Teacher knowledge, the sources of that knowledge, and the day-to-day use of that knowledge have become focal points of contemporary research on teacher education. As this body of research has found, a teacher's knowledge base and her subsequent practice is a composite of her beliefs and identities (Britzman, 2003), experiences (Lortie, 1975),…

One of the goals of successful teacher preparation is to develop professionals who are cognizant of their own backgrounds and who critically reflect on those experiences for future practice (Darling-Hammond, 2006). Overall, this study seeks to explore the ways in which blogging provides a space for reflection, interaction, and development of…

This article provides a look into a day in the life of the author, Cheryl Matias, as a Filipina teacher educator teaching White teacher candidates in a White institution. This article focuses on the conceptualization and operationalization of her pedagogy of trauma as a survival mechanism and as a model for other teacher educators of Color who…

Encouraged in large part by the work of Schon (1983), teacher education programs have spent the last two decades providing preservice teachers with experiences designed to help them examine their beliefs and develop reflective habits (Roskos et al., 2001; Tsangaridou & Siedentop, 1995; Zeichner & Liston, 1987). The present study…

This article investigates one small aspect of the work of secondary social studies teacher preparation at Michigan State University (and, of course, the surrounding public schools where so much of this preparation actually takes place). The authors have come to see that there cannot be a successful program without having close, warm, collegial…

The aim of this self-study was to critically consider the authors' individual thinking and practices as they worked toward a shared understanding of connecting science and literacy during instruction. As teacher educators from different disciplines, this work required them to carefully and recurrently examine their individual understandings…

The purpose of this study was to answer the following research questions: (1) Do secondary social studies pre-service teachers incorporate literacy strategies in their work samples during student teaching? (2) To what extent and under what conditions do secondary social studies pre-service teachers use higher levels of literacy strategies in their…

This article reports on three stories of what the author calls "eco-narrative" constructions from the data. These stories are rendered in detail to underscore the obstacles student teachers face regularly in becoming multicultural educators, as well as the various and subtle ways supervisors can help them advance their skills by giving…

Research indicates that historical and social backgrounds influence individuals' motivation to teach and their commitment to teaching (Gordon, 2000; Su, Hawkins, Huang & Zhao, 2001). This article reports on a comparative study exploring the motivation to teach and the commitment to teaching among non-local prospective student teachers from…

Like most teacher educators, the authors are aware that prospective teachers enter programs with many experiences in schools, and social studies classrooms in particular, that influence their beliefs about schooling, what it means to teach, their subject, and students. These experiences and beliefs inform how they then experience their program…

Adults learn differently than children or adolescents (Brookfield, 1986; Dewey, 1938; Kegan, 1994; Kolb, 1984; Mezirow, 2000). A thorough understanding of how adults learn is imperative to the successful education of adults. It is only by understanding the unique ways in which adults learn that the academy can create environments where adults…

With teacher turnover costing the U.S. as much as $7 billion per year (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2007), and the continuing demand for qualified teachers, it is imperative for schools to increase retention rates among their faculty (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). Retention efforts are especially important among novice…

In the spring of 2005, the author began collecting data for a three-year study investigating the effectiveness of preservice preparation as measured by the transfer of pedagogical practices from preservice settings into novice inservice settings. She was interested in whether or not what was being taught, modeled, and/or espoused in a given…

There is a growing recognition in teacher education that in order to work toward a more equitable and just society, programs of teacher education must explicitly engage with the political commitments of teachers and teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, 2005). They must prepare prospective teachers to address "societal structures that perpetuate…

"Critical social dialogue" (CSD) is the process of problem posing, facilitating personal stories through silence and multimodal assignments, and positioning them for students to re-examine and re-evaluate their understanding of systems of social difference, the beginnings of a multicultural and social justice intellectual frame for pre-service…