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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the decision of former traditional K‐12 teachers in the USA who chose a new career path in academic libraries. It focuses on their successes and challenges in higher education settings.

This study uses a qualitative‐methods approach which includes a brief questionnaire.

Findings indicate that former K‐12 teachers leave their traditional teaching professions due to bureaucracy but because they enjoy teaching, they seek other opportunities in education. The research also reveals that many of the participants continue to use their K‐12 training in their current instruction positions as academic librarians.

Future research on this topic should look into more proactive ways of recruiting K‐12 teachers into positions of information literacy instructor in academic libraries.

Those responsible for hiring information literacy instruction librarians will learn the benefits of hiring former K‐12 teachers. The paper will also help encourage academic library leaders to help fund more training opportunities for information literacy librarians.

All around the USA, academic libraries are fostering opportunities for their students to become information literate in the hopes of helping students succeed in college‐level research. As more former K‐12 teachers are hired in higher education academic instruction librarian positions, it could help students make a smoother transition from high school to college‐level researchers.

This research shows that former K‐12 teachers could be a valuable asset to higher education academic libraries.

Purpose – To explicate how to design a digital internship that encourages both the teacher candidate and the K-12 student to participate in problem-based learning. Framed by the theories of academic motivation and new literacies, this chapter presents templates to demonstrate how a digital internship can be designed that results in the learning goals of both the students and the teacher candidates being met.

Design – Digital internships provide teacher candidates with the opportunity to teach K-12 students online, observe licensed teachers design and employ lessons, and analyze this pedagogical learning space, yet education preparation programs (EPPs) fail to harness this rich learning experience. This chapter makes a case for why EPPs benefit from participating in digital internships, how they can become involved, and results from this learning experience.

Findings – Findings from digital internship research studies indicate that despite frustrations, online mentoring opportunities give teacher candidates a chance to reflect on the work needed to create relationships necessary to instruct effectively. Through them, candidates can also develop dispositions of new literacies and bridge theory and practice in EPPs. Furthermore, digital internships may serve to empower teacher candidates and support them in being successful in teacher preparation coursework.

Practical Implications – Digital internships contribute to best practices in teaching digital literacies by providing examples of how EPPs can design curriculum that situates teacher candidates to observe pedagogy in online environments. These internships provide candidates the opportunity to mentor K-12 students in these spaces and provide teacher candidates time to process how they can best motivate students and give specific feedback to encourage learning. Furthermore, digital internships can include primary resources to enrich units of instruction across content areas and grade levels.

This paper aims to present the case of a semester-long study-abroad education class in Italy. This course explored place-based methods that classroom teachers (K-12) might use to connect students’ outdoor surroundings to extend the lessons they learn in school about environmental sustainability. The experience of the university instructor and students outlined in this paper highlights the promise of place-based education to provide a potent approach for conveying principles of education for sustainable development (ESD).

An American university course enacted the approaches of place-based education and learning outdoors (harnessing student curiosity, building community partnerships, etc.) to investigate the natural and civic systems at work in the city of Florence. The participants deepened their understanding about the natural environment, economic health and well-being of inhabitants and compared the findings about local sustainable resource management to international settings. Through a deliberate practice framework, the students designed classroom lessons.

This discussion of university students’ work in an education course illuminates the possibilities for place-based applications in elementary and secondary schools. The pedagogical principles applied in this course also highlight the multidisciplinary strengths of ESD.

This paper provides an inside look at choices educators must make to provide relevance in classrooms, to connect the curriculum content that is standardized by governments with the systemic dilemmas that challenge communities. The author details the pedestrian topics that the university students examined during the semester. These lessons show that place-based inquiry situated in the outdoors can present clear lessons about sustainable development. An international comparative perspective can enhance learners’ perspectives about local surroundings.

The purpose of this paper is to identify a set of principles that are necessary to overcome the challenges that inclusion coaches encounter with teachers as they transition into an inclusive service delivery model.

Online written reflections of 13 inclusion coaches (K-12) who were a part of a larger, mixed-methods research design are the primary data source. For the two years of the project, the inclusion coaches provided bi-annual reflections, each with 7-11 entries. The reflections were downloaded, coded, collapsed, and thematically presented as the inclusion coaches’ perspectives for supporting teachers’ inclusive classroom practices.

The findings are presented as six principles for the process of coaching teachers for inclusion: pre-requisite: teachers’ receptivity; process: from building trust to collaborating and reflecting; precipice: tension between knowledge and beliefs; promotion: administrative support; proof: evidence of change, impact, and capacity building; and promise: future of the role.

These six principles of coaching for inclusion offer considerations, conditions, and guides for inclusion coaches that are striving for fully inclusive classrooms in their jurisdictions. With a view to future practice, the six principles are reiterative as they should be revisited each time a coaching interaction is initiated in a school site and with a classroom teacher.

As a conclusion, a conceptual model is offered. This spiraling staircase displays the conditions that exist prior to coaching and during coaching interactions and considerations for coaching sustainability.

The purpose of this study is to explore how multicultural curriculum and instruction in a teacher-credentialing program prepared pre-service teachers to work with diverse students.

