For accreditation and programmatic decision making, education school administrators use inter-rater reliability analyses to judge credibility of student-teacher assessments. Although weak levels of agreement between university-appointed supervisors and cooperating teachers are usually interpreted to indicate that the process is not being…

Recently, interdisciplinary instruction has come back to the educational scene, specifically supported through the Common Core State Standards. As teacher educators and former middle-level teachers, the authors see this as a positive move to enhance learning for adolescents. This qualitative study sought to answer: How do secondary preservice and…

Some mathematics educators assert that P-12 students respond better to mathematics when it is taught for cultural relevance and social justice. Providing teachers with examples of how to use culturally relevant pedagogy and social justice pedagogy (SJP) is critical to enacting these strategies in mathematics classrooms. The results of this…

Research on the student teaching practicum indicates that it is a time of enormous stress. The purpose of this study was to gather information from student teachers regarding their perceptions of stress while in the midst of their practicum. The questions were designed to gather information that could be used to create a less stressful practicum.…

The high teacher attrition and early-career exodus of beginning teachers suggest that traditional methods fall short of providing the support needed by beginning teachers. This qualitative study examined the challenges encountered by student teachers during their practicum experience. Findings suggest that the attrition rate may be at least…

Colleges of education must instantiate their candidates' knowledge, skills, and dispositions for accreditation. Professors often have candidates reflect on field experience as a way to enhance their learning. This study examines reflections of 43 candidates over a 2-year period. Candidates engaged in an after-school enrichment program as…

The purpose of this article is to describe commonalities among teachers who have sustained passion for the teaching profession, identify ways to instill a similar passion in teacher education candidates, and encourage teacher educators to maintain and model an enthusiastic passion. The authors present the results of a study that consisted of…

Field experiences hold great promise for preparing candidates for effective urban teaching. This article reviews the research investigating the influence of field experiences on teacher candidates' perceptions of urban students from 1995 to 2010. The 36 articles that met the authors' criteria were organized into three general categories: studies…

The complexity of disposition development for teacher candidates continues to be discussed and debated in teacher education. This study compares two programs and the different ways each approaches the disposition development of their respective candidates. More than 200 candidates from two institutions were surveyed on how and where they perceived…

Within the current accountability context of education in the United States and Canada, there is a clear need to educate teachers on effectively using assessments to support, measure, and communicate student learning. Despite this need, assessment has historically been a neglected area in teacher education programs with comparatively little…

This article explores secondary preservice teachers' attitudes toward the use of teacher self-disclosure as a tool for citizenship education. Based on the notion that teacher self-disclosure may function as citizenship curriculum, this study addressed critical issues of teachers' sharing their knowledge about religions (including their own) and…

As public schools become increasingly diverse, novice teachers are being called on to prepare their students for a multicultural democracy. This article presents a case study of three preservice teachers who attempted to teach for critical multicultural citizenship during their student-teaching semester in an accountability-driven school context.…

The pressure to provide qualified teachers for all students has resulted in reform efforts, including the upgrading of credential and course requirements, as well as the proliferation of so-called alternative routes to teacher certification, which seek to create differentiated pathways into the classroom. In the present study, we compared teacher…

This article examines an assessment initiative for reviewing and developing student dispositions to address faculty concerns about the issue, as well as attend to programmatic needs. The presented disposition model is part of a coordinated and multitiered collegewide initiative for gathering, reviewing, and analyzing data in a central assessment…

Research and practice going back to the 1960s support the use of videotaping to facilitate preservice teachers' development of reflective teaching skills. Emerging research suggests that additional video-based activities, including editing video vignettes of teaching, can deepen preservice teachers' reflection. This action research study describes…