A serendipitous moment, a passing conversation, led to this study. A university professor expressed concern that his second-grade son was "bored" with his weekly spelling lists, homework, and tests. A colleague of his, a former elementary teacher with 30 years experience and currently teaching field-based methods courses in this child's school,…

Teacher education in the 21st century is encountering increased scrutiny, added pressure, and escalating external regulations but does not have practical and immediate solutions for improving programs. While reforms in teacher education call for additional and improved clinical practice for candidates, through strengthened partnerships with local…

"These families must be so sad. I just wonder what they do and if they have any type of normal life." "I am not sure how I will work with parents. I think they probably look to the school for a lot of help." These quotes were taken from preservice teachers' papers early in their teacher education program, in which they were asked to describe what…

Teachers appear as characters in a wide range of literary writing. To date, few scholars have systematically studied the teachers who appear in works of literature. Much of the existing work has focused on relatively small numbers of teachers and has been presented in the form of brief essays rather than formal research (e.g., Booth, 2006; Crume,…

The literature is sated with calls for more and better communication between home and school. Teachers believe that parents should be more involved, but seem at a loss as to how to make that happen, and parents often feel disconnected to their child's teacher and the school. Few would argue that it is the responsibility of classroom teachers to…

In this article, the author describes pre-service teachers' understandings of English language learners (ELLs) and the ways that their understandings evolved through participation in a Structured English Immersion (SEI) course. To provide the context of this study, the author begins with a brief review of recent policies in Arizona that affect the…

In this article, the authors argue that teacher education programs should equip future teachers with skills for engaging in productive collaboration focused on improving instruction. Because little is known about pre-service teachers' beginning conceptions of collaboration and the ways in which collaboration skills can be developed, the authors…

Today, effective and creative teacher designed instruction is being replaced by scripted reading programs. These programs are changing the role of the teacher in the classroom from professionals to mere transmitters of knowledge. The idea that the role of the teacher had changed became evident while conducting a study with elementary school…

As is widely recognized in the teacher education field, it is a complex process for teacher candidates to become effective classroom teachers. With growing linguistic and cultural diversity in today's classrooms, as well as different social expectations for education, the teacher preparation process is becoming increasingly demanding and…

The call for reform of teacher preparation programs by Arne Duncan (2009), U.S. Secretary of Education, has the potential to be the catalyst for a re-emergence of co-teaching in higher education. Duncan argues for the need to implement innovative preservice teacher education strategies that will result in an increase in K-12 student achievement.…

The Census 2000 Brief (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2004b) indicates that English is not the heritage language of approximately one in five Americans, and the number of limited English proficient (LEP) students, also known as English language learners (ELLs), grew about 50 percent in the last decade. It is estimated that nearly 400,000 ELL…

This article describes the various components of a successful review from the standpoint of a veteran journal editor and encourages, in particular, young scholars to consider, if they have not already done so, becoming active participants not only in the authoring of scholarly work, but also as reviewers in the peer review process that is part of…

This study assesses and determines the factors that influence dispositions. To assess dispositions, the authors developed a series of micro-case scenarios. Their prior research showed the effectiveness of using scenarios to assess dispositions, but the authors also sought to understand the factors that influence dispositions. In this article, they…

In light of the issue related to consensus about the definition of dispositions and the larger issue pertaining to the absence of a model to predict the growth of pre-service teachers in their knowledge, skills, and dispositions that Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs) specify, the purpose of this study is two-fold. First, the authors aim at…

As prior secondary teachers, the authors had served as cooperating teachers for student teachers and had worked with university supervisors from local colleges and universities, and during their graduate work at different universities, they had supervised the student teachers themselves. Consequently, the authors, as well as most participants in…