The research method used was a qualitative approach. The research design was a descriptive single embedded case study to interview pre-service teachers who were in their second semester in a teacher-credentialing program at a university on the west coast and pre-service teachers who were in their final semester in the same teacher-credentialing program. Pre-service teachers discussed their disappointment in the program for their lack of training in how to work with culturally diverse students.

The findings from the study will add to the body of knowledge specific to teacher-credentialing programs, curriculum developers and universal design for learning on K-12 education.

As schools become more diverse, an important role of teacher-credentialing courses is to train future teachers with the knowledge to assist culturally diverse students. If teachers were multicultural teachers, they would be better prepared to instruct culturally diverse students and could acknowledge sociocultural resources and information that students bring to the classroom.

The study is essential because training teachers to instruct culturally diverse students is critical as student demographics become more diverse.

Technology is transforming teaching in ways that break down classroom walls while improving course quality and capitalizing on educators’ creativity. Rather than using technology in an ad hoc way, technology needs to fit the content and pedagogical style of the teacher.Our chapter builds on the extant literature on the necessary knowledge to integrate content, pedagogy, and technology (TPACK) in the classroom. We propose a comprehensive model that outlines the factors that lead to the development of TPACK, the relationship between TPACK and the use of technology, and outcomes gleaned from technology-enhanced learning.Our proposed model is an important first step to considering the precursors and outcomes of TPACK, which will need to be validated empirically. We extend the TPACK framework by identifying the predictors of TPACK such as teacher self-efficacy, experience with technology, and student factors. We argue that the extent to which educators develop their TPACK and use technology is bound by contextual factors such as organizational culture, resources, and student characteristics. Without considering the extensions that are identified in the Technology Integration Model, the linkages between TPACK and desirable outcomes (e.g., student engagement) are unclear. As a result, our proposed model has implications for educators and institutions alike.

Today’s students are being called to graduate global ready. The term global ready encompasses the multiple literacies as well as the global citizenship needed in the 21st century to participate, collaborate, and work in a globally interconnected society. This chapter introduces a model for teaching for global readiness. A sequential exploratory mixed methods design was employed to operationalize and validate a teaching for global readiness model. The first phase was a qualitative exploration with 24 expert global education teachers. The second phase was a quantitative analysis using factor analysis and model fit statistics to determine if the findings of the qualitative phase were generalizable to a larger population. Based on the results, the Teaching for Global Readiness Model consists of four dimensions: Situated practice, integrated global learning, critical literacy instruction, and transactional cross-cultural experiences. The chapter describes an array of literacy instruction teacher practices that promote global readiness knowledge, skills, and dispositions and points to the importance of locally situated but globally connected literacy instruction.

This study focused on unpacking the instructional coaching process, addressing key questions about what happens during a coaching session and what coaching elements predict teacher outcomes.

Using coaching observational data, the research examined critical coaching processes described in the literature: coaching practices (observation, feedback, reflective discussion and planning), the coach–teacher relationship, coaching strategies and coaching duration. The study also developed a path model documenting how coaching behaviors predicted teacher instruction.

Results showed that the coach talked more than the teacher and that most coaching time was spent in reflective discussion. The coach–teacher relationship was promoted by building rapport and reciprocal trust, with use of “we” language demonstrating that coach and teacher were working as a partnership. Most common coaching strategies were clarifying and the coach prompting the teacher to attend to teacher or student behaviors. Path model analysis showed that (a) the coach–teacher relationship quality predicted the level of teacher engagement in coaching and their instructional reflection and (b) the quality of coaching strategies predicted the overall quality of the classroom instruction.

The study provides empirical evidence about the active ingredients of coaching – those underlying processes that impact and improve teacher practice.

On February 18, 2021, the NASA Perseverance rover traveled 292.5 million miles, safely landing on Mars, proving the power of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in accomplishing such a historical feat. Glaringly absent from the photos, tweets, and commentaries showing NASA's team celebrations, however, are African American males. Their absence gives rise to the question “Where are the Black males?” – not just in NASA's celebratory photos, but in STEM-related careers altogether. Perhaps even more important questions are “What K-12 systems are in place that exclude Black males from being prepared – academically and socially – for careers with NASA and the like? And what strategies are necessary to engage them in STEM education?”

In this chapter, the author offers a historical overview of the STEM contributions offered by Black males, while explaining the competition of academic identity and Black male identity in successful school experiences. Four K-12 education barriers that derail African American males from their STEM trajectory are highlighted. As a conclusion, strategies to engage Black males in developing and nurturing an early interest in STEM are offered.

Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys’ socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little attention has been given to ways to attract, inspire and recruit them to the professional teaching ranks where a paltry 2 per cent are Black men.

This paper explores the concept of imaginative play experiences with respect to Black boys and unearths possibilities for future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play.

Based on findings from the literature, this conceptual paper makes connections between the early childhood play literature and the Black male teacher recruitment and retention literature to create possibilities to inspire Black boys to enter the teaching profession.

This paper presents a nuanced integration of imaginative play and culturally relevant pedagogy with specific attention to Black males.