Discussion is a practice used in mathematics methods courses to support prospective teachers' pedagogical ideas. Underexamined but central to the development of instructional activities, including discussions of teaching, are mathematics teacher educators' (MTEs') tacit and explicit theories of learning and teaching. We report findings from a…

This study utilized constructivist grounded theory to examine teacher candidates' STEM confidence, preparedness, and self-efficacy before and after participation in an elementary STEM methods course. The study aimed to identify characteristics of the course that impacted teacher candidates' growth. Twenty teacher candidates and the course…

Background/Context: This paper is part of the special issue "Reimagining Research and Practice at the Crossroads of Philosophy, Teaching, and Teacher Education." In it we respond to the question of what role there might be for philosophy of education in an era marked by the demand that students graduating from teacher education programs…

Despite the importance of learning to teach writing, many preservice teachers do not take a writing course as part of their teacher preparation. For those universities that do offer a writing methods course, teacher educators face challenges in designing responsive and rigorous clinical experiences especially since writing is often under taught in…

This article describes how three higher education literacy faculty shifted their traditional face-to-face instruction to a combined synchronous and asynchronous delivery in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and subsequent closure of the university. Faculty share specific lessons that were learned over the first year of the pandemic, and how these…

This study reports the knowledge of text complexity held by preservice teachers prior to coursework. The goal of this research is to determine what strengths and what learning needs preservice teachers have related to text selection with the intention of informing programmatic redesign. In this preliminary component of a design-development study,…

This article describes a literacy methods course designed to introduce reading specialist candidates to research-based practices for comprehension instruction. Specifically, this article focuses on a sequence of assignments and class sessions within that course that introduced theoretical perspectives about comprehension processes and how those…

This study aimed to understand graduate-level Elementary Preservice Teachers' (EPST) mathematical dispositions before, during, and after a graduate elementary math methods course taught through a rehumanizing, ambitious and equitable math teaching framework. In this study, EPSTs' dispositions included four constructs: math anxiety, math teaching…

This qualitative research investigated two preservice teachers' multimodal aesthetic reader responses to a wordless picture book in a literacy methods course. This study took up a sociocultural perspective that was informed by transactional reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1986, 2013) and further supported by a pedagogy of…

This study investigated what 12 prospective mathematics teachers (PTs) in a middle school mathematics method course reported during a video-stimulated recall interview about their experiences when they were engaged in a doing math task that yielded an Opportunity for Productive Struggle (OPS). We investigated their reported feelings during the…

Students with disabilities have scored well below their same-aged peers on national mathematics standardized tests for decades. This problem is compounded by special education teachers who lack strong content knowledge, experience math anxiety, and have poor self-confidence in their ability to teach math. This qualitative study explores three…

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the ways in which physical education teacher education (PETE) prepares preservice physical education teachers (PPETs) to select and implement appropriate assessments. Methods: PPETs (N = 14) enrolled in the secondary teaching methods course at two US universities participated in the study. Semi-structured…

Studies have shown that preservice teachers come to their science methods courses with perceptions about science teaching and learning that can impact their levels of self-efficacy when it comes to teaching science (Bulunuz & Jarrett, 2010; Jarrett, 1999; Kazempour, 2014). Multiple students have been conducted to document the effects of…

Research and national surveys show that deficiencies in elementary science teaching preparation are frustratingly persistent. Understanding positive and negative emotions as they relate to planning and teaching science is relevant for both the well-being of teachers and the quality of their teaching. There needs to be more empirical evidence on…

In this study, we aim to examine the phases of inquiry-based learning and how to best prepare future teachers for inquiry-based teaching. While preservice teachers may leave teacher preparation with an understanding of the tenets of inquiry, their experiences in methods courses and experiences teaching in the field do not adequately prepare them…