We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2015, taking place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 2 to 4 of May. Psychology, nowadays, offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and groups (mental functions and behavioral…

Traditional measures of teachers' competency have been widely criticized for their lack of authenticity and predictive validity. There is little evidence regarding the technical soundness of traditional teacher licensure tests and little research documenting the validity of such tests for identifying competent teachers or effective teaching.…

This article presents findings from an action research study that investigates the impact of an inquiry project designed to help better prepare pre-service middle level teacher interns for their work with English language learners (ELLs). The inquiry project combined a "rounds" approach with ethnographic observation to help pre-service…

The purpose of this article is to propose the use of technology integration in elementary and middle level education courses, specifically, the use of WebQuests as vehicles for the infusion of content knowledge in preservice and in-service education courses. Observation in content area teaching methods courses found that teacher candidates often…

Although current reform movements have stressed the importance of developing prospective middle school mathematics teachers' subject matter knowledge and understandings, there is a dearth of research studies with regard to prospective middle school teachers' confidence and knowledge with respect to quadratic functions. This study was intended to…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

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…

Student teaching is a cornerstone of teacher preparation, yet it remains one of the most difficult experiences to understand. Calls for an ecological approach to research on student teaching prompted this study in which the experience is examined from the perspective of the three key triad members. Using activity theory, this study explores how…

Teachers in rural areas are finding that more and more special needs children are being included in their K-12 classrooms to comply with the mandate for a free and appropriate public education even in isolated small school systems. For students with mild intellectual disabilities (MID) this placement is meant to accomplish both the academic and…

Today with teacher cutbacks looming, and more integration units, general teachers might be required to teach the visual arts. Therefore, teachers need a clear definition of the discipline of art and personal exposure to aesthetic experiences. Many references are made to classic art education research. When lesson plan formats are generic it…

For several years physics faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) have taught physics to pre-service elementary and middle school teachers in an unusual location: the local elementary school! The participating pre-service elementary and middle school teachers are typically in their last semester and are fully immersed in their…

Using an activity theory framework, we investigate how preservice teachers and middle school students utilized instant messaging in educational contexts and the impact of instant messaging on the development of community among preservice teachers. Qualitative results from six focus groups and two personal interviews indicate that instant messaging…

The "International Society for the Social Studies (ISSS) Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2014 proceedings: (1) Legal Profession in the Technological Era with Special Reference to Women Lawyers in…

Situated within a university-based content literacy course, this article considers the spaces between the curricular realities of middle school and high school classrooms, what we call the "what is," and potential alternative configurations of curriculum and instruction for these classrooms, what we call the "what could be."…