Within an early childhood methods course, teacher candidates were prepared to spend three weeks in immersive clinical field experience. Early childhood placements were in rural, high poverty areas of central New York State. In addition to readings and authentic project-based undertakings, preparation included interactive activities on culturally…

In schools, children do not tend to be positioned as fully human. Strong neoliberal currents perpetuate objectification, a focus on technical mastery, and mechanisms for sorting and categorizing. As part of our ongoing design-based research to revise a sequence of elementary literacy methods courses, we have collaborated university faculty and…

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation's universities and colleges required online learning and shelter-in-place/stay-at-home protocols for the end of Spring 2020 semester. This new reality resulted in the fact that my undergraduate elementary science methods course would not be held in our Title 1 urban elementary professional…

Loachapoka Elementary and High School and Auburn University are involved in an emerging professional development school partnership (PDSP), a relationship that began summer of 2018. Reading, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), secondary English education and music education professors hold methods classes on the campus during the…

In this article, two university professors describe how field-based experiences for preservice elementary teachers in literacy methods courses were adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of completing conventional field experiences and classroom observations, the preservice teachers served as adult helpers for virtual learning at a school…

This article discusses ways literature is taught at the university. It describes a gap in the way English is often taught in literature programs and the way future teachers are taught to teach English to secondary students. It argues for teaching literature in ways that might be good for majors in both fields, ways that support the work valued by…

This article provides concrete critical and ethical responses to dominant educational policies promoting the teaching of STEM fields. Recognizing how dominant discourses of modernity (Martusewicz, et al. 2015) work discursively to constitute STEM, this paper examines and exposes how STEM education is prioritized via funding in teacher education.…

This article describes The Bare Book Project, a writing and research project that challenged pre-service and in-service teachers to create their own original pieces of children's literature, and use aspects of their personal writing as models for students in elementary school classrooms. Building on research regarding teacher modeling in writing…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in school closures, shifting to online instruction poses unique challenges for educators. The purpose of the paper is to inform practitioners on how online instruction was facilitated in a science methods course for preservice teachers (PSTs) enrolled in a public university across three campuses. The major…

This article focuses on Lisa Wilson's recent teaching experiences at the School of Dance, University of Cape Town (UCT), where dance pedagogy courses are established curricular components of its two undergraduate programs, the three-year Diploma in Dance Education (DipEd) and the four-year Bachelor of Music (BMus) degree in dance. The DipEd…

In this article, we share a framework for the purposeful design of presence in online courses. Instead of developing something new, we looked at two models that have helped us with previous instructional design projects, providing us with some assurance that the design decisions we were making were fundamentally sound. As we began to work with the…

This article describes an assessment project that analyzed syllabi approved for a communication intensive (CI) requirement in a general education program. As such, it is a first step in a more comprehensive assessment. The article suggests that it is important to ensure that inputs are evaluated prior to an evaluation of outcomes. The assessment…

In this article, we explain how the Discipline-based Art Education Model (DBAE) represents an instructional tool to disturb teacher candidates and elementary students' commonly held notions of US history, motivate research into historical events, and revise understandings of historical topics so that they begin seeing how the past has shaped the…

The aim of this article is to discuss key elements of a constructivist-based elementary mathematics methods course and the role of each component in enhancing elementary school teacher candidates' mathematical understanding, interest in, and confidence with learning and teaching mathematics while decreasing their math-related anxiety and fear. The…

Given changes in the U.S. school-age population, it is crucial that colleges of education prepare teacher candidates to work effectively with students from diverse backgrounds. Because diversity constitutes such a small portion of the curriculum in many teacher education programs, it is crucial that teacher educators find creative ways to…