During 2009, three alternative teacher retraining programs in English as a Foreign Language, mathematics and biology were launched for the first time in one of Israel's largest teacher education colleges. The programs, which offered varied economic incentives to participants, were initiated by the state owing to shortages of teachers in these…

In this article we offer an extended reading of an action research model in the context of mentored learning in preservice education in Israel. Our reading attends both to how a particular form of action research plays out in participants' constructions of the practice of mentoring and mentored learning and how such constructions can be understood…

The literature on Teacher's Guides combines knowledge of discipline-related content and pedagogy-related content in reference to the objectives and contents of the Ministry of Education curriculum. It serves as a self-study tool that provides guidelines of how to teach in light of the various changing goals and needs of the teacher. The corpus on…

Despite having almost no familial or social connection with English speakers and English-speaking countries, 19 interviewees, all preservice English teachers residing in the Israeli periphery, ascribe a central and surprisingly emotional role to English in their lives. The article presents the conclusions of a qualitative research project…

Background: Cooperative Learning (CL) is an inclusive name for various models of teaching/learning methods, all of which emphasize the fundamental of meaningful collaboration among learners during their learning activities. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine whether the CL teaching model contributed to the teaching efficacy and…

The article aims to check the way adults, "some who are" practicing mathematics teachers at elementary school, "some who are" academicians making a career change to mathematics teachers at junior high school and the "rest who are" pre-service mathematics teachers at elementary school, cope with the solution of…

The challenges facing teacher educators to bridge the gap between theory and practice and to solve the problem of curricular fragmentation necessitate the creation of a more coherent program, the establishment of partnerships with schools, and the building of new educative spaces. In order to provide students with rich learning opportunities, and…

This study focuses on the pre-service teachers' reflection on an environmental knowledge questionnaire administered in an introductory environmental education course. Reflection sheets that addressed pre-/post-course knowledge questionnaires were collected from 75 students who took the course in three consecutive years. The students represented…

Why is it so challenging to provide pre-service teachers with adequate competence to cope with the complexity of the classroom context? Three key difficulties are frequently reported as reducing the effectiveness of teacher education programs: the construction of an integrated body of knowledge about teaching, the application of theories to…

Although many researchers have examined knowledge building in traditional settings and distance learning, few have examined middle school students' building of mathematical knowledge using mobile phones. The present study uses two well-known models of knowledge building to carry out the examination: the interactive analysis model of knowledge…

This article aims to present the findings of a research which investigated the effect of a difference in word formulation and mathematical characteristics of story problems on their successful solution by preservice mathematics teachers (students) and practising mathematics teachers. The findings show that in the case of a problem with a…

Early childhood educators are increasingly being called upon to deal with emotionally charged topics, which include natural and manmade disasters, war, terror, death, and other traumatic events. At our teachers college, we prepare students to deal with a challenging issue, memory of the Holocaust, through a series of activities and workshops…

This article examines teacher educators' attitudes to standardised student feedback on the quality of their teaching in a teacher education college in Israel. It is part of a comprehensive study initiated by the management of the institution, and the focus in this writing is on teacher educators' attitudes to student feedback: the way they…

This study investigated whether participating in a 3D immersive virtual reality world simulating the experience of test-anxiety would affect preservice teachers' awareness to the phenomenon. Ninety subjects participated in this study, and were divided into three groups. The experimental group experienced a 3D immersive simulation which made…

Set in a private parochial high school, this case invites consideration of the costs and benefits in a range of tactics that schools use for teacher recruitment. The case calls attention to the technical solutions that make one particular school an adept recruiter of teachers and to the extensive human and social capital at its disposal. At the…