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Teacher Education and Professional Development
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
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Full-Text Articles in Education
Reforming Elementary Science Teacher Preparation: What About Extant Teaching Beliefs?, Julie A. Thomas, Jon E. Pedersen
Reforming Elementary Science Teacher Preparation: What About Extant Teaching Beliefs?, Julie A. Thomas, Jon E. Pedersen
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
A common maxim in the educational profession is that one teaches the way one is taught. Indications are that preservice teachers' beliefs, attitudes, and practices may be linked to previous experiences. Calderhead and Robson (1991) underscored this concern by asserting that teachers use good teachers as models for developing their own images as teachers. Others have argued that the images held by teachers are used as frames of reference for their own teaching practices. In this article, preservice teachers' perceptions of themselves as science teachers are examined. The assertion is made that a long history of stereotypical science learning experiences—in …
Claiming Opportunities: A Handbook For Improving Education For English Language Learners Through Comprehensive School Reform, Maria Coady, Edmund T. Hamann, Margaret Harrington, Maria Pacheco, Samboeun Pho, Jane Yedlin
Claiming Opportunities: A Handbook For Improving Education For English Language Learners Through Comprehensive School Reform, Maria Coady, Edmund T. Hamann, Margaret Harrington, Maria Pacheco, Samboeun Pho, Jane Yedlin
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
For the last decade, the national comprehensive school reform movement has been a focus of efforts to make public education accessible and effective for all students. Comprehensive reform strives to improve schooling for all children through integrated, well-aligned, school- wide changes in instruction, assessment, curriculum, classroom management, school governance, professional development, technical assistance, and community participation. As a sign of its continuing support for comprehensive school reform, Congress formally incorporated the Comprehensive School Reform program (CSR) into the Elementary and Secondary Act (No Child Left Behind, or NCLB) of 2001.
The last decade has also seen a dramatic increase in …
The Call To Play, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta, Karl Hostetler
The Call To Play, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta, Karl Hostetler
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
This article explores the nature of play and its presence and potential in teaching and learning encounters. Play is portrayed as a movement that can characterize the process of learning and teachers’ reflections on their practice. The exercise of techne and phronesis are found to be key but problematic elements in this movement. The paper is in the form of a conversation, a medium calling the authors themselves to play with the play that might occur in classrooms. Thus, the authors’ play is itself a subject for inquiry. Their interplay warrants considering play to be an elemental activity for reconceptualizing …
Reflections On The Field: Imagining The Future Of The Anthropology Of Education If We Take Laura Nader Seriously, Edmund T. Hamann
Reflections On The Field: Imagining The Future Of The Anthropology Of Education If We Take Laura Nader Seriously, Edmund T. Hamann
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
The large corpus of scholarship of cultural anthropologist Laura Nader is relevant to the contemporary practice of the anthropology of education. In particular, her work is relevant to contemporary debates about methodology and what constitutes “scientifically based” education research; to the prospect and need for more cross-fertilization within the discipline of anthropology; and for the proud assertion of anthropology’s distinctive suitability for understanding and responding to many contemporary educational challenges, including how to have anthropologically derived insights more favorably compete in the “marketplace of ideas” against less empirically grounded claims and strategies.
