The Texas A&M University System recently developed six quality standards for educator preparation programs, the Texas A&M Quality Standards for Educator Preparation, that are to be implemented and met by all system schools. These standards are: quality of selection of teacher candidates; quality of content knowledge and teaching methods;…

In this large-scale qualitative study, we use an emergent design to explore pre-service teachers' (PST) motivations to enter the profession. We open-code 2,798 PSTs responses to the directive, 'Explain why you decided to become a teacher', given over the course of a six-year period from one large Texas teacher preparation programme. Using constant…

K-12 educators' digital literacy skills have been designated as a national and state priority by education and accreditation agencies in Texas, resulting in the need for curriculum alignments to the 2017 ISTE Standards for Educators and implementation of a digital literacy evaluation. The purpose of this validation study was to develop a…

In this study, we describe a teacher educator's first experience implementing a service-learning project in a children's literature course in which pre-service teachers helped provide read-alouds for the local public library's summer reading program. We sought to examine the impact the project had on the seven participants. Data was collected…

The purpose of this study is to develop a module for teaching grammar through digital storytelling in the "Grammar Teaching" course of Turkish education undergraduate programs at universities. In this regard, observations on the use and implementation of digital storytelling in classes were made at the University of Houston in the United…

Heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) in the U.S. who seek certification as bilingual teachers must show Spanish language proficiency. The state of Texas requires candidates to pass the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) a test seen as a gatekeeping mechanism (Clark & Flores, 2002) in a field that presents chronic shortage of…

Teacher education has increasingly situated social justice as a critical outcome in their programs. One resource, the Social Justice Standards (SJS), has been identified as a guiding tool for supporting pre-service teachers (PSTs) to plan for and enact social justice-oriented practices in their teaching. Situated in the context of a rural teacher…

This study aims to determine a connection between the pre-service teachers' perception of preparedness and their self-efficacy in instructing students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The researcher was guided by three research questions: 1) What are preservice teachers' perceptions of their abilities to teach culturally and…

For students to fully understand the long-lasting consequences of responsible or irresponsible digital citizenship in the world of online personal and classroom learning, teachers and students need to formally engage with formal lessons on digital citizenship skills as we societally become more dependent on technology daily. Teacher attitudes on…

Generation Z individuals born between 1995-2012 currently represent 25% of the population and will soon exceed the Millennials as the largest generation (Dill, 2015). Thus, lack of practical knowledge and understanding may lead to employee turnover (Flippen, 2017). This study addresses how teacher education programs, cooperating teachers,…

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to investigate perceptions of the preparation strategies, practices, and supports for preservice teachers at a select HBCU to determine how the program prepares preservice teachers to educate culturally diverse K-12 students through culturally relevant pedagogy. This researcher examined data from…

As novice teachers gain experience, they are more efficacious and likely to overcome adversity. The more authentic, rigorous, and frequent the experience in preservice methods coursework, the better prepared candidates are to teach. We used a mixed methods, convergent, nested design to examine the Teacher Self-Efficacy (TSE) of 21 SBAE preservice…

Positioned in the context of experiential learning, this paper reports findings of a virtual reality field trip (VRFT) in conjunction with an in-person field trip involving preservice teachers in an elementary science methods course to a local natural history museum. Findings included that virtual reality (VR) is best used after a field trip to…

In order to promote effective learning, individuals must feel fully appreciated within their own unique identities (i.e., ethnicities, language differences, socioeconomic status, gender, religions). Culturally competent educators employ practices that acknowledge and build on cultural diversity and that identify students themselves as resources…

Pre-service teacher preparation in the United States is becoming progressively more challenging with respect to the demands on teachers. This study examined the impact of tutoring approach on pre-service teachers? skills to work with English language learners through a qualitative research design. Content analysis was used at the thematic level on…