Selecting and using effective instructional strategies is a challenge facing those involved with preservice teacher education. Two instructional strategies with emerging empirical support include WebQuests and Case Method Instruction; however, both have limitations. This study examined the effects of using a CaseQuest--a hybrid of WebQuests and…

Few educational issues have received more attention in recent times than the problem of ensuring that the U.S.'s elementary and secondary classrooms are all staffed with quality teachers. Although ensuring that the nation's classrooms are all staffed with quality teachers is a perennially important issue in schools, it is also among the most…

This article presents a descriptive case study on the first experience moving a required teacher preparation instructional technology course from the university classroom into an elementary school setting. The key motivation was to help future teachers become more adept at integrating technology into their practice by learning about commonly used…

This paper reports on the Digital Historical Inquiry Project, an initiative for developing activities and programs that enable preservice and inservice social studies teachers to learn the methods of digital historical inquiry and implement those methods in their teaching experiences. At one of the project sites, San Diego State University social…

This article chronicles the efforts of one college faculty and their school partners to respond to the contemporary challenges faced by teacher education. It depicts the authors' journey through the planning and implementation of an innovative initial certification master's of arts in teaching (MAT) program in elementary education in the…

There is a tremendous gap in the research of the moral and ethical dimensions of teacher dispositions. Teacher dispositions need to be reviewed, re-evaluated and constructed with a plan in mind to accommodate what we, as educators, now know about the legitimate and unique differences in learning at every age. The purpose of this research was to…

This study has two parallel research agenda: (1) the development of social skills and pedagogical content knowledge in teacher candidates as they work collaboratively in pairs, and (2) the development of conceptual understanding and social skills in elementary school students who are taught by teacher candidates with cooperative learning…

Training preservice teachers to develop a predisposition toward constructivist instruction is a major goal for many faculty in teacher education. One critical attribute of a constructivist teacher is a strong hold on pedagogical content knowledge. This study examined the prior knowledge of preservice science teachers and how that knowledge aligned…

Inverness Research studied the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Seminars on Science program for eight years, from its inception in 1998 to 2006. This paper presents teacher survey ratings for "The Ocean System", along with profiles of three teachers who took the course. Course takers report on the annual follow-up surveys that…

Inverness Research studied the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Seminars on Science program for eight years, from its inception in 1998 to 2006. In 2008, Inverness Research conducted additional studies of the AMNH's new online course, "Evolution". This paper presents teacher survey ratings for "Evolution", along with…

This publication updates information from prior surveys of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the areas of: teacher licensure standards, standards boards, emergency or shortage-driven licensure, alternative preparation, minority teacher recruitment, state response to violence in classrooms, and linkages between efforts towards K-12…

The qualitative inquiry reported here describes the particular sociocultural aspects of an urban elementary school serving as the context for an award-winning reading/language arts early field experience, and takes a close look at how the sociocultural factors of this urban elementary school contribute to the professional development of the…

This paper argues that the reluctance on the part of university teacher educators to engage in thorough self-study, frequently a feature of accreditation processes, is inhibiting teacher education reform because the self-study can be a significant means to improve teacher education. Reluctance resides, in part, in the distinction between academic…

An analysis of a student teacher's lesson in multiplication for Norwegian second graders explored why the lesson did not succeed. Two interpretive frameworks were used to analyze the lesson: teaching as a complex cognitive activity and teaching as improvisation. The student teacher, Marte, believed in child-centered education and tried to create…

This collection of materials was gathered as part of a project to develop and implement a faculty training institute for early intervention personnel in 12 states in the Northeast. The project's emphasis was to train interdisciplinary faculty to infuse basic early intervention content into existing course work, develop new course work or modify…