Dispositions Supporting Elementary Interns in the Teaching of Reform-Based Science Materials

Dispositions supporting the teaching of science as structured inquiry by four elementary candidates are presented. Candidates were studied during student teaching based on their positive attitudes toward teaching science with reform-based materials in their methods course. Personal learning histories informed their attitudes, values, and beliefs about the teaching and learning of science through structured inquiry. Supportive dispositions included curiosity and questioning, investigating first-hand, learning together, and active learning. These dispositions supported early science teaching despite candidates limited science content knowledge, and may contribute to candidates’ further learning of science.     

Characteristics of male elementary teachers in the U.S.A., at teacher education program entry and exit

This article reports on two studies that describe the status of male elementary preservice and inservice teachers. One study looked at entering teacher candidates, describing differences between males entering elementary education and other teacher candidates, at three universities in the U.S.A. (n = 936), with three sets of variables: (1) high school background, (2) self-confidence in teaching, and (3) expectations for teacher education. The second study looked at practicing male elementary school teachers who were recent graduates of teacher education programs at 12 different universities (n = 1098), with three sets of variables: (1) career status, (2) ratings of teacher education program quality, and (3) self-evaluation of teaching knowledge and skills. Male elementary candidates were less academically oriented, more self-confident about teaching, and less optimistic about usefulness of courses than other subgroups of entering teacher candidates. Male elementary teachers had lower job satisfaction and less favorable opinions of their teacher education programs than other subgroups of teachers, but were just as sanguine about their level of teaching skill as were the other groups.     

Elementary students as active agents in their learning: an empirical study of the connections between assessment practices and student metacognition

This study explored how elementary teachers leveraged and structured student-involved formative assessment to promote metacognition and self-regulation. Research has suggested a connection between formative assessment practices (e.g., self-assessment and peer-assessment) and metacognition. However, this connection has limited empirical support, especially within early elementary contexts (i.e. Grades K-4). In this study, 44 Ontario elementary teachers completed a survey reporting their teaching and assessment practices and beliefs about metacognition. Five participants were then purposefully selected for semi-structured interviews to describe their experiences developing students’ metacognition and self-regulatory capabilities through student-involved assessment processes. Data were inductively and thematically analysed. Participants emphasized the value of assessment as learning practices (e.g., self-assessment and reflective thinking) to develop students’ metacognition and discussed the need for ongoing student feedback regarding metacognitive strategies. However, despite purposefully implementing formative assessment to enhance metacognition and self-regulation, participants articulated the need for additional resources to support the cultural shift towards assessment for and as learning within their classrooms.     

Teacher Candidates' Perceptions About Grading and Constructivist Teaching

The Survey of Assessment Beliefs (SAB) was developed to measure teacher candidates' perceptions about grading practices. After piloting, the SAB was administered to 222 teacher candidates at a large northeastern urban university, along with a measure of their beliefs about teaching. Candidates were found to support many grading practices not recommended by professional standards. Support for grading practices that deviate from professional recommendations was positively associated with support for constructivist approaches. Significant differences were found in grading and teaching attitudes between elementary and secondary education teacher candidates. Teacher candidates became more moderate in endorsing nonstandard grading practices following coursework in classroom assessment but on average maintained a tendency to approve academically enabling grading practices. This study provides empirical evidence about possible areas of tension between constructivist learning theory and principles of educational measurement, and it helps classroom assessment teachers understand the needs of their target audiences.     

Teachers’ perceptions of effective teaching: a comparative study of elementary school teachers from China and the USA

This international study investigated Chinese and American elementary school teachers’ perceptions of effective teaching. The sample comprised Chinese (n?=?108) and US (n?=?110) participating teachers. The Effective Teaching Quality Survey (ETQS) was adopted for this comparative education research, an instrument that operationalized Stronge’s effective teaching theoretical framework. Research questions that guided this study were as follows: (1) what are the differences between the USA and China’s elementary school teachers’ perceptions regarding effective teaching? And (2) when comparing teaching experience, school location, and effective/ineffective teachers, what are the differences between the USA and China’s elementary school teachers’ perceptions on effective teaching? Statistically significant results were found when comparing nationality, teaching experience, school location, and effective/ineffective teaching. How these results related to the US and Chinese educational contexts with respect teaching and learning are discussed.     

Developing Practical Knowledge of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Next Generation Science Standards</Emphasis> in Elementary Science Teacher Education

Just as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSSs) call for change in what students learn and how they are taught, teacher education programs must reconsider courses and curriculum in order to prepare teacher candidates to understand and implement new standards. In this study, we examine the development of prospective elementary teachers’ practical knowledge of the NGSS in the context of a science methods course and innovative field experience. We present three themes related to how prospective teachers viewed and utilized the standards: (a) as a useful guide for planning and designing instruction, (b) as a benchmark for student and self-evaluation, and (c) as an achievable vision for teaching and learning. Our findings emphasize the importance of collaborative opportunities for repeated teaching of the same lessons, but question what is achievable in the context of a semester-long experience.     

