Section archive - Instruction in Teacher Training

This study examined the reasoning and responses of prospective elementary and secondary teachers to a student’s non-traditional strategy for dividing fractions. The authors used a teaching-scenario task to explore the teachers' reasoning and responses. Six categories of reasoning were constructed, making a distinction between deep and surface layers. The connections between the participants’ reasoning, their teaching response, and their beliefs about mathematics teaching were investigated. The authors found that there were not only differences but also similarities between the prospective elementary and secondary teachers’ reasoning and responses.

In this article, the authors report on a study in which they examined the multiple interactions and activity settings in which student teachers learn to teach language arts. The study explores the student teachers' experiences from the perspective of the three key triad members- student teachers, cooperating teachers and university supervisors- using activity theory. The findings reveal that all members of the triad were simultaneously operating in multiple settings and facing competing demands that shaped their actions and stances

The study examines the use of video clips from teachers’ own classrooms as a resource for investigating student mathematical thinking. Three dimensions for characterizing video clips of student mathematical thinking are introduced: the extent to which a clip provides windows into student thinking, the depth of thinking shown, and the clarity of the thinking. 26 video clips were rated as being low, medium, or high on each dimension. The analysis suggests that the relationship between the video clip dimensions is most important in predicting whether a video clip will support in-depth conversations of student thinking on the part of teachers.

The demographics of classroom teachers and teacher educators do not mirror the diversity found in today's schools. As we prepare preservice teachers to be quality educators for all students, we must work to ensure that they are examining issues of equity and diversity that will affect those they teach. The article examines this challenge from the author's perspective as a teacher educator. Through self-study research, the author considers how she, as a white, female, middle-class teacher educator, attempted to help preservice teachers to think beyond their own experiences. In the end, what she categorized as a strictly intellectual pursuit uncovered something much deeper: the impact of emotion on learning in a university classroom.