This quantitative study examined the change in Master in Teaching students' attitudes toward civic action and service self-efficacy after participating in academic service-learning with K-2 youth at school-university partnership sites. Study participants completed the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ) and the Community Service…

This study used qualitative case study methods to investigate how a particular community of practice located in a Midwest university influenced the M.Ed./PDS graduates' perceptions of working with diverse students. We use the term multicultural education to refer to the orientations and practices of the M.Ed. program and how the graduates thought…

Engaging students in valuable undergraduate research can be an arduous task to craft outside of the regular schedule of both staff and students. This paper describes a successful research experience that was part of an ongoing methods class for undergraduate pre-service education students. Participants simultaneously engaged in community service…

Recent calls for a shift to clinically-based models of teacher preparation prompt a research focus on the quality of classroom experiences in which pre-service teachers engage and the level to which theory and practice connect to inform those experiences. Developing a theoretical framework to conceptualize an approach to this work is an essential…

Given the powerful influence of past school experiences on the ways in which future teachers decide to teach, it is important to help preservice teachers more deliberately and critically explore the implications of those influences. This study grew out of an assignment in which 38 secondary education majors were asked to describe high school…

This is a study of teachers' visions. Five participants were followed through their pre-service years in the teacher education program and into their first year of teaching to see if their vision was sustained and whether it appeared in their practice. This paper describes the coding process for visions and discusses changes that occurred in the…

An abundance of research confirms preservice teachers are unprepared to work with diverse populations. This article describes an education program's efforts to support diversity initiatives and provide information and hands-on training to prepare teacher candidates for future work with the diversity they will encounter. Explanations of programs,…

As teacher educators, we explored the impact of a range of teaching approaches to encourage the development of critically reflective thinking (CRT) in teacher candidates. Our study, the second in a series of three investigations, examined differences in two preservice secondary teachers' responses to CRT as part of a teacher licensure program. We…

Peer placements, pairing two preservice teachers with a cooperating teacher, have been shown to provide a more supportive and collaborative context for learning to teach than the traditional student-cooperating teacher, single placement model. In some cases, however, tensions existed. This qualitative study seeks to expand the extant research by…

To better prepare teacher candidates to teach for social justice, teacher educators need to know students' understandings of social justice embedded in their personal histories and past and current learning experiences. Using participatory action research, this study examines how 6 early childhood (grades pre-K-3) teacher candidates understood and…

This paper discusses an instructional approach designed to help preservice teachers understand how assessments can be influenced by personal biases. In order to achieve this objective, we developed an analogy-based activity called "The Dog Show Analogy." After participating in the activity, we have observed that the participating preservice…

States, universities, and school districts have responded to teacher shortages by designing programs that transition college graduates into teaching careers. The result is an increase in the number of graduate preservice teachers preparing for teaching careers in colleges of education. The purpose of this study is to explore graduate preservice…

In North American teacher education programs, preservice students typically complete a substantial proportion of time practice teaching in schools, experiencing the extent to which professional school communities of inquiry contribute toward improving teaching and learning. Although there is extensive research about the experiences of new…

The purpose of this study was to assess administrators' views in a mid-western state regarding the development of a job search portfolio for pre-service teachers. All pre-service teachers must complete the professional portfolio, a requirement for initial teacher certification, during the teacher preparation phase of the degree program. It is…

What is the nature of classroom teachers' perceptions of their students' home language and literacy experiences? Evolving from a well-documented concern that current understandings about the validity of home and community language and literacies are not widely recognized or utilized in public school classrooms, this article describes a study that…