Breaking Conventions to Support Quantitative Reasoning

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin C. Moore ◽  
Jason Silverman ◽  
Teo Paoletti ◽  
Kevin LaForest
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Secondary Mathematics ◽  
Quantitative Reasoning ◽  
Central Function ◽  
Reasoning Abilities ◽  
Function Concepts ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Sustained Success

Quantitative reasoning is critical to developing understandings of function that are important for sustained success in mathematics. Unfortunately, preservice teachers often do not receive sufficient quantitative reasoning experiences during their schooling. In this paper, we illustrate consequences of underdeveloped quantitative reasoning abilities against the backdrop of central function concepts. We also illustrate tasks that can perturb preservice teachers' thinking in ways that produce opportunities for quantitative reasoning. By implementing strategically designed tasks, teacher educators can support preservice teachers–and students in general–in advancing their quantitative reasoning abilities and their understanding of secondary mathematics content.

Supporting Preservice Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Professional Judgment Around Digital Technology Use

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Charmaine Mangram ◽  
Kathy Liu Sun
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Mathematical Thinking ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Secondary Mathematics ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
Professional Judgment ◽  
Mathematics Methods

The pervasiveness of digital technology creates an imperative for mathematics teacher educators to prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to select technology to support students’ mathematical development. We report on research conducted on an assignment created for and implemented in secondary mathematics methods courses requiring PSTs to select and evaluate digital mathematics tools. We found that PSTs primarily focused on pedagogical fidelity (ease of use), did not consider mathematical fidelity (accuracy), and at times superficially attended to cognitive fidelity (how well the tool reflects students’ mathematical thinking processes) operationalized as the CCSS for Mathematical Practice and Five Strands of Mathematical Proficiency. We discuss implications for implementing the assignment and suggestions for addressing PSTs’ challenges with identifying the mathematical practices and five strands.

Incorporating Information Literacy into Instructional Design within Pre-Service Teacher Programs

2014 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Lesley S. J. Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Instructional Practice ◽  
Central Function ◽  
Instructional Role ◽  
Pre Service Teacher ◽  
Information And Technology ◽  
Instructional Partners

As information and technology increase, the need for help in accessing, evaluating, and using information efficiently rises. Preservice teachers need information literacy for their own study, instructional practice, and as a set of skills to teach PK-12 students. Librarians are uniquely trained and experienced in this arena, so their instructional role has the potential to serve as a central function in teacher preparation. In reality, educator librarians collaborate on several levels; ideally, they are instructional partners with teacher educators. As information and technology increase, the need for help in accessing, evaluating, and using information efficiently rises. Preservice teachers need information literacy for their own study, instructional practice, and as a set of skills to teach PK-12 students. Librarians are uniquely trained and experienced in this arena, so their instructional role has the potential to serve as a central function in teacher preparation. In reality, educator librarians collaborate on several levels; ideally, they are instructional partners with teacher educators.

Incorporating Information Literacy into Instructional Design within Pre-Service Teacher Programs

2016 ◽  
pp. 336-353
Author(s):  
Lesley S. J. Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Instructional Design ◽  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Instructional Practice ◽  
Central Function ◽  
Instructional Role ◽  
Pre Service Teacher ◽  
Information And Technology

As information and technology increase, the need for help in accessing, evaluating, and using information efficiently rises. Preservice teachers need information literacy for their own study, instructional practice, and as a set of skills to teach PK-12 students. Librarians are uniquely trained and experienced in this arena, so their instructional role has the potential to serve as a central function in teacher preparation. In reality, educator librarians collaborate on several levels; ideally, they are instructional partners with teacher educators.

The Three-Minute-Rehearsal Cycle of Enactment and Investigation: Preservice Secondary Mathematics Teachers Learning to Elicit and Use Evidence of Student Thinking

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-48
Author(s):  
Fran Arbaugh ◽  
Duanne Graysay ◽  
Nursen Konuk ◽  
Ben Freeburn
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Mathematics Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Secondary Mathematics ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Learning To Teach ◽  
Student Thinking ◽  
National Council ◽  
Design Learning ◽  
The Impact

In the last decade, mathematics teacher educators have begun to design learning opportunities for preservice mathematics teachers using a pedagogies-of-practice perspective. In particular, learning cycles provide a structure for engaging PSTs in learning to teach through the use of representations, approximations, and decompositions of practice (Grossman et al., 2009). In this article, we provide details of one learning cycle designed to support secondary mathematics preservice teachers' learning to elicit and use evidence of student thinking and pose purposeful questions (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2014). Through qualitative analyses conducted on learning reflections, we provide evidence of the impact on engagement of this cycle through the lens of the Framework for Learning to Teach (Hammerness et al., 2005).

Pushing the Boundaries from the Inside

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Colleen Conway ◽  
Shannan Hibbard
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Adaptive Expertise ◽  
Music Teacher Education ◽  
Classroom Relationships ◽  
School Based

This chapter situates the study of music teacher education within the larger body of music education and teacher education research. It problematizes the terms teacher training, teacher education, and best practice and introduces the concept of teaching as an “impossible profession.” Goals of teacher education, including reflective practice and adaptive expertise, are discussed. The chapter outlines the challenges that music teacher educators face as they try to prepare preservice teachers for the realities of P-12 school-based music education while instilling in these new colleagues a disposition toward change. It concludes with narratives that examine teachers’ descriptions of classroom relationships throughout the lens of presence in teaching as a way to remind teacher educators of the importance of their work to push the boundaries of music teacher education in order to serve the profession at large.

