Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice Based Teacher Education

This comprehensive volume advances a vision of teacher preparation programs focused on core practices supporting ambitious science instruction. The book advocates for collaborative learning and building a community of teacher educators that can collectively share and refine strategies, tools, and practices. A renewed interest in practice-based teacher education paired with increasingly rigorous requirements, notably the Next Generation Science Standards, has highlighted the importance of teachers' deep disciplinary knowledge. This volume examines the compelling ways teacher educators across the country are using core practices to prepare preservice teachers for ambitious and equitable science teaching. With contributions from a wide network of teacher educators focusing on science education in various geographical and institutional contexts, Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice-Based Teacher Education serves as a valuable resource both for teacher educators and for administrators.

This comprehensive volume advances a vision of teacher preparation programs focused on core practices supporting ambitious science instruction. The book advocates for collaborative learning and building a community of teacher educators that can collectively share and refine strategies, tools, and practices. A renewed interest in practice-based teacher education paired with increasingly rigorous requirements, notably the Next Generation Science Standards, has highlighted the importance of teachers' deep disciplinary knowledge. This volume examines the compelling ways teacher educators across the country are using core practices to prepare preservice teachers for ambitious and equitable science teaching. With contributions from a wide network of teacher educators focusing on science education in various geographical and institutional contexts, Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice-Based Teacher Education serves as a valuable resource both for teacher educators and for administrators.

This groundbreaking handbook offers a contemporary and thorough review of research relating directly to the preparation, induction, and career long professional learning of K–12 science teachers. Through critical and concise chapters, this volume provides essential insights into science teacher education that range from their learning as individuals to the programs that cultivate their knowledge and practices. Each chapter is a current review of research that depicts the area, and then points to empirically based conclusions or suggestions for science teacher educators or educational researchers. Issues associated with equity are embedded within each chapter. Drawing on the work of over one hundred contributors from across the globe, this handbook has 35 chapters that cover established, emergent, diverse, and pioneering areas of research, including: Research methods and methodologies in science teacher education, including discussions of the purpose of science teacher education research and equitable perspectives; Formal and informal teacher education programs that span from early childhood educators to the complexity of preparation, to the role of informal settings such as museums; Continuous professional learning of science teachers that supports building cultural responsiveness and teacher leadership; Core topics in science teacher education that focus on teacher knowledge, educative curricula, and working with all students; and Emerging areas in science teacher education such as STEM education, global education, and identity development. This comprehensive, in-depth text will be central to the work of science teacher educators, researchers in the field of science education, and all those who work closely with science teachers.

This unique, edited book is a must for science educators who desire to improve upon traditional methods for science teaching and learning. It provides background, theoretical research-based frameworks, guidelines, and concrete examples for the implementation and assessment of innovative models of science learning, teaching, and professional preparation.

Science is a subject matter that requires learners to explore the world and develop their own abilities on the basis of that exploration. As technology broadens and deepens, science teachers need to expand their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), which determines how well they use technology to help students learn science. The book details our efforts to prepare science teachers to teach with the help of technology, examining various aspects of teacher education, professional development and teaching material preparation. It consists of three parts, which focus on: how TPACK is conceptually constructed within the field of science education, how teacher evaluation and teaching materials are developed and utilized based on the transformative model and how science teachers are prepared and supported with electronic resources based on the integrative model. The book offers a valuable resource for all those working in science education, as well as those readers who are interested in teacher education. Science teachers will come to know how simulations and animations can pedagogically support student learning. Practices for teachers’ TPACK development such as learning-by-design, evaluation and measurement and teacher communities are also addressed, applied and discussed in the case of science teachers. The individual chapters will provide teacher educators and researchers from all disciplines with new insights into preparing teachers for the Digital Era.

In Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education, Pam Grossman and her colleagues advocate an approach to practice-based teacher education that identifies “core practices” of teaching and supports novice teachers in learning how to enact them competently. Examples of core practices include facilitating whole-class discussion, eliciting student thinking, and maintaining classroom norms. The contributors argue that teacher education needs to do more to help teachers master these professional skills, rather than simply emphasizing content knowledge. Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education outlines a series of pedagogies that teacher educators can use to help preservice students develop these teaching skills. Pedagogies include representations of practice (ways to show what this skill looks like and break it down into its component parts) and approximations of practice (the ways preservice teachers can try these skills out as they learn). Vignettes throughout the book illustrate how core practices can be incorporated into the teacher education curriculum. The book draws on the work of a consortium of teacher educators from thirteen universities devoted to describing and enacting pedagogies to help novice teachers develop these core practices in support of ambitious and equitable instruction. Their aim is to support teacher educator learning across institutions, content domains, and grade levels. The book also addresses efforts to support teacher learning outside formal teacher education programs. Contributors Chandra L. Alston Andrea Bien Janet Carlson Ashley Cartun Katie A. Danielson Elizabeth A. Davis Christopher G. Pupik Dean Brad Fogo Megan Franke Hala Ghousseini Lightning Peter Jay Sarah Schneider Kavanagh Elham Kazemi Megan Kelley-Petersen Matthew Kloser Sarah McGrew Chauncey Monte-Sano Abby Reisman Melissa A. Scheve Kristine M. Schutz Meghan Shaughnessy Andrea Wells

Teachers make a difference. The success of any plan for improving educational outcomes depends on the teachers who carry it out and thus on the abilities of those attracted to the field and their preparation. Yet there are many questions about how teachers are being prepared and how they ought to be prepared. Yet, teacher preparation is often treated as an afterthought in discussions of improving the public education system. Preparing Teachers addresses the issue of teacher preparation with specific attention to reading, mathematics, and science. The book evaluates the characteristics of the candidates who enter teacher preparation programs, the sorts of instruction and experiences teacher candidates receive in preparation programs, and the extent that the required instruction and experiences are consistent with converging scientific evidence. Preparing Teachers also identifies a need for a data collection model to provide valid and reliable information about the content knowledge, pedagogical competence, and effectiveness of graduates from the various kinds of teacher preparation programs. Federal and state policy makers need reliable, outcomes-based information to make sound decisions, and teacher educators need to know how best to contribute to the development of effective teachers. Clearer understanding of the content and character of effective teacher preparation is critical to improving it and to ensuring that the same critiques and questions are not being repeated 10 years from now.

Computer science has emerged as a key driver of innovation in the 21st century. Yet preparing teachers to teach computer science or integrate computer science content into K-12 curricula remains an enormous challenge. Recent policy reports have suggested the need to prepare future teachers to teach computer science through pre-service teacher education programs. In order to prepare a generation of teachers who are capable of delivering computer science to students, however, the field must identify research-based examples, pedagogical strategies, and policies that can facilitate changes in teacher knowledge and practices. The purpose of this book is to provide examples that could help guide the design and delivery of effective teacher preparation on the teaching of computer science. This book identifies promising pathways, pedagogical strategies, and policies that will help teacher education faculty and pre-service teachers infuse computer science content into their curricula as well as teach stand-alone computing courses. Specifically, the book focuses on pedagogical practices for developing and assessing pre-service teacher knowledge of computer science, course design models for pre-service teachers, and discussion of policies that can support the teaching of computer science. The primary audience of the book is students and faculty in educational technology, educational or cognitive psychology, learning theory, teacher education, curriculum and instruction, computer science, instructional systems, and learning sciences.