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Professional development schools (PDSs) advocate links between schools and teacher education programs, but how do mentor teachers in schools experience their role in this? Therefore, this research focuses on mentor teachers to investigate the change brought about by the implementation of a complex-wide PDS.

This qualitative single case study in a newly formed complex-wide PDS is based on surveys and individual interviews with mentor teachers from one school complex area. Activity systems analysis provided the framework to analyze mentor teachers interactions, their role and activities.

Mentor teachers expressed a sense of purpose in educating the next generation of teachers, experienced continuous learning in the collaboration with the teacher candidates and recognized opportunities for professional development offered by teacher education programs.

Schools and teacher education institutes rely on mentor teachers in their support to educate the next generation of teachers. Knowing what activities and values mentor teachers place on their mentoring can guide school administrations and teacher education institutes in their support and recruitment for mentor teachers.

This research contributes to the development of teacher education in the State of Hawaii and has identified helpful structures for meaningful teacher education.

The study aims to present a logic map linking the Professional Development School (PDS) Nine Essentials as a PDS theory of action and offer an analysis of dissertations that compare outcomes of learning in PDS and non-PDS contexts.

For this current study, the authors identified 25 of the 210 dissertations from a larger study that used a comparison methodology to provide a window into how learning in PDS and non-PDS settings may differ. In reviewing these comparison studies, the authors identified a set of clustered themes, as well as a variety of comparison constructs and measurements researchers used to determine the impact of PDS.

Five themes emerged including (1) the experience of learning to teach in a PDS setting vs. a non-PDS; (2) the experience of teaching in a PDS vs. non-PDS; (3) teacher candidate quality in a PDS vs. non-PDS; (4) teacher quality in a PDS vs. non-PDS; (5) school leader quality in a PDS vs. non-PDS; and (6) K-12 student learning in PDS vs. non-PDS.

Limitations of this study include the complications related to comparison, logic-related fallacies and the complexity of capturing simultaneous renewal.

In the 30th year of PDS work, the study utilizes a theory of action comprised of linking the PDS Nine Essentials to situate the comparison dissertation analysis of outcomes in PDS and non-PDS contexts suggesting challenges and possibilities and perhaps a direction for new research questions.

An investigation of how secondary history teacher education candidates implemented research-based instructional practices for instruction is described as a model of pre-service teacher preparation for social studies teachers. Cohorts of candidates participated in a five-year project while enrolled in a discipline-specific capstone senior methods course and subsequent student teaching experiences. Candidates were surveyed and interviewed concerning their use of, and feelings about, twelve instructional strategies developed with a focus on authentic history pedagogy. Surveys were administered three times: before the secondary social studies methods course, after the methods course, and after student teaching. A variation on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model was used to measure the levels of use and stages of concern of the candidates. Artifacts of practice, including lesson plans from a model unit plan and actual student teaching, also were analyzed to document use of the strategies. Results indicate an increasingly high level of implementation of and comfort with the strategies, as well as the developmental nature of the process. Implications and recommendations for pre-service activities in history teacher education are presented.

This paper investigates and reports on the study abroad experiences of 22 teacher candidates from the Southeast region of the USA (n=22). The purpose of this paper is to examine the teacher candidates’ development of social and emotional learning through their international teaching experiences.

The study is framed by Critical Cosmopolitan Theory, which is a theoretical lens for a critical understanding of the development of global competencies for critical consciousness. The paper uses a case study research design (Yin, 2008), which included data collected via artifact analysis, participant interviews and participant observation through field notes.

The study found how the study abroad and international teaching experiences were instrumental in aiding in the teacher candidates’ social and emotional learning. This included the adoption of culturally responsive teaching practices, development of reading the world and enactment of taking action to rewrite the world.

One of the limitations is the relatively small sample size. This is due, in part, to the high cost associated with study abroad. The high cost of study abroad can be a barrier for students to access the cross-cultural experiences afforded by study abroad. The hefty price tag of study abroad often limits the number of teacher candidates at public institutions who can go on study abroad (Malewski and Phillion, 2009). A future research agenda is needed about ways to help off-set the costs in order to make study abroad more affordable and equitable.