Music Teacher Education Program Practices: Preparing Teachers to Work With Diverse Learners

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Mara E. Culp ◽  
Karen Salvador
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Diverse Learners ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Music Teacher Education ◽  
Education Programs

Music educators must meet the needs of students with diverse characteristics, including but not limited to cultural backgrounds, musical abilities and interests, and physical, behavioral, social, and cognitive functioning. Music education programs may not systematically prepare preservice teachers or potential music teacher educators for this reality. The purpose of this study was to examine how music teacher education programs prepare undergraduate and graduate students to structure inclusive and responsive experiences for diverse learners. We replicated and expanded Salvador’s study by including graduate student preparation, incorporating additional facets of human diversity, and contacting all institutions accredited by National Association of Schools of Music to prepare music educators. According to our respondents, integrated instruction focused on diverse learners was more commonly part of undergraduate coursework than graduate coursework. We used quantitative and qualitative analysis to describe course offerings and content integration.

Enhancing Environmental Experiences through Effective Partnerships among Teacher Educators, Field Study Centers, and Schools

1995 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Ferry
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
New South ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Education For All ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Tertiary Institutions ◽  
South Wales

Few teacher educators would dispute that preservice teachers benefit from active participation in planning, implementing, and evaluating experiential learning activities in natural environments. Such experiences help them to understand how environmental education can be successfully woven into a teaching program rather than just an added “frill” presented in isolation. However, it is difficult to find efficient ways of organising these experiences in tertiary institutions. This paper discusses a partnership formed among teacher educators, schools, and field study centers in New South Wales, Australia. It was devised to enhance the experiences in environmental education for all participants, and at the same time make efficient use of human resources.

Rhetorically speaking: on white preservice teachers’ failure to imagine an anti-racist English education

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
S.R. Toliver ◽  
Heidi Hadley
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
English Education ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
Content Type

Purpose This paper aims to identify how white preservice teachers’ inability to imagine an equitable space for Black and Brown children contributes to the ubiquity of whiteness in English education. Further, the authors contend that the preservice teachers’ responses mirror how the larger field of English education fails to imagine Black and Brown life. Design/methodology/approach Using abolitionist teaching as a guide, the authors use reflexive thematic analysis to examine the rhetorical moves their preservice teachers made to defer responsibility for anti-racist teaching. Findings The findings show preservice teachers’ rhetorical moves across three themes: failure to imagine Black and Brown humanity, failure to imagine a connection between theory and practice, and failure to imagine curriculum and schooling beyond whiteness. Originality/value By highlighting how preservice teachers fail to imagine spaces for Black and Brown youth, this study offers another pathway through which teacher educators, teachers and English education programs can assist their faculty and students in activating their imaginations in the pursuit of anti-racist, abolitionist teaching.

Equitable Teaching and the Core Practice Movement: Preservice Teachers’ Professional Reasoning

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Britnie Delinger Kane
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Student Teacher ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Student Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Collaborative Analysis ◽  
Core Practice

Background/Context The Core Practice movement continues to gain momentum in teacher education research. Yet critics highlight that equitable teaching cannot be reduced to a set of “core” practices, arguing that such a reduction risks representing teaching as technical work that will be neither culturally responsive nor sustaining. Instead, they argue that preservice teachers need opportunities to develop professional reasoning that takes the specific strengths and needs of students, communities, and subject matter into account. Purpose This analysis takes up the question of how and whether pedagogies of investigation and enactment can support preservice teachers’ development of the professional reasoning that equitable teaching requires. It conceptualizes two types of professional reasoning: interpretive, in which reasoners decide how to frame instructional problems and make subsequent efforts to solve them, and prescriptive, in which reasoners solve an instructional problem as given. Research Design This work is a qualitative, multiple case study, based on design research in which preservice teachers participated in three different cycles of investigation and enactment, which were designed around a teaching practice central to equitable teaching: making student thinking visible. Preservice teachers attended to students’ thinking in the context of the collaborative analysis of students’ writing and also through designed simulations of student-teacher writing conferences. Findings/Results Preservice teachers’ collaborative analysis of students’ writing supported prescriptive professional reasoning about disciplinary ideas in ELA and writing instruction (i.e., How do seventh graders use hyperbole? How is hyperbole related to the Six Traits of Writing?), while the simulation of a writing conference supported preservice teachers to reason interpretively about how to balance the need to support students’ affective commitment to writing with their desire to teach academic concepts about writing. Conclusions/Recommendations This analysis highlights an important heuristic for the design of pedagogies in teacher education: Teacher educators need to attend to preservice teachers’ opportunities for both interpretive and prescriptive reasoning. Both are essential for teachers, but only interpretive reasoning will support teachers to teach in ways that are both intellectually rigorous and equitable. The article further describes how and why a tempting assumption—that opportunities to role-play student-teacher interactions will support preservice teachers to reason interpretively, while non-interactive work will not—is incomplete and avoidable.

scholarly journals Evidence-informed teaching and practice-informed research

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 199-208
Author(s):  
Leila E. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Epistemic Cognition ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Roles Of Teacher ◽  
Do So

Abstract. In this commentary, I seek to join the ongoing conversation about evidence-informed educational practice that has been threaded through this special issue. I do so by drawing on related insights from the fields of teachers' beliefs and epistemic cognition and considering the roles of teacher education and educational research in improving (preservice) teachers' use of educational research. In particular, I focus on the merits of explicit research-based practice in teacher educators' teaching and ways that they can encourage preservice teachers' interactions with educational research in class, and methods of changing the beliefs that may underlie (preservice) teachers' engagement with educational research evidence, and finally, the need for clearly communicated research, including details of implementation.

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