This paper describes a tool called the Professional Development Project (PDP) that helps preservice teachers become reflective teachers. Action research in a course for preservice teachers, "Reading and Literature in the Schools," from 1993 through 1996 led to the development of the PDP. Action research helps students become reflective…

Western Illinois University's College of Education and Human Services is redesigning its undergraduate teacher education program. The program places volunteer freshmen in real classrooms for long-term observations and volunteer assistance, eventually leading up to a full range of teaching opportunities. Also, coursework is presented in an…

Collaborative efforts between university methods courses and elementary classroom teachers provide laboratory experiences that facilitate preservice teachers understanding of thematic instructional approaches to teaching elementary science and social studies. Preservice teachers in these field-based programs learn to apply the theories to which…

Training teachers as reflective practitioners is an important element in many teacher education programs. Teacher education literature indicates that journal writing is an approach that fosters reflection, and is an effective source of dialogue between student and teacher. This document reports on an action research study on the use of journals in…

The majority of teacher candidates feel unprepared to teach with computers, and few teacher training programs are preparing future educators to effectively use the Internet to enrich their classrooms and contribute to their own personal development. The purpose of this study was to teach the procedural knowledge required to navigate the Internet…

This paper reports the results of a deliberate effort to help preservice science teachers improve their ability to learn from experience and take charge of their own professional development as teachers. The study was conducted by a teacher educator who simultaneously taught a physics methods course and a 12th-grade physics class and thereby…

This paper describes a simulation activity, which was coupled with Confluent/Gestalt meta-processing, that was designed to address the affective component of a mathematics procedures class for preservice teachers. The activity consisted of an explanation and demonstration for teacher educators. It is argued that a reconstruction of disposition…

In the master's program in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course at the American University of Cairo (Egypt), student projects linking theory with classroom practice are used as a teacher training technique. The projects allow trainees to synthesize theoretical concepts, learn processes and develop materials they can use in…

The study described in this presentation was conducted to survey the status of classroom discipline within the professional teacher education curriculum and to ascertain the perceptions of preservice teachers towards addressing discipline problems. Classroom discipline is examined in the following ways: (1) an analysis of contemporary literature;…

This study examined how methods courses affected preservice teachers' knowledge of and attitudes toward cooperative learning. Data were gathered utilizing a pre/post course attitude survey, a pre/post class true/false test, postclass interviews, and interviews conducted with subjects during their respective student teaching experiences.…

A comprehensive approach to the supervision and training of teaching assistants (TAs) in the proficiency-based classroom might include a pre-service workshop, in-service methodology courses linked to appropriate teaching assignments, and systematic observations and evaluations of their performance as instructors. An intensive pre-service workshop…

To obtain practical experience, a research methods class at the University of Colorado (Colorado Springs) undertook a special project to help a nearby county (Park County), assess its planning needs. The county was chosen for its characteristics as a rapidly growing rural area faced with the problems created by mounting population pressure on…

The Competency Based Teacher Education (CBTE) effort in science methods has been responsible for generating a different approach to university-level instruction. Student achievement of specified goals is greater than in the traditional program, and study perceptions of the instructional experience suggest that competency-based instruction…

A competency-based teacher education program is the most complete approach to training bilingual teachers because trainees know what is expected to be certified, change is built into the program, and students receive credit for life experiences. In the sample program described here, an interdisciplinary committee first stated an integrated view of…

The Yazigi Project for the Teaching of English in Brazilian High Schools, a 2-year, nationwide program for the retraining of high school teachers of English as a foreign language, involved 2,210 teachers and a team of 60 teacher trainers and retrainers. Each training session lasted 6 days and totalled a minimum of 30 hours, with a maximum of 50…