The practical implications of this paper are that it provides an instructive lens for how to integrate social and emotional learning within a study abroad experience. At the same time, the paper connects socio-emotional learning (SEL) with the development of global competencies and global citizenship.

The social implications relate to the practical implications in that the paper illustrates how SEL is connected to the development of global citizenship development. The study weds the critical cosmopolitan framework with SEL to show how learners develop empathy through reading and rewriting the world.

The case study presented in this paper highlights the possibilities of study abroad in tandem with international teaching experiences to help prepare teachers with SEL features like fostering empathy, developing culturally responsive practices, and becoming critically conscious and cosmopolitan. The study fills a gap in the literature regarding the development of SEL among elementary education teacher candidates through study abroad and international teaching experiences.

As the P-12 student landscape continues to grow in cultural and linguistic diversity, teacher preparation programs have yet to adequately prepare teacher candidates' teaching and learning skills in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of diverse student demographics. This article examines teacher candidates’ cultural competence and cultural responsiveness to enhance candidates' educator preparation and stimulate candidates' personal growth development as developing culturally and linguistically responsive new teachers. While many teacher preparation programs require one multicultural or diversity education course, the authors examine a minority serving institution's integration of a cultural immersion experience for teacher candidates as one way of supporting their development as culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogues. This paper aims at supporting school districts' need of culturally competent new teachers who have the content knowledge and pedagogy to teach and support culturally and linguistically diverse children. Recognizing this need, this qualitative analysis highlights the importance of and a need for cultural and linguistic competence among teacher candidates. Findings from this study provides a means by which universities can implement cross-cultural coursework and field-based experiences to prepare culturally responsive teacher candidates.

In this chapter, we discuss how to use technology to enhance teacher education through the discussion of teacher education programs at two Maryland universities. University of Maryland University College, a public university, was founded to address the needs of the military overseas following the end of World War II, as an offshoot of the University of Maryland College Park. It has become the largest primarily online public, not for profit, university in the United States. Its Master of Arts in teaching program was reinstituted in 2009, after a several year hiatus. The second university, Bowie State University (BSU), is a more traditional, historically black university (HBCU) founded as a teacher education institution in the 1800s and has been training teachers ever since. Both institutions of higher education are part of the University System of Maryland and the teacher education programs are certified by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE). These two universities were selected to highlight how different types of universities are implementing technology into their teacher education programs. The distinction illustrates a fully online teacher education program and a fully face-to-face teacher education program and the nuances between the two. These distinctions offer a broader view of how technology is used to enhance teacher education and to offer equal opportunity to students who want to become teachers. The chapter focuses on the uses of technology for the instruction of teacher candidates’ field experiences and internships. Technology enhancements provided in teacher preparation courses for student academic instruction and university faculty and school personnel training in the use of technology and Web 2.0 tools are discussed.

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.

Clinical practice provides teacher candidates with opportunities to link teaching and learning theory to practice in a supported environment with strong mentorship through their initial phases of teaching. Teacher candidates wait in anticipation for the opportunity to get into classrooms to work alongside veteran teachers to promote student learning and achievement. This article presents one educator preparation program’s (EPP’s) innovative program that spans the boundaries of the USA to provide teacher candidates with a two-week intensive full-time clinical placement in schools located in the Cotswold Region of England.

Highlighted in this piece is the program’s partnership history, design, structure, connection to the nine essentials, assessment of program goals, and a synthesis of the literature on global education and its value in educator preparation.

Highlighted in this piece is the program’s partnership history, design, structure, connection to the nine essentials, assessment of program goals and a synthesis of the literature on global education and its value in educator preparation.

This article highlights one university’s innovation that places teacher candidates in the classroom for a two-week full-time immersive clinical experience in various schools in England. As early as their sophomore year, teacher candidates can participate in this study abroad program and do so while developing their own cultural competence and global citizenship.

During field experiences, preservice teachers often are asked plan and teach a lesson and then to reflect on their teaching. The purpose of this paper is to examine the guided reflections of 66 preservice teachers after they planned and implemented a primary source-based lesson in an elementary classroom. The project occurred during the preservice teachers’ enrollment in a social studies methods course.

This qualitative study utilized a fieldwork approach as the methodological framework. This approach provided data that allowed the researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the preservice teachers’ experiences. Data were analyzed using Bogdan and Biklen’s (1998) content unit of analysis. Descriptive and interpretive coding schemes were used to analyze data using a priori categories of successes and challenges.

