Book Summary: Performance-based assessments have become a critical component of every teacher education program. Such assessments allow teacher candidates to demonstrate their content and pedagogical knowledge, skills, and dispositions in an authentic setting.Evaluating Teacher Education Programs through Performance-Based Assessments analyzes and discusses the theory and concepts behind teacher education program evaluation using assessment tools such as lesson plans, classroom artifacts, student work examples, and video recordings of lessons. Emphasizing critical real-world examples and empirically-based studies, this research-based publication is an ideal reference source for university administrators, teacher educators, K-12 leaders, and graduate students in the field of education.

Although more nuanced understandings of assessment have been proposed in the physical education literature, assessment practices remain relatively underdeveloped, and when used, tend to focus on traditional, summative evaluations of learning. However, physical education teacher education programs can be used as an intervention to help pre-service teachers develop assessment knowledge and skill. Toward this end, the purpose of this article is to propose an evidence-based framework for helping pre-service teachers develop assessment literacy that is rooted in occupational socialization theory. The framework provides a four-phase approach to integrating assessment into teacher education, and includes suggestions for how physical education teacher educators can progressively help build pre-service teachers’ assessment knowledge in line with the focus given to instruction and planning. These suggestions acknowledge the technical and sociocultural aspects of learning to use assessment. Implications are discussed along with the need to help graduating pre-service teachers transfer lessons learned into the workplace.

This study explored the beliefs of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers about project-based learning (PBL), as they encountered a project-based learning high school where they implemented a project-based unit of instruction. A qualitative study was conducted with one undergraduate cohort in a higher education science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) national initiative that has 40 U.S. replication sites. Using teaching philosophy statements and focus group discussions, the beliefs of STEM pre-service secondary teachers are made visible. The findings from this study reveal a recurring theme: the process of how these pre-service teachers seemed to evolve and mature as teachers, from novice toward becoming an expert, as they asked themselves internal questions that are common to developing teachers. These pre-service STEM teachers experienced 1) internal questions about their own growth as a potential teacher, as evidenced through their verbal and written statements; 2) tension between PBL content and pedagogy; and 3) tension between practice and theory. The findings also infer that there are potential critical variables that may contribute to pre-service teachers’ beliefs. Those variables identified were the following: 1) the sequence of when the project-based instruction (PBI) course was taken; 2) time, as related to when the participant took the PBI course in relationship to the final semester when they were engaged in apprentice teaching; and 3) the field placement location during the apprentice teaching semester.

Orientador: Miriam Godoy Penteado / Banca: Laurizete Ferragut Passos / Banca: Telma Aparecida de Souza Gracias / Resumo: Esta pesquisa trata da Formação Inicial de Professores de Matemática, em particular sobre o uso de tecnologia informática. Sabendo da problemática existente nos cursos de graduação, como, por exemplo, a desarticulação entre teoria e prática, entre formação universitária e realidade escolar, deteve-se na seguinte questão: "Quais são as perspectivas, expectativas e dificuldades que os futuros professores apresentam quando refletem sobre uma prática educativa utilizando planilhas eletrônicas na escola básica?". A pesquisa contou com a participação de dois futuros professores de Matemática da UNESP de Rio Claro. Foram realizados três encontros de planejamento, dez encontros de intervenção em uma escola pública, e dez encontros de reflexão, que ocorreram sempre após cada intervenção. Os licenciandos tiveram a oportunidade de expor suas idéias sobre as experiências realizadas e, a partir de uma análise à luz do referencial teórico, foram extraindo temas que se referem às suas expectativas, perspectivas e dificuldades. Entre eles, a gestão da sala de aula e a transposição de conteúdo, a complexidade da sala de aula, como eles percebem os alunos, as condições de trabalho na escola, ser professor e o uso de tecnologia informática. / Abstract: This research addresses the pre-service mathematics teacher education, in particular their practice with computer. Considering the problems concerning teacher education courses - as, for instance, the disarticulation between the theory and the practice, and between the university education and the school reality - it was formulated the following research question: "What are the perspectives, expectations and difficulties that the future teachers experience when they reflect on an educational practice using spreadsheets at the basic school?" The research was developed in collaboration with two future mathematics teachers from UNESP at Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil. It was organized three planning meetings, ten intervention meetings in a public school, and ten reflection meeting, that always took place right after each intervention meeting. The reflection meetings were videoed and transcribed. The data were analyzed with reference to the literature. Themes were identified that could be referred to their expectation, perspectives, and difficulties. These themes included: the teaching in the classroom and the transposition of the contents; the complexity of the classroom environment; the interaction with the students; the school working conditions; being a teacher; and the use of computers. / Mestre

