Peer mentoring programs are developed to assist first-year students as they make the transition into university life. The qualitative study appraises a mentoring programme for first-year undergraduate students from the mentors' perspective. Understanding the mentors' experiences can contribute to the success of the program and, more importantly, can lead to strong self efficacy for the mentors.

The article explores mathematics anxieties and mathematics teacher efficacy among 156 elementary pre-service teachers from a university in the southeastern United States. Data included tests and interviews. Findings revealed a significant, negative relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics teachers' efficacy (r = -.475, p<.05 specifically="" the="" pre-service="" teachers="" with="" lowest="" degree="" of="" mathematics="" anxiety="" had="" highest="" levels="" teacher="" efficacy.="">

This article reports on a study that closely followed and documented the journeys of professional growth for a group of teachers from their points of view, over a period of six months. Action research was conducted in conjunction with participation in a project centered on the creation of Web sites as culminating performance tasks.Analysis of the data collected led to the conclusion that one possibility could be to facilitate professional development in such a way that it is authentic, based in the classroom and focused on tasks meaningful to and specifically chosen by the teacher.

A professional development course was learned by three teachers, with the purpose of sensitizing teachers about learning difference. The case study focuses on their extreme learning preferences and discusses the impact of these preferences on their language, beliefs and practice, both before and after the course. Finding indicate that teachers tend to teach the way they prefer to learn; over-generalize and project their own learning needs onto students; and hold initial “blame the learner” beliefs about students mismatched to them.

The article examine what teachers know and do regarding higher order thinking skills in teaching science. Semi structured interviews were collected with 11 experienced physics science teachers. The findings highlighted a diversity among the teachers in four areas: meta-strategic knowledge of the concept of higher-order thinking; practical utilization of instructional strategies related to fostering higher-order thinking in the classroom; beliefs about students' abilities to acquire higher-order thinking skills; and self-perception regarding teaching towards higher-order thinking.

This study examined whether game elements could be used along with Problem Based Learning (PBL) in a digital learning environment to improve student writing. Results from this study included statistically significant decreases in teacher time spent answering procedural and directional questions, increased voluntary student writing, and improved standardized achievement scores on writing tasks.

This study involved the analysis of the complex interactions that take place between tutors and preschool children using a computer during early literacy tutoring sessions. Eight five-year-old pre- and early-readers (four boys and four girls) attending a childcare centre participated in daily 20-minute tutoring sessions for two weeks. The literacy software (a beta version) was especially designed to guide tutors while working one-on-one with elementary school students falling into the lower 30% of reading achievement (i.e., at-risk). Rigorous grounded theory analyses generated three comprehensive themes: rapport, motivation, and scaffolding. The first focused on interpersonal issues, the latter two on teaching/learning.

This article explores of critical pedagogy, and the process and experiences of 22 preservice teachers enrolled in a required teacher education course, Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, who collaboratively developed and taught the course syllabus to one another. Results indicated that students preferred deeper, richer dialogues on the social issues they chose to study.