Teacher Education: How Teacher Educators Can Use Manipulative Materials with Preservice Teachers

1983 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 12-13
Author(s):  
Sharon L. Young
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Methods Course

Not long ago I wa ob erving Martha Peterson, a preservice teacher from my methods course, as she was teaching the subtraction algorithm to some third grader. Martha was using base-ten blocks to show how the physical exchange of a “long” for ten “unit,” in relation to a written step in the algorithm, when Johnny exclaimed, “so that' why you cross out the tens!” As we left the classroom, Martha was elated and said. “Did you hear Johnny? The base-ten block really helped him understand. l didn't think manipulative material would really work but now I do”

scholarly journals Emotion and Teacher Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Bellocchi
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Emotion Management ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Teacher Emotions ◽  
School Based ◽  
Emotional Demands

Emotion research in teaching and education more generally is a well-developed field of inquiry, offering suggestions for initial teacher education course development and practical suggestions for improving the working lives of teachers and schoolchildren. In contrast, emotion research in teacher education is an emergent and expanding area of inquiry. Preservice teachers, or university teacher education students, have unique emotional demands given that their teacher identities may still be in formative stages and their school-based practicum may not present the full complement of emotional experiences that full-time teachers encounter daily and for extended periods of time. Some specific objectives of past research in teacher education include explorations of preservice teachers’ emotions; preparing preservice teachers for the emotional demands of the job; developing understandings about the interplay between teacher–student relationships or social bonds, emotions, and learning; and addressing the strong emotions associated with practicum for preservice teachers, school-based teacher educators, and university-based teacher educators. A diverse range of theories are available for investigating emotion in preservice teacher education. This range presents different ways of conceptualizing what emotions are considered to be, stemming from disciplines including sociology, philosophy, psychology, critical studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and neuroscience. In addition to canvassing theories and traditions, dominant approaches to the study of preservice teacher emotions are addressed including early investigations, which relied on single self-report research methods to the more complex and dynamic multimethod and multitheoretical studies that have emerged in recent years. Suggestions are made for fruitful future lines of inquiry of preservice teachers’ emotional experiences and needs. Teacher attrition and burnout, particularly in the early years, continue to be vexing international problems. Research into preservice teacher emotions and emotion management are two important areas of inquiry that could address the related problems of burnout and attrition. Emotion management is also linked to social bonds, and better understandings of these connections are needed in the context of preservice teachers’ experiences and learning during practicums and within university courses. A focus on enacted classroom and staffroom interactions offers great scope for novel research contributions. Better understandings of structural conditions affecting emotions and preservice teachers’ learning are needed that include the bridging of macrosocial structural factors influencing work conditions with microsocial interactions in classrooms, staffrooms, and during parent-teacher interactions. New research adopting contemporary theories of emotion and methods is needed to explore preservice teacher identities. Combining this focus with the aforementioned lines of investigation into burnout, attrition, social bonds, and connections between macrostructural and microinteractional aspects of teaching and learning presents a third line of novel research. Guiding questions to prompt these and other lines of investigation are offered.

The Professional Handbook

2010 ◽  
pp. 347-364
Author(s):  
Sara Winstead Fry
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Student Teaching ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Experience ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Methods Course ◽  
Inservice Teachers ◽  
Reflective Skills

The Professional Handbook is a teacher education assignment that allows preservice teachers to use technology to connect theory and practice while also developing their reflective skills and professionalism. The assignment involves compiling information in an easy-to-use website that preservice teachers can access while engaged in their semester-long student teaching experience and once they are employed as inservice teachers. This chapter describes the Handbook’s essential goals, discusses its use in an instructional methods course, and makes recommendations for modifying the Handbook’s format for use in any teacher education course while preserving the framework provided by the assignment’s essential goals. The chapter serves as a resource for teacher educators looking to use technology to enhance the quality of teacher preparation assignments.

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.

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.

