Reconceptualizing Preservice Teacher Preparation in Science Literacy Education Using Action Research in South Africa

This chapter presents a reconceptualization of preservice teacher preparation in the context of science, information technology, and African language education using action research (AR). The authors provide a background of AR as a transformative practice, along with benefits and possible limitations, and describe how student teachers turn theory to practice as change agents engaging in reflection and implementing solutions. Collaborative interaction between mentor teachers and lecturers and the project reports and reflective journals generated by the student teachers are integral parts of the research design and internship program. The authors recommend the use of AR to empower student teachers to deal effectively with probems that arise, and they discuss future research directions.

Guiding Online Graduate Special Education Candidates Through E-Performance Assessments and edTPA

As online teacher preparation programs continue to grow, guiding the process for edTPA candidates can pose varying challenges. As such, teacher preparation programs must be equipped to provide guidance to online candidates as they complete the actionable items required for edTPA. Provided from the field supervisors' perspective, this chapter outlines the current process Western Carolina University has in place to provide effective clinical and teacher candidate experiences for students in their online program. The purpose of this chapter provides guided structure for graduate special education teachers pursing initial licensure through an online masters' program. This chapter will include 1) the challenges of guiding online students through the e-portfolio process, 2) an exploration of the provided structure for the teacher candidates to fulfill the requirements of edTPA, as well as 3) recommendations for teacher preparation programs and teacher candidate readiness in the practice and application of e-performance assessments and edTPA.

Pre-Service Teacher Preparation to Integrate Computational Thinking

United States education has experienced a big push for students to learn coding as part of computer science and more explicitly address computational thinking (CT). However, CT remains a challenging subject for many students, including pre-service teachers. CT, which overlaps mathematics and computer science, tends to be offered as an elective course, at best, in P-16 education. Pre-service teaching profession students usually do not have foundational knowledge to guide them in integrating computational thinking into the curriculum that they will eventually teach as instructors themselves. This chapter explains computational thinking in light of K-8 education, discusses issues and needs in integrating CT into K-8 curriculum, identifies relevant theories and models for teaching CT, describes current practice for integrating computational thinking into K-8 curriculum, and discusses pre-service teachers' preparation that can lead to their successful incorporation of CT into the curriculum.

Use of a Residency Program in Preservice Teacher Preparation

The training and retention of special education teachers is a critical need in the education field. One innovation that can be used in educator preparation programs to better prepare teachers is to establish a residency model. In this model, preservice teachers work as full-time teachers, while also completing their coursework. They receive support from university faculty and peers during this structured first year of teaching. This chapter will explore the need for residency programs, possible features and structures, short and long-term benefits, and potential challenges. In addition, this chapter explores ways to incorporate high-leverage practices into residency coursework.

Collaborative Partnerships in Teacher Preparation

This chapter presents a description of a collaborative approach to clinical induction for pre-service teachers, the benefits of a collaborative clinical approach, and the voiced experiences of public school teachers, teacher candidates, and university faculty/supervisors reflecting on the impact of professional involvement in the collaborative process. Arguments for disrupting traditional models for clinical practice are presented. Tips for other educators and education preparation programs for developing collaboration and co-teaching induction models are included.

Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn

Preservice teachers are developing their professional identity while honing their teaching skills. Without transformative learning experience, preservice teachers will teach students the ways they were taught. They can have exclusive and deficit mindsets about students with disabilities (SWDs), many of whom are also English learners. Exclusive and deficit mindsets can lead to two teaching approaches: One is to treat SWDs as inferior to their typical peers. The other is to insist on standardized instruction for the sake of equality. In this chapter, the authors, as the teacher preparation faculty, confronted this challenge by engineering a transformative learning experience to liberate preservice teachers from the deficit mindsets about teaching students with disabilities.

Education for Gender Equality in Teacher Preparation

Since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1979, education has been regarded as an essential vehicle to face gender inequities. As a result, universities are increasingly recognizing the need for mainstreaming gender into education to ensure that all graduates are prepared for developing a gender-sensitive practice. With the purpose of bringing evidence of present developments in connection with current European policies, student teachers' and educators' perceptions of gender mainstreaming implementation from three education programs at the University of Alicante, Spain were explored. Findings reveal that there is a common view that gender mainstreaming has not emerged as a priority in teacher education and that institutional indifference in implementing a gender approach in teaching is a norm. The study contributes to identifying areas of need suggesting actions for making progress in gender equality training at institutional and curricular levels.

Language Teachers' Sense of Efficacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic quickly changed the educational landscape by adding challenges as teachers had to pivot almost immediately from traditional educational contexts to unfamiliar remote, online environments. In-service world language teachers (N = 497) were surveyed to understand differences in one's sense of efficacy teaching languages before and during the pandemic. Results show stark differences in both contexts. The findings provide manifold implications for world language teacher preparation as well as teacher retention and professional development.