A study was conducted to determine the attitudes of undergraduate education students regarding the importance of experiences with children and to examine the effects of age, prior experiences with children, and class standing on their attitudes. The purpose of this study was to seek an appropriate balance among field experiences, methods, content,…

A teacher education course strongly emphasizing field work in classrooms, team teaching, and providing early opportunity for informed career choice is described. The following major objectives of the course are identified and their implementation described: (1) provide students with intensified field experiences very early in and throughout the…

Recognizing the need to reinforce methods courses with realistic perceptions of the secondary classroom, the Business Education Department at Shippensburg State College implemented, in September 1972, an integrated methods block including field experiences. The program has three primary objectives. The first objective is to provide business…

Determined whether the field experience component of an undergraduate science methods course influenced teachers' concerns and attitudes toward science and science teaching. Age, grade-point average, openmindedness, and school assignment were examined as variables which might explain some of the variance in the dependent measures. (Author/JN)

Describes a mathematics content course in which observations are made by preservice elementary school teachers of actual classroom teachers. This course emphasizes these aspects of teacher education: attitudes towards mathematics, achievement and understanding of content, expectation levels of prospective teachers, and understanding of elementary…

Experience with materials developed by the Mathematics Teacher Education Project has shown that these resources of teaching methods and suggestions can be used to assist student teachers in their first field experience and in the final term as a means to coalesce and focus on specific teaching strategies. (FG)

Compared are elementary teacher methods courses differing in the amount of field experience with specific teaching behaviors involving the ability to teach activity-oriented or experiential science. Results include the finding that field experience effects a major difference in the ability to model specific teaching behaviors. (CS)

This study used interviews; observations of methods, course meetings, and field experiences; and audiotapes of weekly reflection sessions. Data analysis indicated that preservice teachers made managerial decisions, planned lesson content, considered children's prior learning, and connected their choice of words to children's perspectives but did…

Using Alice's experience in "Through the Looking Glass" as inspiration, this paper recounts how preservice teachers journey through their field-based experiences and gain increasing insights into the teaching profession. The paper illustrates their progression with notes from several reflective logs which will eventually become papers…

This paper describes the results of a productive collaboration between university instructors who linked the principles and theories in reading methods coursework with the practical field experience of preservice teachers. The objectives of the collaboration were: to counter the effects of the isolation of theoretical premises of reading…

The Multiple Perspectives Teacher Education Emphasis Area at Michigan State University was designed to integrate teacher candidates' field experiences with the instruction from the methods courses. Field instructors were informed about the specific methods, content, and procedures. Some methods courses were taught within the field setting and…

This document on the value of field experience for preservice teachers is based on a course and an experiment conducted at the University of Maryland in which blocks of a methods course were devoted to elementary school classroom experience. It is reported that school visits progressively involved observation lesson presentation, and general…

Noting that both the college and the collaborating schools gain from early field placement (prior to student teaching) in education programs, this paper presents a prototype for early placement practicums based on 10 years experience in providing practicums for reading methods courses for Medgar Evers College, City University of New York…