Finding Possibility in Pitfalls: The Role of Permeable Methods Pedagogy in Preservice Teacher Learning

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Heather Hebard
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Teacher Candidate ◽  
Methods Course ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Opportunities To Learn ◽  
Field Placement ◽  
Pedagogical Tools ◽  
Field Placements

Background/Context Tensions between university-based teacher preparation courses and field placements have long been identified as an obstacle to novices’ uptake of promising instructional practices. This tension is particularly salient for writing instruction, which continues to receive inadequate attention in K–12 classrooms. More scholarship is needed to develop a theory and practice of methods education that accounts for these tensions. Purpose This study investigated how opportunities to learn to teach writing in preservice preparation mediated teacher candidates’ learning. The investigation's aim was to add to our knowledge of how teachers learn and the factors that impact this learning to offer implications for improving teacher education. Participants and Settings Participants included literacy methods course instructors from two post-baccalaureate, university-based, K–8 teacher certification programs and participating candidates enrolled in these courses (N = 20). Settings included methods course meetings and participating candidates’ field placements. Research Design This comparative case study examined opportunities to learn and preservice teachers’ uptake of pedagogical tools across two programs. A cultural–historical theoretical lens helped to identify consequential differences in the nature of activity in preservice teachers’ methods courses and field placement experiences. Data included instructor interviews, methods course observations, teacher candidate focus groups, and field placement observations. Patterns of field and course activity in each program were identified and linked to patterns of appropriation within and across the two cohorts. Findings In one program, methods course activity included opportunities to make sense of the approaches to teaching writing that teacher candidates encountered across past and current experiences. The instructor leveraged points of tension and alignment across settings, prompting teacher candidates to consider affordances and variations of pedagogical tools for particular contexts and goals. This permeable setting supported candidates to develop habits of thinking about pedagogical tools, habits that facilitated uptake of integrated instructional frameworks. In the other program, methods activity focused almost exclusively on the tools and tasks presented in that setting. This circumscribed approach did not support sense-making across settings, which was refected in the fragmented nature of teacher candidates’ pedagogical tool uptake. Conclusions Findings challenge the notion that contradictions in teacher education are necessarily problematic, suggesting instead that they might be leveraged as entry points for sense-making. In addition, permeability is identified as a useful design principle for supporting learning across settings. Finally, a framework of pedagogical tools for subject-matter teaching may provide novices with a strong starting point for teaching and a scaffold for further learning. “I felt at the beginning of the school year that writing was not going to be a strong point for me…. Maybe part of it was the way [my cooperating teacher] modeled it for me; it was just free flowing, kind of … jumping from thing to thing [each day]…. It wasn't like the way [our methods instructor] had modeled for us … [using] four-week units.” –Sheri, teacher candidate, Madrona University

Whiteness as Property in Science Teacher Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Felicia Moore Mensah ◽  
Iesha Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
Science Teacher ◽  
Science Teachers ◽  
Elementary Science ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Science Teacher Education ◽  
Methods Course ◽  
Teachers Of Color ◽  
Science Teacher Educators

Background/Context The disparity between the race and ethnicity of teachers and students is expected to increase as our nation and classrooms continue to become more racially, ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse. It is extremely important to think about not only the educational needs of such a diverse student population within schools but also who will teach these students. However, when looking at subject-matter specificity for the retention of Teachers of Color, such as science teachers, the picture becomes extremely serious when we understand teachers’ paths into and out of science and teaching. Purpose The purpose of the study is to analyze the experiences of preservice Teachers of Color (PTOC) enrolled in an elementary science methods course as they gain access to science as White property. Our analysis provides evidence that PTOC can break the perpetual cycle of alienation, exclusion, and inequity in science when they are given opportunities to engage in science as learners and teachers. In addition, we also offer insights regarding the role science teacher educators may play in preparing teachers and especially TOC for urban schools. Setting/Research Design The context of this study was a graduate-level preservice elementary science methods course at a large urban university in New York City. Multiple data sources included pre-post surveys, semester observation journals, final course papers, and a post-course questionnaire. Utilizing constructivist grounded during the initial phase of analysis and themes from critical race theory (CRT), our unique voices of color and positionalities allowed us to interpret the data from a CRT perspective and arrive at findings relevant to making science inclusive to PTOC. Conclusions/Recommendations In order to push the field of science teacher education toward social justice issues of access, opportunity, and enjoyment, efforts must focus on increasing representation of Teachers of Color in science education. The transformation of science teacher education to grant equitable learning experiences for Teachers of Color is needed. Further research on the experiences of science Teachers of Color, as well as Faculty of Color and their relationship with students, is highly encouraged. Both teacher preparation and science education must be open to interrogate and reveal structural forms of race, racism, and power that manifest through curriculum, structure, and pedagogy that cause alienation and exclusion for Teachers of Color. Therefore, we encourage science teacher educators to examine their own course curriculum, structure, and pedagogy through self-study and refection. Overall practices in teacher preparation must empower rather than impede progress toward important goals of CRT, and this may be achieved through building stronger relationships with PTOC and Faculty of Color across teacher preparation courses in support of these goals.

