Editors’ Notes

In this issue, we present to our readers six articles with varied methodologies that each relates in some way to pre-service teachers and their instructional processes. Whether university teacher education programs have undergraduate or graduate licensure programs, traditional or alternative routes to licensure, what they tend to have in common are courses that provide pedagogical content knowledge to program participants. They do so through varying designs of field-based practices in which participants have experiences with master teachers and students so that they may realize how to take the theoretical underpinnings into practice while also learning to manage the diversity of classroom experiences for the students they encounter. The articles in this issue take us on a journey across content areas, from literacy to science, from student teacher to first-year teaching experiences, and from belief systems to classroom behavior management. Methodologically, we bring you two articles involving a single case study, one that is a qualitative study, two that are quantitative studies, and one that is a multi-case longitudinal study.

In “Clouded Views and Silver Linings: Learning to Teach Literacy in Cooperating Teachers’ Classrooms,” Kathryn Struthers Ahmed examines how one pre-service teacher learned to teach literacy in an urban, poverty-impacted school. The study scrutinizes the influence of this teacher’s relationship with her cooperating teacher in relation to literacy instruction. Ahmed contributes to the literature on factors that support and/or hinder the professional growth of pre-service teachers. Framed within cultural historical activity theory, findings from this single case study indicate that an amiable relationship between a pre-service teacher and school-based mentor teacher does not, in and of itself, always maximize learning outcomes. Implications from the current study include strengthening the curricular alignment between teacher education program coursework and student teaching experiences as well as increasing opportunities for structured reflection and discussion about student teaching.

“My Eyes Have Been Opened’: Pre-Service Secondary Teachers Exploring Behavior Management through a Microteaching Project,” by Erin Mikulec and Kira Hamann, adds to the ongoing conversation about preparing pre-service teachers to respond to student behavior and effectively manage a classroom. The authors contend that microteaching is a practice that can support pre-service teachers’ development of classroom management skills. Microteaching involves pre-service teachers presenting a section of a lesson plan to their peers for feedback. In this qualitative study, the researchers primarily relied on written reflections from their secondary education pre-service teachers who reflected on teaching a 20-minute lesson to peers along with participating and observing as a peer tasked with acting like a high school student. Findings suggest that allowing students to participate in microteaching before entering a clinical teaching experience can increase self-efficacy in relation to classroom management.

Eralp Bahçivan and Yasin Aydin consider a comprehensive belief system model for pre-service science teachers in “Pre-service Science Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs: Responding to ‘Which’, ‘How’ and ‘Why’ Questions.” The authors maintain that negative core beliefs should be integrated into pre-service science teachers’ teaching belief systems, epistemological beliefs affect these teachers’ teaching and learning beliefs, and conceptions of teaching and learning exist on a constructivist-traditional scale. Based on these assertions, Bahcivan and Aydin examine the relationships between and inconsistencies within depressive beliefs, epistemological beliefs, and conceptions of teaching and learning. Their quantitative study suggests that pre-service science teachers with depressive beliefs about themselves are more likely to view scientific knowledge as stable. Recommendations include interventions rooted in cognitive behavior therapy.

In their work, “The Affective vs. the Academic: A Quantitative Study of Pre-Service Teachers’ Expected Impact on their Future Students,” Jeremy Delamarter and Katie Wiederholt explore in a quantitative study the extent to which pre-service teachers expect to foster affective outcomes over academic outcomes. They surveyed 112 pre-service teachers through an inspiration/content dichotomy (I/CD) framework and found that, generally speaking, participants tended toward affective outcomes over academic outcomes. However, those in graduate certification programs tended to emphasize expected academic outcomes over affective outcomes, whereas participants in traditional undergraduate programs emphasized the affective over the academic. The authors suggest that program instructors might consider addressing the interdependent nature of affective and academic outcomes both explicitly and programmatically so as to avoid cognitive dissonance that could occur when pre-service teachers enter the profession.

Authors Lara K. Smetana, Jenna Carlson Sanei, and Amy Jennifer Heineke provide us a specialized glimpse into pre-service teaching through their study titled, “Pedagogical Language Knowledge: An Investigation of a Science Teacher Candidate’s Student Teaching Strengths and Struggles.” Their case study follows the experiences of one participant of a field-based program, Neil, who had successfully completed student teaching in a diverse secondary science classroom with a high EL student population. Data consisted of typical student teaching sources, to include observations of his teaching, assignments, and reflective journal entries. Interview data rounded out the data sources analyzed through a constant-comparative approach. Findings indicate that Neil’s knowledge and understanding of science, language, and science–language integration proved to be of higher sophistication than his implementation, and at times, his practices were contradictory to the more sophisticated views that he held. The current study affirms that science teachers require supportive expertise in promoting students’ language development while also receiving content-based classroom instruction. The authors suggest that content and language faculty work together to reflect upon their own programs while recognizing that teacher candidates’ progress in integrating science concepts and language is a developmental process.

Finally, we turn to Lindsay Joseph Wexler to take us through the pre-service experience and into the novice teaching experience through her article, “How Feedback from Mentor Teachers Sustained Student Teachers Through Their First Year of Teaching.” In her two-year longitudinal qualitative study, Wexler followed three novice teachers during student teaching and through their first year of teaching to examine the feedback they received during their mentoring experiences. Data sources included student teaching lessons, reflections, and observation notes, along with interviews, followed by observations and interviews during their first year of teaching as well. All three participants received frequent, focused feedback from their master teachers during student teaching, which they used to improve their instructional practices. However, as first-year teachers, they found that they had to self-advocate for feedback from instructional coaches and sometimes had to find their own mentors either from inside or outside the school. In addition, they craved more feedback than they received, suggesting that they viewed feedback as critical in the learning to teach process.

As we consider the articles in this issue, we recognize the research undertaken with pre-service teachers who are preparing to teach in highly diverse classrooms. Taken together, these articles shed light on a variety of key issues and opportunities encountered by pre-service and novice teachers that need to be considered for the improvement of teacher education programs that ensure educational and academic success of students in preK-12 schools.