The preservice teachers were able to engage in technical and practical reflection, considering strategies used in the classroom and their effects on student learning, but they were unable to reflect at the critical level, thinking about moral and ethical decisions. The themes and subthemes that many of the preservice teachers identified as successes, others identified as challenges.

This study highlights the importance of preservice teachers engaging with primary sources, as well as with frequent, meaningful, and ongoing field experiences. Teacher educators need to provide multiple opportunities for teacher candidates to reflect broadly and deeply on their teaching practice and student learning. Additional research needs to be conducted to assess the impact of preservice teachers use of primary sources in the elementary classroom.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze teacher candidates’ implied assumptions, attitudes, and concerns about occasional teaching. Data were gathered from 100 teacher candidates over the course of three academic years. Each of the participants posed two questions at the beginning of an online occasional teaching course that they would like to be answered by the end of the course. An awareness of teacher candidates’ questions will be useful in the process of improving pre-service teacher preparation and professional development in occasional teaching.

On the first day of the course, the teacher candidates were asked to reflect upon their first practicum experience and post these reflections to the Sakai discussion forums board. As a follow-up to this introductory activity, the author then invited the teacher candidates to compose and share two (open-ended) questions they would like addressed in this occasional teaching course. These questions were submitted and retained by the author for the duration of the course. The author referred to these teacher candidates’ questions over the term of the course to ensure that the teacher candidates’ queries were being addressed and their misconceptions were being challenged. Over the course of this study, the 100 teacher candidate participants (n=100) each offered two questions for a total of 200 questions. However, not all questions were unique. The study design employed the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. The participants’ questions were transcribed, organized, coded and categorized. Data were initially bracketed into meaning units, coded for relevant categories, refined and related to enable the development of encompassing themes. Each question was coded only once based on the central issue or premise of the question. Frequency distributions and percentages of common responses were also derived from participant responses.

Findings suggest that teacher candidates are most concerned with classroom management, curriculum and instruction, getting hired as an occasional or long-term occasional teacher, administrators’ and classroom teachers’ expectations of occasional teachers, legal aspects of occasional teaching, and working with special populations.

Due to attrition, the final number of respondents was 100. It can be argued that the group of students who withdrew from the occasional teaching course may have had different perceptions, concerns, and questions from those who completed the study. More research should be conducted on occasional teaching. Such research may help the author to improve the situation for students, teachers, administrators, teacher candidates, and occasional teachers. Conducting a longitudinal study with the same students would also be useful to identify whether or not they were satisfied with the amount of preparation they had during their pre-service teacher training.

A critical beginning for teacher educators is to capture the initial questions and conceptions that their teacher candidates possess on entry into pre-service education programmes. Teacher education programmes should begin considering courses that will help pre-service teachers reconstruct and modify their preconceived perceptions about occasional teaching, in hopes that it will promote professional growth and development. Faculties and boards of education should consider creating a “How-To” resource manual that is aligned with the Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession, and designed for newly hired occasional teachers, regular classroom teachers, administrators, and teacher candidates. This manual could include case studies accompanied by a series of thought-provoking questions and real-world guidance from the “experts in the field” which will prove helpful when teacher candidates are preparing for their interviews.

Occasional teaching is the route into the profession for the majority of Ontario’s new graduates. This gradual and increasingly extended process toward full entry to the profession results in more competition each year for the next group of first-year teachers and greater reliance on occasional teaching. Despite these findings, few teacher education programmes in Ontario, Canada offer courses, workshops, or training to help prepare their teacher candidates for occasional teaching as their possible point of entry into the teaching profession. This lack of preparation is a major concern for the teaching profession as a whole. To fully address these concerns, occasional teacher training must be provided for all teacher candidates. Faculties and boards of education need to develop a well-qualified, highly skilled occasional teacher who through training becomes a well-developed specialist at teaching at one school today, in another tomorrow, and in still another the day after tomorrow. Occasional teaching training courses and programmes must provide prospective occasional teachers with the skills they need to enter any classroom and provide a positive learning atmosphere. This applied research will inform efforts to improving pre-service teacher preparation and professional development in occasional teaching.