The social unrest during the summer of 2020 in the United States has produced a renewed sense of urgency and agency for the interrogation of curriculum in K-12 education and the development of culturally sustaining practices. This urgency has encouraged more teacher preparation programs to be intentional in developing culturally sustaining…

Middle Grades teacher candidates participated in a "field trip" in an Integrated Reading course to model best practices in culturally responsive teaching. The college students visited their downtown city including a regional art museum and memorial sculpture garden commemorating local Black history to experience and contemplate…

This study investigated how pre-service middle school mathematics teachers attend, interpret, and respond to the students' thinking about statistical concepts in a case-based teacher training environment. 25 pre-service middle school mathematics teachers participated in the study, and they were asked to make evaluations on the cases given. Based…

Lesson study, a popular method of professional development in which instructors collaborate to critique and improve a lesson, can be used for curriculum development. This paper describes an implementation of lesson study that went through two iterations across different, related, contexts: an undergraduate mathematics content course for secondary…

The study aimed to explore the integration of lesson study into science teacher education programs to enhance preservice science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for STEM. The lesson study cycle encompassed planning, teaching, reflecting, re-teaching, and re-reflecting phases, and the participants' experiences regarding PCK for STEM…

There is no argument that the world of middle level education is constantly changing. Teacher education programs are always in flux adopting their programs to meet these needs. Faculty who teach within a middle level education teacher preparation program are at the front lines of preparing the next generation of middle school leaders. They are…

One crucial function of a classroom, and a school more generally, is to prepare students for future learning. Students should have the capacity to learn new information and to acquire new skills. This ability to "learn" is a core competency in our rapidly changing world. But how do we measure ability to learn? And how can we measure how…

The purpose of this study was to investigate prospective middle school mathematics teachers' proportional reasoning before and after receiving a practice-based instruction based on proportional reasoning. The Proportional Reasoning Test, semi-structured interviews and observations of student teachings were used to collect data about the…

This preliminary study reports upon students' experiences in engaging friends and family members in discussing global climate change for required assignments in a laboratory-centered physics course for prospective elementary and middle school teachers, (https://open.oregonstate.education/physicsforteachers). Research questions included: What…

The present study aimed to examine the opinions of in-and preservice middle school mathematics teachers about teaching four operations with integers through "number line" and/or "counters". Participants were 42 middle school mathematics teachers and 51 pre-service mathematics teachers. The data were collected through open-ended…

This qualitative article examines the making of a distinct Christian identity through confessional teaching of Christianity. As there had been very little empirical research on teachers of religious education and none on teaching Christianity in Israel, this pioneering paper investigates the teachers' views on their goals and challenges, while…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate choral directors' experiences as they navigate Whiteness through their own personal philosophies and practices related to repertoire selection and how those lived experiences may or may not impact their students. Twelve practicing choral directors from middle school through university…

It is important for the teacher, who is one of the main actors in the cognitive, mental and psychological development of their students, to create a safe educational environment. However the state in Turkey has received reports that have found abusive behavior by some teachers. The main objective of this study is to question the existence of abuse…

We can see why educators are drawn to making; maker environments hold tremendous potential for engaging learners in both (a) building and representing their knowledge and (b) fostering opportunities for seeing the world in new ways. This potential reflects what our team of middle school teachers, university professors, and graduate students…

The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which practicum teaching could lead to value orientation change of preservice physical education teachers. A group of preservice physical education teachers (N = 28) in China were randomly assigned to practicum-teach either a health-related fitness unit or a traditional sport unit. Their…