This paper offers a critical review of the literature on 21st century knowledge frameworks, with a particular focus on what this means for teachers and teacher educators. The article identifies common themes and knowledge domains in 15 reports, books, and articles that describe the kinds of knowledge that researchers state are integral and important for success in the 21st century. The authors argue that seemingly disparate frameworks converge on three types of knowledge, as necessary for the 21st century: foundational, meta, and humanistic. They argue that the synthesis of these different frameworks suggests that nothing has changed, that this tripartite division between what we know, how we act on that knowledge, and what we value has always been important. This analysis suggests that, though the 21st century is different from previous times, it does not mean that our core roles have changed.

This study investigated the perceived development of student teachers’ attitude towards research and the development of their research knowledge and skills, after participating in an introductory course in teacher research. The findings reveal that the students perceived a positive development in their attitude towards research, especially in their opinions of the importance of research and their own capability of conducting and using research. This study showed a significant difference, as students described teacher research as more important in comparison to the extent to which they were planning on carrying our research or using it in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the Early Childhood Training Program. This program was designed to increase the quality of care offered to children age 0 to 5 in a metropolitan area of Southern California. Participants were recruited from six center-based child care programs serving preschool-age children and included program administrators, teachers, teacher aides, and enrolled children. The six participating programs were assessed at four levels: program administration, classroom, teacher, and child. The results demonstrated that the largest effect sizes were seen at the program administration and classroom levels and that smaller effect sizes were found with regard to the teacher and child levels.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of a yearlong, online teacher professional development (oTPD) program, Prime Online, on teachers’ mathematics knowledge for teaching (MKT) and to examine the components of a PD program that impacted participants’ MKT. The analysis indicates latent growth modeling and focus group data indicated growth in participants’ content knowledge and initial growth in knowledge of students from pretest to midtest, with a decline at the end of the program. The authors conclude that that Prime Online has potential to provide teachers with ongoing, rigorous, high-quality learning opportunities for impacting their knowledge of mathematics content and pedagogy and of their students.

This study investigated the current practices and training needs of early childhood professionals in conducting assessment with young children with and at-risk of disabilities. The findings reveal that the participants reported that they used a wide range of standardized tools and nonstandardized methods to assess children’s development in the developmental domains. Three of the top five tools most frequently used by professionals to assess children’s skills are curriculum-based assessment methods that are developmentally based and that take into consideration the child’s experiences and background. The authors recommend that preservice teacher preparation programs must include numerous targeted field assignments. Furthermore, preservice teachers must receive instruction in how to use a few of the most commonly used tools and assessment methods.