The authors argue that teacher education programs can provide scaffolded contexts for developing teachers’ ability to critique, adapt, and design inquiry-based materials. In this paper, the authors describe a qualitative study of 17 preservice teachers enrolled in two consecutive science methods courses at a large public university on the east coast. The findings suggest that teachers improved in their ability to critique lesson plans and to suggest revisions that would make them more inquiry oriented.

This research examines perceptions of special education teachers pertaining to mathematics instruction as learners and teachers throughout a semester-long mathematics methods course. The participants were eighteen alternate-entrant special education teachers who were enrolled in the required elementary school mathematics methods course for their program of study. Data were collected via mathematics autobiographical narratives, recollections of the participants’ experiences as K-12 learners of mathematics, and information pertaining to elements of their ideal mathematics classroom.

An Inquiry Learning Partnership (ILP) for professional development (PD) was formed between a university, science centre, and two urban school districts. The purpose of ILP was to offer 4–6th grade teachers specific science content and pedagogical techniques intended to integrate inquiry-based instruction in elementary classrooms. Results indicate that teachers increased their science content knowledge, reported implementing inquiry practices in their classrooms and their students experienced modest gains on 5th grade standardized science achievement exams. While some teachers were transferring knowledge/skills gained in professional development to their classrooms, others encountered barriers to implementing PD.

In this article, the author discusses the professional literature on culturally responsive higher education training. The author focuses on the intended outcomes of professional development, including faculty knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Once the intended outcomes for professional development have been established, activities that best meet these outcomes can be designed and implemented.

This study describes the development of two instruments, the Principles of Scientific Inquiry- Teacher (PSI-T) and the Principles of Scientific Inquiry-Student (PSI-S), to investigate the extent to which students are engaged in scientific inquiry. As a result of the instrument development process employed, each finalized instrument consisted of 20-items separated into five categories. Based on the analyses completed, the instruments appear to be useful instruments for use in comprehensive assessment packages for assessing the extent to which students are experiencing inquiry in science classrooms.

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to test the factor structure of a recently developed Norwegian scale for measuring teacher self-efficacy, and (2) to explore relations between teachers' perception of the school context, teacher self-efficacy, collective teacher efficacy, teacher burnout, teacher job satisfaction, and teachers' beliefs that factors external to teaching puts limitations to what they can accomplish. Norwegian teachers in elementary school and middle school participated in this study.

This article discusses the challenge of retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools. Hence, the paper examines how it is addressed in three context specific teacher education programs, which prepare teachers to teach in urban public, urban Catholic, and Jewish Day Schools in U.S.A. The findings of this study suggest that counter to teaching force trends teachers from the three programs that the authors studied expressed high motivation to serve as teachers or leaders in their particular schools and communities.