has voiced…

Teacher education programs must continue to find greater parallels between the experiences provided to teacher candidates and what is occurring in classrooms. In this article, we describe technology use in schools, our courses, and our students' field experiences. Specifically, we describe the results of our efforts to mirror our teacher education…