The primary objective of this study was to describe the influences upon pre-service elementary teachers' preplanning, lesson planning, and bases for interactive decision making during their lesson implementation. Six female volunteer pre-service elementary teachers from the teacher preparation program at the University of North Texas planned and taught three separate lessons in one of the following content areas-social studies, language arts, mathematics, science, and safety, at six different schools in the north Texas area. Each element of the lesson plans (18 total) was classified for analysis. Following the presentation of each lesson, the pre-service teachers were asked to use the repertory-grid technique to sort out five decisions from a series of lesson-implementation decisions which had been observed and recorded by the investigator. Then the six pre-service teachers were interviewed by the investigator using the stimulated recall technique. During the interview, each decision was discussed with the pre-service teachers, who responded to seven structural questions that probed their concerns, attitude, type of concerns, and number of concerns. The six pre-service elementary teachers possessed some ability to direct students in their classroom learning using activities and instructional knowledge. This enabled them to notice individual student performance and that of students in the group or in the class. During their interactive teaching, pre-service elementary teachers made more decisions concerning the implementation of management strategies than decisions concerning instruction and activities, in their classroom management, the pre-service teachers focused the most attention on students' verbalization and performance. The study showed that the student's classroom behavior, the thing in which a student is interested, the student's relationship with other students, the feeling of a student, and a student's action caused the six pre-service elementary teachers to immediately modify their strategies.

Developments in technology have influenced all areas of life, including education and in particular, language learning and teaching. The computer has become very advantageous in the teaching of foreign languages, especially with the augmentation of hardware, software and the World Wide Web. Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is beneficial, since it helps teachers to enhance their teaching and gives students the opportunity to learn in an authentic and interesting environment. The impact of CALL has led many researchers to carry out studies to explore the significance of CALL and the factors that could enhance or reduce the integration of CALL into language learning and teaching. Although CALL could be beneficial to the enhancement of English proficiency among Saudi Arabian students, the integration of CALL is still narrow in terms of quantity and quality among EFL teachers in public female secondary schools in Riyadh. So, this study aims to explore the current integration of CALL among these teachers. Furthermore, this study aims to explore some of the factors that contribute to the integration of CALL, those being computer literacy and the computer training that is available for both pre-service and in-service teachers. In addition, the study focuses on the kind of training that is vital to enhance teachers' use of CALL. Also, this study revolves around the teachers' roles when using CALL, their barriers to the integration of CALL, as well as their attitudes toward CALL. The first step in this study is a background of the history of language teaching methods, starting with the traditional methods and ending with the integration of CALL. The literature review follows in order to substantiate this study with relevant studies that have been conducted in this area and to provide the theoretical background of the study. After that, the methods that are used to carry out the study are indicated; including the questionnaire, follow-up interviews and two focus groups. Lastly, an analysis of the results is done in order to come up with the findings. The findings of the study suggest that the current levels of computer use and computer literacy among EFL teachers are still insufficient. The available computer training is inadequate for both pre-service and in-service teachers and there are no computer courses facilitated by the Ministry of Education. Moreover, in-service teachers still need ongoing computer training courses to keep them up to date with recent developments in educational technology. Recommendations to increase teachers’ computer literacy and to enhance their use of CALL are considered as well as recommendations for further Saudi Arabian studies on CALL. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Afrikaans / unrestricted

When interviewing school students for what constitutes a good mathematics teacher, the first characteristic usually listed is the ability to explain well. Besides well-founded content knowledge most important for classroom episodes of teacher explanations is knowledge about how to present mathematical concepts in a comprehensible way to students. This encompasses competencies in the area of verbal communication as well as the conscious use of means for illustrating and visualising mathematical ideas. We report about an analysis of explanatory processes in math lessons and about an analysis of prospective teachers\'' explanatory competencies. As a result we identify improvements in teacher education at university.

Over the past decades, there has been a growing consensus among researchers and teacher educators that more support and training should be provided for pre-service and in-service teachers in order to help them acquire basic assessment knowledge and competence. Using a quasi-experimental research design, this dissertation study examined the effectiveness of a backward-designed assessment training course for improving the assessment literacy levels of pre-service primary teachers who were participating in college-level teacher preparation programs in Shanghai. Two extant naturally formed classes, within which the eighty pre-service primary teachers from a private pre-service teacher education institution XT in Shanghai fit the participants recruiting criterion, were used to serve as the treatment and control groups. Framed by the design approach of Understanding by Design (UbD) developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005), an assessment training program was developed and provided for those in the treatment group during a 12-week period of time; in contrast, those in the control group were not provided with any assessment-related courses. For all the participants, their levels of assessment literacy were measured twice, before and after the intervention, by using the Chinese version of the Assessment Literacy Inventory (Mertler & Campbell, 2005) which I modified further to better meet the context of this study. Results of the study suggest that: 1) among the courses (excluding the intervention itself) provided for the pre-service primary teachers involved in this study, limited efforts had been made to prepare the pre-service teachers for their future assessing tasks; 2) due to the inadequacy of assessment training, most of the Chinese pre-service teachers being tested were not initially literate enough in their assessment knowledge or practice; and 3) whether or not one participates in the assessment training course is a statistically significant predictor of pre-service teachers' assessment literacy, with their previous assessment literacy controlled. In other words, with the embedded theoretical framework of UbD, the designed assessment literacy training course appears to have had a large positive impact on improving pre-service teachers’ assessment competency ( F (1, 77) = 135.91, p 2 partial = .638).

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