Professional Development

Although teacher education is the formal means by which novices are prepared for teaching, they come having already had significant experience in schools. Preservice teachers have formed habits of “teaching” which influence their learning to teach. This article reports a study of the specific knowledge of and skills with teaching practice that novices bring to teacher education with respect to one teaching practice, eliciting student thinking in elementary mathematics, and describes the use of a standardized teaching simulation to learn about novices’ skills.

We describe a four-step strategy used in our professional development program to help elementary science teachers recognize and create lesson plans with coherent conceptual storylines. The conceptual storyline of a lesson refers to sequencing its scientific concepts and activities to help students develop a main scientific idea and, often, is an implicit component of a lesson plan.

Amidon, J., Chazan, D., Grosser-Clarkson, D., & Fleming, E. (2017). Meet me in Azul’s room: Designing a virtual field placement for learning to teach mathematics. Mathematics Teacher Educator, 6(1), 52–66. DOI10.5951/mathteaceduc.6.1.0052

The traditional model for supervision of pre-service science teachers during the field experience within teacher preparation programs includes the appointment of a university supervisor who is often a retired teacher and/or adjunct faculty and a school-based co-operating teacher who rarely receives training from the university to be a mentor. This can lead to a disconnect between the university supervisor, co-operating teacher, and university, and a disjointed experience for the pre-service teachers.

While the scholarship examining the teaching of high leverage teaching practices in the context of pre-service teacher education is continuing to grow (Ball & Forzani, 2009; McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanaugh, 2013; Windschitl, Thompson, Braaten & Stroupe, 2012), fewer teacher educators have been examining how to bring those who mentor pre-service teachers, sometimes called cooperating teachers or pre-service mentor teachers, into this effort.

Released in 2013, the Next Generation Science Standards have the potential to revolutionize science education in the United States, requiring a very different way of thinking about learning and teaching science. Now is the opportune moment to prepare teachers for these new approaches to science instruction and classroom assessment and introduce them to the types of curriculum resources needed to implement the NGSS successfully. What are these teaching resources and professional development needs?

In 2012, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City launched the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Urban Residency Program. The AMNH recruits Earth science majors from across the United States who are motivated to teach in high-need schools in New York State. Developing a teacher preparation program from scratch is a tall order, and the museum is learning a tremendous amount from its pilot effort.

Kinzler, R. & Macdonald, M. (2014, January-February). Preparing new science teachers for high-need schools. Dimensions Magazine, 27.

This article describes a museum-based urban teacher-residency (UTR) program's approach to building subject-specific content knowledge and research experience in Earth Science teacher candidates. In the museum-based program, graduate-level science courses and research experiences are designed and implemented specifically for the UTR by active Earth and Space research scientists that account for almost half of the program's faculty.

Informal science education institutions play an important in the public understanding of science and, because of this are well-positioned to positively impact science teacher education. Informal science institutions (ISIs) have a range of affordances that could contribute to learner-centered science teacher identity development. This article describes research from a clinical experience in a museum where teacher candidates engaged visitors in learning dialogs around objects on a moveable cart in an exhibit.

This chapter examines the affordances of museum resources in informal settings and how they shape science teacher identity. More specifically, this chapter discusses how residents learning how to teach in school settings leverage experiences of learning to teach in museum settings. 

Gupta, P., Trowbridge, C., & Macdonald, M. (2016). Breaking dichotomies: Learning to be a teacher of science in formal and informal settings. In L. Avraamidou & W. M. Roth (Eds.), Intersections of formal and informal science (pp. 178-188).New York, NY: Routledge.