This article describes how a teacher-education program (TEP), whose mission is to improve schooling for linguistically diverse students, develops its' teacher candidate's critical dispositions and pedagogy related to academic-language (AL) development and how candidate performance on PACT can help TEPs better assess and improve how AL…

Throughout the United States, teacher educators are developing new strategies to improve the preparation of mainstream teachers for linguistic diversity. In this article, we explore teacher candidates' responses to the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), a preservice assessment required for credentialing that requires…

Beginning teachers most often are viewed as needing significant support in all areas of teaching. As a result, professional development (PD) associated with induction programs typically is presented by experienced professionals. This article describes one induction program's attempt to draw on the strengths within its network, engaging new…

This qualitative case study describes how one beginning primary grade teacher benefited from collaborative lesson-planning meetings with her grade-level colleagues. The teacher accumulated knowledge of curriculum, pedagogy, and professional contexts as she participated in planning meetings each week during her first year of teaching. Furthermore,…

In this era of globalization, students need to know how to write well. Faculty development needs to focus on assisting primary teachers as they prepare students for a twenty-first-century world. Strategic curriculum reform and professional development can be achieved by partnerships between district administrators and professional consultants. Two…

This article examines an in-service training for early childhood teachers in the context of a financial, administrative, and political crisis. Despite the crisis context of this case study, the professional development was considered successful by the participants and the facilitators. The key to overcoming the negativity and limitations of the…

Teacher-preparation programs across the nation are faced with multiple mandates that aim to increase rigor and effectiveness of future educators. In the state of Illinois, all teacher-preparation programs must revise and redesign their coursework to align with the new professional teaching standards and licensure requirements. This article will…

Recent public policy and research aimed at addressing student-achievement accountability in education may make it prudent for teacher-education programs to explicitly address data literacy as a valid outcome for their graduates. This article examines the changes in perceptions of comfort toward data-literacy behaviors before and after an…

This study followed 9 teacher candidates through a 3-week cultural immersion experience in which they volunteered in educational settings where they were not members of the majority culture. This learning experience was designed to help candidates better understand their culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse future students. A…

This article reports on a semester-long project where a TESOL professor and English Education professor modeled collaborative teaching and explicitly taught collaboration skills to a coscheduled teaching methods class consisting of TESOL and Secondary English teacher candidates. Data were collected in the form of pre- and postsemester surveys. In…

If teachers are to be informed, aware actors in today's labyrinthine policy environment, they need to be knowledgeable about the issues and interests that so extensively impact their work lives. One skill needed to construct such a knowledge base is the ability to read strategically. This article is an account of an attempt to make learning…

The emotional and cognitive work of becoming a teacher is often unknown to preservice teachers, leaving many to negotiate professional identities without support from teacher educators. This article examines how one preservice teacher, Ava Mendon, used language to negotiate professional identities and to build professional confidence during her…

In this article, the authors--a team of veteran and preservice teacher educators and teachers--describe the results of a photovoice, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study that positioned diverse adolescents as researchers to explore these youths', teachers', and teacher educators' perspectives on school and literacy…

In this article, we describe our inquiry and confess how our work as teacher educators weaves through multiple contexts and roles to reinforce a stronger enactment and construction of knowledge and practical relevance. We examined the complex nature of teacher education roles through collaborative self-study. Questions included the following: What…

Existing scholarship on teacher leadership fails to account for the perspectives of African American female teacher leaders. In this article, we profile 3 African American female teacher leaders located at different trajectories on historical and professional timelines. Our analysis is grounded in understandings from the intersection of social…