Standards For Science Teacher Preparation, National Science Teachers Association
Standards For Science Teacher Preparation, National Science Teachers Association
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
Any project intending to write education standards for national dissemination and implementation is immediately confronted with the fact that education is a state function, and that the fifty states, plus Puerto Rico, each have their own ideas about what should be taught to their children. Education, unlike many professions, is a highly political act: parents and guardians are concerned about what their children are taught; and various stakeholders have their own ideas about what constitutes a good education. Whether or not they are directly engaged in setting standards, they want to know why a particular set of standards has been …
Falling Into It: Novice Tesol Teacher Thinking, Mark K. Warford, Jenelle Reeves
Falling Into It: Novice Tesol Teacher Thinking, Mark K. Warford, Jenelle Reeves
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
The authors conducted a qualitative study in order to understand the preconceptions novice TESOL teachers might have about teaching English language. Long interviews were conducted with nine students (six native English Speakers and three non-native speakers (NNS)) enrolled in one of two courses offered in a TESOL teacher education program. None of the participants had experience as an in-service teacher. Inductive analysis of tape transcripts suggested the presence of several conceptual themes discussed in the teacher thinking literature. Findings suggest that novice TESOL teachers, like their more experienced counterparts, have a system of metaphors to conceptualize teaching. The apprenticeship of …
The Risk Of Intelligent Design, Lawrence C. Scharmann
The Risk Of Intelligent Design, Lawrence C. Scharmann
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
Alternative explanations to evolution are very popular these days. An articulate advocacy exists for the Intelligent Design (ID) theory, led nationally by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and academicians like Michael Behe (1996), Phillip Johnson (1997), and William Dembski (1998). In many U.S. communities science teachers are besieged with requests by local boards of education to include ID and evidence against evolution. Whether national or local, those representing the latest attacks on biological evolution demand such alternatives out of fairness, for religious reasons, or to protect a basic freedom of choice. The motives of individuals making these demands notwithstanding, the consequences …
Ethnic Identity In Transition: Chinese New Year Through The Years, Elaine Chan
Ethnic Identity In Transition: Chinese New Year Through The Years, Elaine Chan
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
Multiculturalism has been identified as the key educational issue of the epoch. However, despite studies acknowledging the importance of multiculturalism and multilingualism in school contexts and research that attests to the importance of teachers learning about individual students’ experiences of culture rather than generalizing knowledge about culture groups to individual students, there exists only a small, and mostly recent, literature examining ethnic identity experientially. In the spirit of work done by Phillion (1999, 2002), He (1998, 2002a, b), and Hoffman (1989) examining the complexities of factors shaping a sense of ethnic identity, I examine here the experiences of first-generation Chinese …
Constructivism: Defense Or A Continual Critical Appraisal – A Response To Gil-Pérez Et Al., Mansoor Niaz, Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, Alicia Benarroch, Liberato Cardellini, Carlos E. Laburu, NicoláS Marín, Luis A. Montes, Robert Nola, Yuri Orlik, Lawrence C. Scharmann, Chin-Chung Tsai, Georgios Tsaparlis
Constructivism: Defense Or A Continual Critical Appraisal – A Response To Gil-Pérez Et Al., Mansoor Niaz, Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, Alicia Benarroch, Liberato Cardellini, Carlos E. Laburu, NicoláS Marín, Luis A. Montes, Robert Nola, Yuri Orlik, Lawrence C. Scharmann, Chin-Chung Tsai, Georgios Tsaparlis
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
Abstract. This commentary is a critical appraisal of Gil-Pérez et al.’s (2002) conceptualization of constructivism. It is argued that the following aspects of their presentation are problematic: (a) Although the role of controversy is recognized, the authors implicitly subscribe to a Kuhnian perspective of ‘normal’ science; (b) Authors fail to recognize the importance of von Glasersfeld’s contribution to the understanding of constructivism in science education; (c) The fact that it is not possible to implement a constructivist pedagogy without a constructivist epistemology has been ignored; and (d) Failure to recognize that the metaphor of the ‘student as a developing scientist’ …
Preservice Elementary School Teachers’ Understandings Of Theory Based Science Education, Edmund A. Marek, Timothy A. Laubach, Jon Pedersen
Preservice Elementary School Teachers’ Understandings Of Theory Based Science Education, Edmund A. Marek, Timothy A. Laubach, Jon Pedersen
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications
Undergirding the science education program examined in this study is a theoretical foundation based upon four cornerstones that reflect scientific inquiry. These four cornerstones are best represented by four key questions: (a) What is science; (b) What are the goals or standards for elementary school science education; (c) What theory describes how elementary school children construct knowledge; and (d) What teaching approach represents the discipline of science, achieves the goals of elementary school science education and accommodates to how children construct knowledge? The learning cycle (Barman & Kotar, 1989; Bentley, Ebert,& Ebert II, 2000; Lawson, Abraham, & Renner, 1989; Marek …