Curriculum integration is a hallmark of middle level education. This approach to education involves blending topics across content areas as a way of studying topics and problems of interest to young adolescents. Approaches to curriculum integration and interdisciplinary curriculum overlap with concepts like democratic education, place-based…

The teacher shortage calls for innovative recruitment, development, and retention practices. This qualitative inquiry highlights the Academy for Future Teachers (AFT), a teacher-cadet program for high-schoolers interested in teaching. We endeavored to understand how the varied participants' in AFT (high schoolers, teacher residents, and master…

Recently adopted state standards for middle grades and high school mathematics content have an increased emphasis on statistical topics. With this change, teacher education programs may need to adapt how they prepare preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) to teach statistics and require measures related to statistics teaching to assess…

While there is interest in pathways-aligned high school math reform among secondary education stakeholders, change in high school math depends a great deal on policies, practices, and norms at the higher education level. This report focuses on the role of higher education in influencing (encouraging or deterring) secondary education math reform.…

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…

For three weeks each June, the authors' PDS hosts a summer program called the Academy for Future Teachers (AFT), serving high school students interested in a teaching career. Partners across the PDS convene to support high-school AFT participants, including master teachers (P-12 teachers from local school districts and university faculty) and PDS…

We present results of a case study in which we analyzed the impact of problem-based learning (PBL) and cognitive scaffolding techniques introduced in our secondary social studies methods course on the perceptions and practices of 12 preservice teachers (PSTs) during their fall practicum and spring student teaching. Our PSTs reported teaching 54…

Career Technical Education (CTE) teacher recruitment is a challenge that has dogged state CTE leaders for decades. According to a recent survey of State CTE Directors, 98 percent said that increasing access to industry experts is a high priority in their state. And 20.4 percent of rural districts with CTE teacher vacancies report that CTE…

This chapter describes an effort to internationalize a foreign language education initial teacher certification program through a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) grant project that was funded by Valdosta State University. The purpose of the QEP grant was to foster discipline-specific inquiry skills among undergraduate students and to promote the…

A university near a major city in Georgia and a large, urban school district established a Professional Development School (PDS) in which the majority of junior and senior-level preservice teacher coursework and fieldwork took place at seven urban, high-needs public schools. The purpose of this study was to provide preliminary feedback to the…

The purpose of this article is to provide a basic review of a hiring simulation fair, and to describe strategies for successfully implementing a similar organized event in a college/university teacher education program in order to better prepare students for the interview process.

Our nation's educational system has scored many extraordinary successes in raising the level of reading and writing skills in younger children. Yet the pace of literacy improvement in our schools has not kept up with the accelerating demands of the global knowledge economy. In state after state, the testing data mandated by No Child Left Behind…

Secondary preservice teachers at Georgia Southern University have little knowledge of poverty or the lives of students who live in poverty. Preservice teachers rarely interact with others who live outside their self-reported middle-class status. In this article, the author examines the effects a study of poverty has on the philosophy and practice…

One of the competitive priorities of the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top applications addressed science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). States that applied were required to submit plans that addressed rigorous courses of study, cooperative partnerships to prepare and assist teachers in STEM content, and prepare…

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…