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teachHOUSTON is a university-based secondary STEM teacher preparation program that addresses the critical need for highly qualified STEM teachers in Texas and across the country. STEM teachers are prepared through early and ongoing field-based teaching experiences and rigorous research-based instruction that integrates content and pedagogy provided by faculty members who have extensive teaching experience in public schools. teachHOUSTON serves the fourth largest city in the United States, along with its satellite communities and has many noteworthy features which are mapped in this chapter. Particular attention is paid to inquiry-based learning, student-centered instruction, and culturally responsive pedagogy as well as the improvements in the program based on the collaboration between physics and teachHOUSTON faculty.

In order to teach science effectively, teachers need a strong background in science content as well as an understanding of productive methods of teaching. This includes inquiry-based learning that will cultivate conceptual development of science concepts with their students. Furthermore, it is imperative to use student-focused activities in high-needs schools to engage all students, particularly students of color, in the learning process. As a result, faculty from the teachHOUSTON Program and the Department of Physics at the University of Houston produced a Physics by Inquiry course to engage middle school and high school preservice teachers in interactive, inquiry-based teaching pedagogies for physics. This chapter provides an overview of the course. It also highlights the benefits of including such a course in a STEM teacher education program.

To demonstrate how teacher candidate narratives in response to videos depicting science and literacy instruction can be used to both teach and evaluate beginning teachers’ emerging conceptions of disciplinary literacy.

Teacher candidates viewed and responded to videos depicting exemplary practice in science education and then videos of their own practice. Qualitative discourse analysis was used to investigate the science teacher candidates’ interpretations of problems of practice, their views of scientific literacy and understandings of their students.

The teacher candidates displayed distaste for textbooks, reinforced by negative experiences with textbooks in school settings, and yet they viewed textbooks as essential for effectively teaching knowledge about science. At the same time, each viewed the natural world as the ideal “text” for teaching knowledge about science, at times compensating for the weaknesses of textbooks and at other times entirely replacing textbooks as the source of knowledge about science. We consider what this means for preparing teachers for effective subject matter and literacy practice.

Video reflections like these demonstrate that what teacher candidates understand about video representations of others’ and their own teaching are far from literal and are interpreted through the educational and background lenses of the teacher candidates’ themselves. We suggest that a great deal more work needs to be done to better understand how to use video reflection to best develop teacher candidates’ conceptions of subject matter and literacy practice.

The purpose of this chapter is to identify the pedagogical approaches that foster critical reflection using video among the pre-service teachers during tutorials.

The research is situated in a school-based teaching programme in which pairs of pre-service teachers taught small groups of primary aged children over a period of seven weeks. Volunteer pre-service teachers videotaped their lessons and selected video excerpts to share with their peers in the tutorial. The educator guided the pre-service teachers’ reflection using the video. A case study drawing on interviews with pre-service teachers and audio recordings of tutorials, charted the development of pedagogical decisions made by the educators to promote reflection.

The pre-service teachers had difficulties undertaking deep reflection of their own and peers’ teaching practice. The response by educators was to promote collaboration among pre-service teachers by discussing specific aspects of the teaching in small groups and to use a jigsaw approach. This enabled a deeper analysis of particular elements of the lesson that were then integrated to produce a more holistic understanding of the teaching. The video data are most suitable for reflection and provide valuable evidence for pre-service teachers to develop their practice.

For pre-service teachers to develop effective skills to analyse their own practice they need to experience teaching in a safe but challenging environment, over a sustained period; have opportunities to develop a shared understanding of what constitutes quality teaching; have opportunities to critically analyse their teaching in discussion with peers and educators and be able to be guided by a framework of reflective strategies.

This chapter details our story of developing and using a series of videocases in elementary science teacher preparation. The Reflecting on Elementary Science videocases provide models of best practices in reform-based elementary science teaching. They reduce the complexity of teaching into a manageable story situated in a specific context, so that preservice teachers can uncover and reflect upon their theories about science learning and teaching. Through an accompanying research program, we have found that the videocases perturb student thinking and catalyze them to think like a teacher as they refine their science education theories.

This chapter links ideas about a key issue and a major factor in successful implementation of effective science education in Africa. It presents the Kenyan case as a prototypical African country. While located in the sub-Saharan region, Kenya shares similar national development plans and dreams as well as socio-economic conditions as most African countries. In this work, the current status of science education in Kenya [Africa] is explained, and a blueprint for successful science education relevant to any country in Africa is presented. This chapter argues for contextual and practical approaches to enhancing science teacher effectiveness. It is anticipated that discussions of this work will generate debate within and about science education in Africa and hopefully ignite cross border research on teachers and the teaching of science. Also, the question of quality science education in Africa and elsewhere will be raised locally and internationally.

This chapter illuminates the impact of providing informal learning experiences for students pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teaching careers at a time when there is a considerable shortage of qualified teachers in America's urban centers. Preservice STEM teachers were provided with the opportunity to participate in a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant funded Noyce Internship Program prior to serving as counselors and teaching assistants in a STEM camp for underrepresented middle school students. Through the Noyce Internship Institute, participants were introduced to interactive sessions that model promising teaching practices including inquiry-based and project-based learning. This narrative inquiry examines the impact of these experiences on preservice STEM teachers' self-efficacy and highlights outcomes in three areas: increase of preservice teachers' confidence, classroom management, and strengthening their desire to teach STEM.

To explain how digital video editing can help foster reflective pedagogical thinking for pre-service teachers (PSTs).

PST education has emphasized reflective thinking, particularly through the use of video as a means to view teaching vignettes. As the process of editing videos involves recursive viewings and numerous multimodal choices in representing the raw footage, this chapter outlines two disciplinary PST courses (English and science) where they used digital video editing to create narratives of and reflect on their teaching lesson.

PSTs who edited their teaching promoted reflexive thinking about their content learning, provided a means to critique their teaching context, pedagogy, and assessment, and served to shift their attention from PST as learner to student as learner.

Using digital video allows teachers, through the recursive process of editing their footage, to emphasize reflection on content area learning, planned and enacted pedagogy, and context-based and learner-centered approaches to teaching.