In California, 2021 legislation expanded transitional kindergarten (TK) to be universal for all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. This expansion will require an additional 11,900 to 15,600 credentialed teachers. Given projected workforce needs and historic investments in teacher preparation, early childhood-focused residencies can help districts…

Teacher identity work throughout one's academic studies and career has been shown to have a positive impact on teachers' resilience and longevity in the field, in contrast to those who do not engage in these kinds of reflexive practices. This research expands our understanding of teacher identities and how they develop within and outside school…

The Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) is a high stakes summative assessment that was designed to measure pre-service teacher readiness. We examined the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of trained PACT evaluators who rated 19 candidates. As measured by Cohen's weighted kappa, the overall IRR estimate was 0.17 (poor strength of…

Background: Classroom discourse featuring meaning making supports students achieving discipline-specific learning. However, moving beyond recitation requires developing beliefs, skills, structures, and practices. Any theorizing we do about developing discussion practice must attend to realities of culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms.…

This study investigated the learning process of preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) through lesson study in a mathematics teaching methods course. Lesson study meeting data of kindergarten PSTs were analyzed to examine the shifting focus on (1) student collaboration in classroom (vision), (2) teaching practices (making content accessible), and…

"PreK-3 Alignment in California's Education System: Obstacles and Opportunities" by Rachel Valentino and Deborah J. Stipek reviews the opportunities and challenges that must be addressed to better align PreK-3 education in California. The report describes policies and practices that districts have implemented to strengthen alignment, and…

Empirical evidence that horizontal alignment of policies and practices from preschool through the early elementary grades sustains the effects of quality preschool and contributes to children's learning is scarce, as discussed above, but there are nevertheless good reasons to expect benefits to such alignment. Moreover, many districts and schools…

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…

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…

In the United States in the last few years, a considerable amount of attention has been given to literacy programs as a way to close the academic gap between English-only (EO) students and English language learners (ELL). Teacher education programs around the country have been dealing with issues of academic inequity for some time. There are no…