Examining Elementary Education Teacher Candidates’ Experiences Completing edTPA

Abstract

This study examined 388 elementary education teacher candidates (n?=?388) across four semesters in one educator preparation program about their experiences completing the performance-based assessment edTPA. Candidates were in one of three programs at a large, public research university in the Southeast region of the United States. These programs included: a general undergraduate elementary education program, an undergraduate elementary/special education dual licensure program, and a post baccalaureate graduate certificate in elementary school teaching program. Findings indicate that candidates across all three programs reached consensus on the five biggest challenges of edTPA. The challenges included: (1) deeper thinking for students; (2) identifying the language function of the lesson sequence; (3) including discourse in the lesson plans; (4) including the syntax supports in their lesson plans; and (5) making connections to research and theory. While all three groups of candidates identified these five challenges, the order and the extent to which they were a challenge varied by group. Further, candidates expressed disproportionate periods of time dedicated to edTPA during student teaching. Candidates in the graduate certificate in teaching program reported that they felt less prepared than undergraduate students in the other programs. Implications include examining how to best support candidates in all three programs to increase their likelihood of success on edTPA.     

Water can be messy, but that’s OK: reflections on preparing elementary teachers to teach science

Building on Christina Siry and Johaira Lara’s account of one teacher’s (Johaira’s) identity formation, we describe how our own experiences with elementary teacher candidates inform, and are informed by, this account. Chris and Johaira provide a lens that helps us consider how experiences in elementary science teacher preparation courses and in elementary classrooms impact the development of a teacher candidate’s identity as a teacher. The course taught by Chris was one in which teacher candidates encountered uncertainty and ambiguity in the teaching process. While uncertainty and ambiguity can be uncomfortable, we suggest that uncertainty and ambiguity can help teacher candidates view science teaching as a process of continuous inquiry. Concomitantly, working within a context marked by ambiguity and uncertainty can prompt teacher candidates to confront—and possibly transform—their own assumptions about students and science. We suggest that the account by Chris and Johaira illustrates the importance of providing teacher candidates with a set of experiences and theoretical tools to assist them in conceptualizing the possibilities of practice as they construct their identities as teachers.     

小学英语教学策略的探讨

本文针对小学生自身的特点，提出了在小学英语教学中，要了解小学英语教学类型；要以激发学生的学习兴趣为出发点，根据小学生的兴趣爱好选择教学内容、方法以厦教学手段；要建立以形成性为主的科学的教学评价体系。     

Preparing Elementary Pre-Service Teachers from a Non-Traditional Student Population to Teach with Technology

This article documents the development of a two-stage curriculum intended to improve elementary teacher candidates’ understanding of technology integration. Most students in the program came from low-income districts and lacked technology experience. The first stage of the curriculum consisted of a prerequisite basic technology skills course offered by the Computer Science Department. This was then followed by an online educational technology course offered by the College of Education. The objectives of the authors in this article are twofold. The first is to describe the rationale, procedures, and design of a two-stage curriculum, as a pedagogical model for teaching elementary teacher candidates to teach with technology, with the goal of preparing a new generation of teachers who are capable and comfortable applying a broad range of advanced technologies to meet the learning needs of their students. The second objective is to share the authors' findings from the evaluation, which employed mixed methodologies, after the students completed the online educational technology course. The results showed that an online educational technology course contributed to the candidates’ development of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and improved their attitudes and beliefs on their technology integration practices.     

Who is responsible for vulnerable pupils? The attitudes of teacher candidates in Serbia and Slovenia

In the ongoing trend towards inclusive education, initial teacher education programmes must ensure that prospective teachers are prepared to teach all pupils effectively. The study presented in this paper aimed to explore the attitudes of teacher candidates in Serbia and Slovenia towards responsibility for the teaching and learning of vulnerable pupils in mainstream elementary schools. Using a quantitative approach, the study sought to elicit teacher candidates’ views about division of responsibility for the academic achievement and additional support of vulnerable pupils and their views on the factors that most affect learning difficulties in those pupils. Our findings indicate that teacher candidates’ feelings of responsibility are unlikely to help when instructing vulnerable pupils. The implications of these findings are discussed and we suggest several ways to improve teacher education programmes to promote inclusive education based on the concept of quality education for all.     