scholarly journals Preservice teacher mobile investigation and interpretation of everyday mathematics across settings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremiah (Remi) Kalir
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Preservice Teacher ◽  
Mobile Learning ◽  
Mathematics Teacher ◽  
Mathematics Learning ◽  
Mathematics Teacher Education ◽  
Everyday Mathematics ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
K 12

This study reports upon design-based research that enacted mobile mathematics learning for preservice teachers across classroom, community, and online settings. The integration of mobile learning within mathematics teacher education is understudied, and it is necessary to better understand mobile technology affordances when locating disciplinary inquiry across settings. A curriculum module was designed to support preservice teachers’ participation in two mathematics education and mobile learning repertoires: a) mobile investigation of disciplinary concepts situated in community locations and circumstances, and b) mobile interpretation of connections between school and everyday mathematics. This exploratory case study analyzes three module iterations and identifies the qualities of preservice teachers’ cross-setting disciplinary connections. Reported mobile learning outcomes include connections preservice teachers produced among mathematics concepts, mathematical actions, and material objects, and also connections produced between school mathematics and everyday circumstances. Findings indicate preservice teachers established disciplinary connections when participating in commercial and civic activities relevant to their daily lives. Yet other mathematics concepts and practices were either seldom investigated, only vaguely described, or not representative of K-12 students’ interests and cultures. Design recommendations and implications are suggested for subsequent attempts at situating preservice teacher learning outside of the mathematics teacher education classroom and across multiple settings through mobile learning.

scholarly journals Implementing Narrative-Pedagogical Approaches in a Teacher Education Classroom

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Goh
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Method ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Narrative Pedagogy ◽  
Educational Stakeholders ◽  
Conventional Teaching ◽  
Teachers Experiences ◽  
The Rich

Preservice teachers can no longer be prepared using conventional teaching approaches as these are inadequate to equip them with the necessary knowledge and skills they require to perform the tasks of teaching effectively. Teacher educators need to use new pedagogies, and narrative pedagogy is seen as a teaching method which can better prepare preservice teachers for the challenging classrooms of today. My study explored nine preservice teachers’ experiences after the enactment of a narrative pedagogical approach in one of their courses within their teacher education program. I used Ricoeur’s framework of the prefigured and configured arena of education to analyse the rich interview and reflective data which emerged. Three themes for the prefigured arena emerged: (a) feeling the sense of responsibility, (b) feeling anxious, and (c) feeling the lack of experience and confidence. Similarly, three themes were found for the configured arena: (a) learning through emotions, (b) learning through insights, and (c) learning through discussion. The preservice teachers have interpreted and discussed “lived” stories and this has shifted the way they think about teaching. The results do offer teacher educators and educational stakeholders a stepping-stone to further pedagogical insight into using narrative pedagogy in teacher education.

Critical Thinking in Teacher Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Katie Peterson-Hernandez ◽  
Steven S. Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Teacher Preparation Programs ◽  
Methods Course ◽  
Preparation Programs ◽  
Literacy Methods

This chapter documents the development of critical thinking skills in preservice teachers as they engaged in practicum settings in a teacher education program. Qualitative data helps illustrate the shifts in thinking that correlated with particular experiences in the program. Data is used to illustrate strategies that teacher preparation programs might draw on to help teacher education students develop critical thinking skills related to pedagogies and practices. The authors conclude by theorizing a relationship between the structure and strategies employed within a literacy methods course and the expansion of preservice teachers understanding of literacy, teaching, and learning.

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