This paper reports action research intended to advance intercultural learning and pedagogy within teacher preservice education. Northern Ireland (NI) student teachers returning from teaching abroad and students from abroad training in NI shared views upon pedagogical practices, identified features supportive of inclusive teaching and assessed the…

In this article, the author describes a technique she uses to achieve an autonomous student discussion. The technique involves setting up highly structured debates, whose content is informed by coherent sets of primary sources and whose form models one aspect of how professional historians work. Students are required to read about twenty to…

The author was not a great student in high school, yet she had ambitions to succeed as a psychologist. She also had difficulty attaching herself to one friend or a group of friends with which she felt comfortable. She was the only self-identified Native student in her high school, however, and there were no support groups or clubs for Native…

While a variety of alternative careers has emerged for Ph.D. life scientists in industry, business, law, and education in the past two decades, the structure of doctoral training programs in many cases does not provide the flexibility necessary to pursue career experiences not directly related to a research emphasis. Here I describe my efforts to…

Action Research is used in many teacher education programs to promote reflection, inquiry, and a sense of efficacy in pre-service teachers. As teacher educators working with a cohort of thirty-two teachers in a nine-month program, we decided to incorporate action research into the Teacher Education Seminar, a foundational course addressing general…

Field experiences and clinical practice are considered the most important and most influential component of teacher preparation programs. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education Programs (NCATE) has established six standards to measure the effectiveness of teacher education programs; field experiences and clinical practice…

Teacher education programs provide many environments and experiences in an effort to support elementary preservice teacher development. Ultimately the goal is to transform the student into the teacher. Students enter teacher education programs focused on their present education, grades, and getting that long-sought-after degree; by selecting a…

The use of English by foreign language teacher is a matter of much controversy. Whereas language switching by English-speaking foreign language teachers has been the focus of previous research, relatively little is known about the amount of teachers' language used in the classroom when comparing native speakers of the foreign language with…

In this study, we hypothesize that cases demonstrating exemplary practice in the science classroom can be used as a source for learning content and pedagogical skills that will improve teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. Twelve preservice elementary science teachers are followed as they participate in a case and case method activity illustrating the…

This paper reflects on the experiences of two colleagues who co-taught a larger-than-traditional online graduate class in a Master of Continuing Education program in the fall of 2002. Their goal was to test a number of design and facilitation assumptions that had been successful in smaller online graduate-level classes. They began with a set of…

The annual "Maryland Teacher Staffing Report, 2004-2006," provides information about teacher candidates completing programs from Maryland institutions of higher education and the hiring needs of local school systems. The report also outlines a number of critical incentives and strategies for the recruitment and retention of quality teachers for…

Researchers compared thinking and decision making in expert and novice teachers. They analyzed audiotaped planning interviews, videotaped lessons, stimulated recall interviews, postteaching interviews, delayed self-reports, and printed materials and found striking differences between the mental representations of the two groups. The article…

This yearlong qualitative study is an examination of 10 undergraduate preservice teachers' lesson planning for the classes and/or individual lessons they taught in a university string project. Data analysis revealed that these preservice teachers held differing views of lesson planning from each other and from their supervisor. Five themes…

Because of the link between teacher training and higher-quality classroom practice, early childhood researchers and professional organizations have placed an increasing emphasis on all early childhood teachers--including those in early care and education (ECE) settings--obtaining a minimum of a Bachelor's degree as part of their professional…

This article discusses another ancillary project of the Writers In Electronic Residence's (WIER) program, "The Virtual Practicum," which provides online practice teaching placements to pre-service candidates. WIER offered its first virtual practicum in 1989 through the former Faculty of Education, University of Toronto, and has since…