Supporting Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Critique and Adaptation of Science Lesson Plans Using Educative Curriculum Materials

Critiquing and adapting curriculum materials are essential teaching practices but challenging for many preservice teachers. This study explores the use of educative curriculum materials—materials intended to support both teacher and student learning—to help preservice elementary teachers develop their pedagogical design capacity for critiquing and adapting lessons. Preservice teachers received educative supports highlighting pedagogical principles and rationales for those principles. When provided with educative supports, most individuals attended to the principles targeted in the supports, engaged in an in-depth analysis with regard to the principles, and used the rationales from the supports to justify their analyses. However, few continued to do so in subsequent analyses when they no longer received support. Implications for science teacher education and curriculum design are discussed.     

Exploring Postcolonial and Feminist Issues: Rabbit‐Proof Fence in a Teaching Context

The discussion in this article focuses on representations in Doris Pilkington's Rabbit‐Proof Fence of trauma and reparation, and reflects on processes and strategies involved in teaching undergraduate students about these issues within literary contexts. The article discusses the practice of introducing students to new texts and areas of study, and demonstrates the positive learning outcomes deriving from inclusion of non‐canonical material linked to feminist and postcolonial theoretical and critical discussions. An earlier version of this paper, entitled ‘Rabbit‐Proof Fence: Text and Film’, was given at the Contemporary Women's Writing Network Inaugural Conference, ‘For Love or Money: Contemporary Women's Fiction in the Marketplace’, University of Bangor, April 2006.