In recent years, a group of teacher educators has developed a method of teacher education that incorporates practices that provide guidance about how to teach along with a principled vision of teaching that supports teachers to use the practices with judgement. Sometimes termed "core practices-focused teacher education" (Forzani, 2014,…

Mathematics is often taught by lecturing students on how to perform procedures, but it could be taught in ways that promote active student engagement and develop deep conceptual understanding. Research supports the latter approach as better for students' retention, engagement, and success with learning mathematics. An important time to influence…

There is ongoing debate in preservice science teacher education about the function, definition and assessment of preservice science teacher dispositions in preservice science teacher education programs. This is due to the numerous definitions found in the educational literature on teacher disposition. Previous research indicates that teacher…

To successfully create inclusive environments that address the unique needs of each student, teacher candidates must adopt their students' perspectives. Radical imagination is essential for empathy, as it enables individuals to recognize diverse viewpoints (Greene, 1995). Arts-based methods provide a means for teacher candidates to practice…

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the education technology narrative asserted that "New tools hold great promise for teaching and learning, but only when they are used effectively, appropriately and intentionally". In this dissertation, I explored how early childhood education teachers construct their understanding of technology…

Research has shown that teachers and students have difficulties in connecting climate change evidence with climate change claims. Such difficulties may come from the lack of knowledge about how scientific models and modeling work in climate science. Climate change as a complex system with a large time and land scale requires sophisticated…

We live in an attention economy where many of our interactions are mediated by technologies incentivized to exploit our attention. The consequences of this exploitation, so far as they are known, affect how we spend our time, and also our capacity for reflection and self-awareness, which can have lasting effects across our life and relationships.…

Task selection is a critical element of mathematics teaching because mathematical tasks differ in the mathematical opportunities made available to students. Thus, it is important to examine both the tasks that PSTs chose and why they were chosen. This study examines the task selection of 10 pre-service teachers (PSTs) in a middle grades…

During university-based programs that prepare K-12 teachers, candidates traditionally participate in course work that discusses educational theory and application related to the future teacher's chosen population (based on age range and subject areas). Traditional methods courses cover the pedagogy related to a single, specific content area, or…

Socioscientific issues (SSI) such as COVID-19 and climate change often highlight the inequalities that structural racism creates. If we ever wish to equitably solve these issues, we require a population that has the scientific literacy and the sociopolitical consciousness to do so. Yet, the push for culturally relevant education has had little…

Scientific modeling is a scientific practice that uses models to prepare elementary and middle school science teachers to engage students using scientific inquiry. Model-based inquiry (MBI) is a pedagogical teaching approach that engages students using scientific inquiry during scientific modeling. However, preservice teachers lack understanding…

The purpose of this study was to explore four elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs) learning outcomes based on "affective characteristics," "science knowledge," and "pedagogical content knowledge" during a science methods course that incorporated "explicit instruction on drawing-to-reason" about…

This phenomenological study explored best practices to increase preservice teacher self-efficacy before the student teaching semester. The research was guided by this central inquiry and three sub-questions. Using a pre- and post-phenomenon survey instrument as well as an initial questionnaire and a final reflection, preservice teachers who were…

Black students and their linguistic resources are undervalued, disdained, disrespected, and disregarded in language arts classrooms. Not only is Black Language often ignored in English language arts instruction, but language more generally remains largely hidden within elementary ELA. Elementary ELA educators are tasked with teaching a vast array…

All human beings possess within them implicit and explicit theories which they use repeatedly throughout their lives to explain a wide array of experiences (Tracey & Morrow, 2017). In education, teachers use their theories about reading and learning to read to inform nearly every aspect of their instruction. These belief systems develop over a…