Productive friction: How conflict in student teaching creates opportunities for learning at the boundary

Student teaching is contested ground for teacher candidates’ learning. Struggling to implement practises when expectations of university and schools are inconsistent, they experience conflicts between these two worlds. In this article, we conceptualise student teaching as a space where conflicts can be generative for candidates’ learning. We use the idea of productive friction—dissonance experienced by teacher candidates when two or more social worlds conflict that leads to more sophisticated practise—to consider student teaching as a potential boundary space that benefits from diverse perspectives. Drawing on ethnographic data, we contrast the cases of four candidates’ productive and unproductive friction during student teaching. Furthermore, we discuss the qualities of student teaching that can promote productive friction for learning.     

PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS’ CHALLENGES IN TEACHING REASONING-AND-PROVING

The activity of reasoning-and-proving is at the heart of mathematical sense making and is important for all students’ learning as early as the elementary grades. Yet, reasoning-and-proving tends to have a marginal place in elementary school classrooms. This situation can be partly attributed to the fact that many (prospective) elementary teachers have (1) weak mathematical (subject matter) knowledge about reasoning-and-proving and (2) counterproductive beliefs about its teaching. Following up on an intervention study that helped a group of prospective elementary teachers make significant progress in overcoming these two major obstacles to teaching reasoning-and-proving, we examined the challenges that three of them identified that they faced as they planned and taught lessons related to reasoning-and-proving in their mentor teachers’ classrooms. Our findings contribute to research knowledge about major factors (other than the well-known factors related to teachers’ mathematical knowledge and beliefs) that deserve attention by teacher education programs in preparing prospective teachers to teach reasoning-and-proving.     

Reconstructing elementary teacher candidates' understanding of mathematics and science content

This paper examines the mathematics and science content knowledge of elementary teacher candidates. Data are presented which demonstrate that many elementary teacher candidates enter teacher education seriously deficient in their understanding of the subject matter they will teach to elementary students. The authors argue that these candidates are weakly prepared in content because of deficiencies in the pedagogy practiced in traditional didactic mathematics and science courses. They describe a conceptual approach to teaching mathematics and science content and contrast this with a didactic approach. Data are presented which demonstrate that these conceptual approaches significantly improved novice teachers understanding of content.     

“Asking,Learning, Seeking Out”: An Exploration of Data Literacy for Teaching

Abstract

The current study explored preservice and inservice teachers’ perspectives on data literacy for teaching. Semi-structured interviews were employed with 12 teacher candidates in elementary and special education. The findings revealed participants’ misconceptions regarding formative and summative data; their understanding of the value of formative data; perceptions of challenges related to data literacy for teaching including time, making sense of data, and reliability and validity; and candidates’ preferences for authentic data literacy instruction.     

Manipulative Use and Elementary School Students’ Mathematics Learning

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) 1998/1999, we examine the relationship between elementary students’ (K–5) manipulative use and mathematics learning. Using a cross-sectional correlational analysis, we found no relationship between manipulative use and student mathematics achievement. However, using a longitudinal analysis, we documented a positive relationship between manipulative use and student mathematics learning during their elementary school years (K–5). From a teaching and learning perspective, these findings provide important evidence of the influence of long-term manipulative use on students’ overall learning. From policy and methodological perspectives, these findings provide evidence for the importance of modeling student learning (as opposed to achievement) when studying the effectiveness of instructional strategies.     

小学英语教学中实施学习策略教学的必要性研究

在大学英语教学中实施学习策略教学已被外语界所广泛认可。由于小学生认知能力有待完善、英语学习习惯尚不定型等特点,外语界对于在小学英语教学中实施英语学习策略教学还存在着分歧。文章在对小学生英语学习策略调查的基础上,探讨了在小学英语教学中实施学习策略教学的必要性,认为学习策略教学不仅能够帮助小学生形成良好的英语学习习惯,提高其英语学习能力,而且能丰富其语言学习策略理论。     

Learning by doing? Prospective elementary teachers' developing understandings of scientific inquiry and science teaching and learning

This study examined prospective elementary teachers' learning about scientific inquiry in the context of an innovative life science course. Research questions included: (1) What do prospective elementary teachers learn about scientific inquiry within the context of the course? and (2) In what ways do their experiences engaging in science investigations and teaching inquiry‐oriented science influence prospective elementary teachers' understanding of science and science learning and teaching? Eleven prospective elementary teachers participated in this qualitative, multi‐participant case study. Constant comparative analysis strategies attempted to build abstractions and explanations across participants around the constructs of the study. Findings suggest that engaging in scientific inquiry supported the development more appropriate understandings of science and scientific inquiry, and that prospective teachers became more accepting of approaches to teaching science that encourage children's questions about science phenomena. Implications include careful consideration of learning experiences crafted for prospective elementary teachers to support the development of robust subject matter knowledge.