We describe a workshop in which 10 teachers from 10 schools, located in central Israel, participated in the development of alternative assessment tools in the context of implementing a new science curriculum for senior high-school students, namely "Science for All" (an STS type curriculum). In order to assist a group of teachers (who began…

Textbooks play an important part in the instructional process. The purposes of this study were to develop an instrument to identify the characteristics of high school physics textbooks, and examine how appropriate the currently used textbooks were for teaching and learning physics. The criteria were identified and the instrument was developed with…

This study explores teacher professional learning within the workplace context of a science department community. Workplace learning is considered in terms of the construction and flow of information about science, pedagogy and the relationships of science to the wider community. Implications for establishing sound conditions for teacher workplace…

General education science teachers are meeting increasingly diverse classrooms of students that include students with disabilities. A one-week, summer, residential workshop was offered to interested science and special educators who worked through lab experiments one-on-one with students with physical or sensory disabilities (grades 7-12). To…

The experiences of middle school science teachers at two schools in the southeastern US who participated in collaborative, sustained, whole-school professional development and their implementation of standards-based instructional practices are the focus of this study. Participants were involved in their second year of the professional development…

In this study, we consider the potential of multimedia cases as tools for teacher professional development. Specifically, we examined online and face-to-face discussions that occurred within groups composed of pre-service mathematics teachers, in-service mathematics teachers, mathematicians, and mathematics teacher educators. Discussions within…

A video-based program on lesson analysis for pre-service mathematics teachers was implemented for two consecutive years as part of a teacher education program at the University of Lazio, Italy. Two questions were addressed: What can preservice teachers learn from the analysis of videotaped lessons? How can preservice teachers' analysis ability,…

This article arises from a study whose overall purpose was to investigate the relationship between Colombian mathematics teachers' conceptions of "beginning algebra" and their conceptions of their "own" teaching practices. The teachers' understandings of their teaching practices were explored with a view to unravelling their conceptions of change…

The purpose of this study was to look at the use of the case method approach in relation to the preferred learning style of students in an elementary science methods course. Ninety-seven students enrolled in an elementary and elementary/middle level science methods course at Midwest university participated in this study. Participants completed a…

This investigation assessed the impact of situating explicit nature of science (NOS) instruction within the issues surrounding global climate change and global warming (GCC/GW). Participants in the study were 15 preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a science methods course. The instructional intervention included explicit NOS instruction…

To promote the use of scientific inquiry methods in K-12 classrooms, departments of teacher education must provide science teachers with experiences using such methods. To comply with state and national mandates, an apprenticeship course was designed to afford preservice secondary science teachers opportunities to engage in an authentic, extended,…

This is the report of a qualitative emergent-design study of 2 different Web-enhanced science methods courses for preservice elementary teachers in which an experiential learning strategy, labeled "using yourself as a learning laboratory," was implemented. Emergent grounded theory indicated this strategy, when embedded in a course organized as an…

We present a practical way of adapting and using four research-based assessments for different purposes in an electricity and magnetism course for K-8 science teachers. The course is designed to accomplish conceptual change toward accepted scientific conceptions as well as introducing teachers to materials and activities appropriate for their…

We explore the potential of dilemma analysis as an assessment tool to reveal student teachers' thinking and concerns about their practice. For this purpose we analyze the dilemma analyses completed by 22 student teachers enrolled in our science teacher preparation program over a period of four semesters. Student teachers' dilemmas fall into two…

Improving mathematics education in the United States has taken many forms. Our work has focused on two aspects: the content knowledge of teachers and a well-articulated coherent curriculum. Our aim was teacher "capacity building" that is enabling teachers to teach to coherent and significant mathematical curricular goals and describe the…