This study examined preservice teachers' understanding of the syntactic structures of inquiry; in particular, what it means to give priority to evidence and how to use evidence to construct explanations. Data were collected from student journals, the course syllabus, the assignment description, and weekly lesson plans. The use of content analysis…

This article explores one element of collaborative practice: the integration of English language learner-focused instruction and discussion in a secondary English methods course. Drawing on the authors' expertise, they examine revisions made to a secondary English methods course to better address the academic and individual needs of diverse…

Training and investing teachers at all career levels in student-centered practices is widely recognized as a significant challenge. Various studies document the failure of student-centered teaching practices to take hold in K-12 mathematics classrooms in significant ways, including collaborative work; problems that are cognitively demanding or…

This paper examines how Lesson Study (Lewis, 2002) was used in an elementary mathematics methods course held at a Professional Development School and intended to support pre-service teachers to become reflective practitioners while working alongside clinical faculty. Attention is given to detailing the features of Lesson Study that situates the…

Purpose: Although teacher educators have worked on improving pre-service teachers' diversity awareness, researchers still face the challenge of pursuing a better approach to achieve the goal. In an era when educators are calling for evidence-based practice, the purpose of this paper is to explore various ways in which both teacher-education…

The majority of the teacher candidates in my methods classes come from a background that is different from the primarily African American students at my professional development school. Because these teacher candidates continue to be predominantly White middle-class females, the gap between their cultural comfort zone and their students' cultural…

Curriculum analysis, modification, and enactment are core components of teacher practice. Beginning teachers rely heavily on curriculum materials that are often of poor quality to guide their practice. As a result, we argue that preservice teachers need to learn how to use curriculum materials for effective teaching. To address this concern, the…

The study discusses the professional identity and aspects of professional development of Clinical Faculty Teacher Educators (CFTEs) teaching methods courses in a College of Education during a time of change. The above aspects were revealed while analyzing data collected to evaluate an in-service professional development course for CFTEs. Data…

This study has resulted in an elementary science methods course that facilitates the identification and description of the changes in students' conceptions and understanding of inquiry teaching, and the cultural influences, reflections, and situational factors influencing these changes. Written responses to open-ended questions, reflective…

This self-study examined the 1st-year science teacher educator's integration of instructional technology into a science methods course and modeled the reflective practice of her own teaching. Elementary science methods students participated in a series of inquiry-based activities that utilized various instructional technologies. Data sources…

The Vietnamese curriculum reform which trends toward a student-centered approach requires Vietnamese teacher educators to prepare student teachers for teaching using this approach. In this article, we present a case study of three Vietnamese student teachers working in groups in a methods course to explore Freudenthal's theory of realistic…

The author describes a teaching model designed to enable the methods teacher to exemplify the behavior of a successful teacher. (MM)

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to analyze enabling factors in the technology integration change process in a multi-section science methods course, SCIED 408 (pseudonym), from 1997 to 2003 at a large northeastern university in the United States. We used two major data collection methods, in-depth interviewing and document reviews.…

This case study of three teacher education programs in California colleges aimed to answer two questions through informal interviews of methods course instructors and analysis of the associated course syllabi: First, what assumptions or theories of professional development appear to inform the various methods courses for preservice secondary…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of peer-generated feedback versus visual feedback in inspiring preservice physical education teachers to produce reflections that are more critical than technical. The participants were junior-, senior-, and graduate-level health and physical education majors enrolled in an instructional…