The Amount of Science in the Preparation of Elementary School Teachers in the United States

1963 ◽  
Vol 63 (9) ◽  
pp. 755-762
Author(s):  
M. Ira Dubins ◽  
William D. Chamberlain
1973 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 397-399
Author(s):  
George W. Bright

At such time as the metric system is adopted as the measurement system in the United States, every American will develop some degree of bilingualism in the English and metric languages of measurement. The burden of encouraging this development will fall to a large extent on elementary school teachers, for they will have to confront the confusion of young children. But there are advantages that will accrue for those who learn to use the metric system. As teachers recognize these advantages and begin to exploit them, acceptance of the metric system will increase.


2010 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
pp. 1860-1863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sian L. Beilock ◽  
Elizabeth A. Gunderson ◽  
Gerardo Ramirez ◽  
Susan C. Levine

People’s fear and anxiety about doing math—over and above actual math ability—can be an impediment to their math achievement. We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers’ anxieties relate to girls’ math achievement via girls’ beliefs about who is good at math. First- and second-grade female teachers completed measures of math anxiety. The math achievement of the students in these teachers’ classrooms was also assessed. There was no relation between a teacher’s math anxiety and her students’ math achievement at the beginning of the school year. By the school year’s end, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls (but not boys) were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that “boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading” and the lower these girls’ math achievement. Indeed, by the end of the school year, girls who endorsed this stereotype had significantly worse math achievement than girls who did not and than boys overall. In early elementary school, where the teachers are almost all female, teachers’ math anxiety carries consequences for girls’ math achievement by influencing girls’ beliefs about who is good at math.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002205742199624
Author(s):  
Kurt Meader ◽  
Karen H. Larwin

There is a shortage of male elementary school teachers in the United States. Men who choose careers as elementary school teachers must be confident and ignore social barriers that keep other men from considering the profession. The current investigation seeks to understand the viewpoints of men who teach elementary school, a career predominated by women. This was the first known investigation on the topic using Q methodology. Data analysis extracted three distinct viewpoints: the Fixers, the Mentees, and the Aspirants. This study provides the results of data analysis, responds to research questions, and makes recommendations for policy. The findings of this study indicated that men who teach are proud to be role models and make a difference for students, and they believe that they are equally suitable to teach as women. Many participants seemed to be unaware of recruitment efforts in their field. The information gleaned from this study may help universities and school districts to seek new ways to attract quality male teachers.


Author(s):  
Jean Ngoc Boulware ◽  
Brenda Huskey ◽  
Heather Harden Mangelsdorf ◽  
Howard C. Nusbaum

Aims: School teachers have hundreds of spontaneous interactions with students each hour, requiring frequent decision-making. Often these interactions require social understanding and emotional self-regulation, two constructs often identified with wisdom and mindfulness.  Increasing mindfulness could aid wiser management of classroom demands. The present study evaluated effects of an online mindfulness course on measured wisdom in a sample of public elementary school teachers. Study Design: This study used a pretest posttest design using data collected immediately before taking the online mindfulness course and after completion of the course. End of the school year follow-up data was analyzed for all teachers. Place and Duration of Study: Participants were enrolled from multiple cities across the United States including Boston, Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, and San Diego between June 2014 and June 2015. Data were collected online and analyzed at the University of Chicago. Methodology: Public elementary school teachers (n = 12) were assigned to a mindfulness training or a matched wait-list condition (11 female, 1 male; age range 26 – 57 years). Teachers had a range of teaching experiences from 1 to 36 years (median =18 years) and taught grades K-4 at schools with 30% - 50% Caucasian students with 40%-60% students receiving free and reduced-price lunches. We used standardized measures for mindfulness, wisdom, emotion regulation, compassion, theory of mind, state/trait anxiety, stress, burnout, and efficacy. Results: Online mindfulness training produced a significant increase in mindful awareness and changes in cognitive wisdom implying increased understanding of inter/intrapersonal concerns. There was a significant increase in mindful attention in those who completed both pre- and post-class online evaluations (n = 10) solicited by Mindful Schools (t (9) = 2.738, p = .02) from 54.3 to 59.9 following training (ΔM= 5.6, SD = 6.5). Wisdom, measured with Ardelt’s Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (n =12), demonstrated a significant change increase in the cognitive dimension of wisdom (t(11) = 2.39, p =.03) with a non-significant increase in the affective dimension (t(11) =1.38, p =.19) and a non-significant reduction in the reflective dimension of wisdom (t(11) =.96, p = .35) following mindfulness training. Conclusion:  Online mindfulness training may help develop wise decision making as a skill for teachers to aid classroom management and social problem solving.


2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 480-484
Author(s):  
Tamela Randolph ◽  
Helene Sherman

An algorithm is “a finite, step-by-step procedure for accomplishing a task that we wish to complete” (Usiskin 1998, p. 7). Algorithms have served as a major focus of mathematics education in the United States for decades. Because school-based mathematics focuses on computation and estimation, the tasks of developing number sense, place-value understanding, and strategies for computing with algorithms remain of great importance to elementary school teachers. “The use of algorithms allows students to look at math as a process rather than as a question answer type activity … they can choose from their toolbox. Algorithms provide a comfort zone for some students and encourage students to pursue better ways as they get comfortable with them” (Mingus and Grassl 1998, p. 56).


Author(s):  
Steven Camicia ◽  
Juanjuan Zhu

Social networks and communities are rapidly expanding and changing due to the accelerating pace of globalization. In this article, we examine new possibilities for the reform of curriculum and educational research in a way that is responsive to increasingly multicultural and global communities. Drawing on literatures in the areas of multicultural, global, and civic education, we conducted a critical qualitative case study of four elementary school teachers. The teachers, two in the United States and two in the United Kingdom, are known to be exemplary at synthesizing multicultural, global, and civic education. We, the two authors, one a female from China and the other a male from the United States, employed duoethnography methodology to utilize our different positionalities as researchers in our description, analysis and interpretation of the data. As the exemplary teachers in our study illustrate, education needs to be culturally responsive, socially just, well-integrated, and empowering. We conclude with findings that have implications for the reform of curriculum and educational research methodology.


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