As former elementary classroom teachers and current teacher educators, the authors teach, research, and advocate for anti-oppressive elementary social studies education. In their current role as teacher educators, they consider it our responsibility and mission to facilitate a social studies methods course that prepares pre-service teachers (PSTs)…

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…

Despite the increasing number of coding initiatives to promote computational thinking (CT), their main focus on in-service teachers in large school districts of the big cities far from exemplifies opportunities for preservice teachers (PSTs) to learn how to promote it in rural elementary school settings. As a preliminary step, this research…

Cognitively demanding tasks provide important opportunities for students to develop an understanding of mathematics; however, they are challenging to launch and implement. The authors designed a secondary methods unit on launching tasks. Participants in the study were enrolled in five different methods courses. Using a noticing framework, findings…

Despite growing numbers of English Learners (ELs) in United States science classrooms and recent science education reforms calling for language and literacy integrated science instruction, research is just beginning to address how to prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach science to ELs. Using a framework highlighting key structural and…

This case study explores the integration of children's literature in science education, with a focus on engaging preservice teachers in a science methods course to select, locate, design, and implement the integration of children's literature in their instructional practices. Sixty-four elementary preservice teachers in an initial teacher…

Algebra holds an important role in school mathematics, and teachers must recognize the broad range of algebraic ideas and develop a deep understanding of these concepts to teach algebra conceptually. This study aims to investigate two pre-service middle school mathematics teachers' (PSTs) conceptualization of algebraic thinking before and after…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate early childhood preservice teachers' perceptions of computer science and gender stereotypes in computer science, and perceptions of coding in early childhood education. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from early childhood preservice teachers enrolled in a teaching methods…

Engaging in productive struggle--grappling with challenging problems--is conducive to understanding mathematics. This paper examines five pre-service teachers as they learned to engage English language learners in productive struggle. The context of this descriptive case study was an elementary mathematics methods course in the Northeastern United…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate preservice elementary teachers' science teacher identity development during their participation in the field-based science methods course and a year after. Grounded within the Feiman-Nemser's thematic framework of learning to teach, this study utilized a case study approach aimed to examine…

Music education method courses include pedagogical content essential for successful classroom instruction. Preservice music educators, however, have expressed concerns with their method course experiences. Researchers have found that modeling, peer teaching experiences, various forms of feedback, and video recordings can help improve…

This study was designed to explore nonstring specialists' comfort teaching students in string ensembles. Comfort was defined as an individual's ease when teaching the subject matter. Data were gathered, using a 7-point Likert-type scale related to 15 string topics administered through a researcher-developed study. Participants ("N" =…

Reading intervention sessions are most effective when students are engaged. Combined interventions that target both reading and engagement may produce stronger outcomes in both domains than separate interventions for each goal. They also have advantages of being efficient, thus requiring fewer resources. However, planning and executing combined…

Reading intervention sessions are most effective when students are engaged. Combined interventions that target both reading and engagement may produce stronger outcomes in both domains than separate interventions for each goal. They also have advantages of being efficient, thus requiring fewer resources. However, planning and executing combined…

This case study explored pre-service teachers' (PSTs) efforts to consider the integration of digital technology as they learned to use their developing TPACK to plan literacy instruction. PSTs were introduced to the Technology Integration Planning Cycle (TIPC; Hutchison & Woodward, 2014) to support their learning. They observed modeling of the…