In this dissertation, I explore what it means to different people, in different places throughout life's spectrum, to create a space to learn. This dissertation is a collection of work that I have written throughout my time at the CUNY Graduate Center. The chapters herein represent an arch of my learning over the past five years. The title,…

Instructional reforms in science education require changes in the type of intellectual work students are engaging in. This study explored the cognitive demand of tasks pre-service teachers selected during their full time teaching semester. Using the Task Analysis Guide in Science, we analyzed 177 tasks from the lesson plans that seven pre-service…

Critical thinking is an essential skill for learners and teachers alike. Therefore, it is essential that educators be given practical strategies for improving their critical thinking skills as well as methods to effectively provide critical thinking skills to their students. The "Handbook of Research on Critical Thinking and Teacher Education…

We present research from an investigation on developing a learning progression (LP) for sea level rise (SLR), a major effect of global climate change. We began our research by drafting a hypothetical LP for sea level rise, informed by extant knowledge of the topic in the scientific community, in science education literature, and in science…

Teaching science concepts for conceptual understanding has its challenges. Promoting conceptual change in the science classroom can be difficult because most concepts are complicated and counter-intuitive. This dissertation research aimed to determine the effect of teaching for conceptual understanding models on pre-service teachers' conceptual…

This paper describes a pre-service mathematics teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) during her school experience. This study focuses on how the participant taught different views of three-dimensional objects in a private middle school. It is a descriptive case study in which the data was collected through semi-structured…

This pilot qualitative study explored K-8 pre-service teachers' (PSTs') learning experience in a Statistics and Probability course and their ability to make connections between mathematics and their everyday lives when given opportunities to investigate mathematics through a social issue. Data from student surveys, assessments, and written…

The study reported on in this chapter describes the justifications that elementary and middle school prospective teachers (PTs) made as they examined the temperature story that a Grade 5 student posed for an integer subtraction number sentence. The ways that the PTs made sense of the student's story that used integer subtraction as distance are…

Faced with school closures in the spring of 2020 due to COVID-19, middle level teacher candidates were left with no way to finish their field experiences. The challenge continued into the fall with many schools providing only virtual learning and some not allowing visitors on campus. This article describes the steps one university middle level…

The purpose of this study is to present an activity designed according to inquiry-based science approach and its implementation. The activity set up towards guided inquiry and was performed with participating 12 preservice science teachers and 24 eighth grade students. The activity started with a daily-life problem related to Yozgat Çamlik…

This article describes reflections of two mathematicians and a mathematics teacher educator who collaborated on the development and implementation of courses (probability and statistics connections, number concept connections, and middle school mathematics methods) for middle school mathematics preservice teachers. The instructors of the courses,…

Forming part of a wider research study, the current study investigated prospective middle school mathematics teachers' ways of covariational reasoning on tasks involving simultaneously changing quantities. As the introductory theme of a larger unit on derivative, a model development sequence on covariational reasoning was designed and experimented…

The purpose of the current article is to test and revise the hypothetical learning trajectory designed for teaching quadrilaterals by reporting the classroom mathematical practices emerged in a social learning environment developing preservice middle school mathematics teachers' understanding of quadrilaterals. Ten preservice teachers participated…

This study used sociocultural learning theory to better understand how middle and high school environmental science and biology students and pre- and in-service science teachers connect the daily life activity of eating to the food web model learned in school. We sought to understand how student and teacher perceptions of the environment and their…

Providing meaningful feedback to student writers is a nuanced, fully human endeavor. Thus, teaching preservice teachers, in all disciplines, to respond to students' writing is a complex task, one that requires intentional instruction and practice. In this article, we use practitioner inquiry to analyze our experiences and teaching approaches with…