Highly qualified teachers with strong STEM backgrounds are needed to teach children, particularly in high-need school districts. One university's teacher preparation program used a constructivist approach to build candidates' technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge to enhance their preparation to teach in classrooms where they are expected to utilize instructional technology effectively. Teacher preparation programs prepare candidates to a certain degree, however, beginning teachers continue to need support. This chapter reports on how prepared these new STEM teachers were to teach and the challenges they faced in high-need school districts. This chapter also discusses the instructional technology provided to these teachers from a federal grant to address some of these challenges. The chapter concludes that beginning STEM teachers benefit from induction supports that 1) provide university-based mentoring, 2) allow them to continue to use strategies and technologies they had access to during their teacher preparation program, and 3) continue to develop themselves as professionals.

We report on the potential of higher education science faculty involvement in a K–12 scientist–teacher partnership as a source of faculty professional development (PD). Participating higher education science faculty members were paired with middle or high school science teachers to create online, technology-enhanced curricular materials in a range of disciplines for middle and high school science classes using innovative, open-source software created for the project. The same pairs designed and taught associated PD workshops to participating in-service teachers during a summer institute. The activities and professional development cover Earth and space science, physical science, and life science. Survey results on higher education faculty involvement, and attitudes indicate that this process represents a valuable form of faculty PD. It also provides a foundation for future collaboration and network building.

How student teachers might benefit from using their mobile technologies during teaching experiences is a timely question for teacher educators. This chapter describes efforts to use the TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) to investigate how students use iPad computers during their student teaching and design appropriate supports. A design-based approach (Sandoval & Bell, 2004) was used over two years with two cohorts of student teachers (N=60). Descriptions of the use of the TPACK framework in this endeavor and findings from surveys and field notes about how and to what degree mobile technology can facilitate activities and interactions in planning, teaching, reflecting, and sharing are included. The case is made for co-learning and co-constructing by student teachers and teacher educators of the various TPACK domains of teacher knowledge in the context of mobile technology. Implications for developing supportive learning environments for 21st century student teachers are also discussed.

How do educators leverage students’ fluency with ubiquitous information and communication sources to foster a scholarly digital ethos? This article describes a blended learning environment designed to engage first-year students in 21st-century emerging forms of scholarship and publication. The authors describe an effort to reverse the millennials’ passive attitude and practices when conducting online research, described in previous studies, into a scholarly digital ethos characterized by the use of high-quality, relevant sources of information, effective academic research, and critical evaluation of information for the purpose of scholarly online writing and for establishing a credible online presence.

Reform based curriculum offer a promising avenue to support greater student achievement in science. Yet teachers frequently adapt innovative curriculum when they use them in their own classrooms. In this study, we examine how 19 teachers adapted an inquiry-oriented middle school science curriculum. Specifically, we investigate how teachers' curricular adaptations (amount of time, level of completion, and activity structures), teacher self-efficacy (teacher comfort and student understanding), and teacher experience enacting the unit influenced student learning. Data sources included curriculum surveys, videotape observations of focal teachers, and pre- and post-tests from 1,234 students. Our analyses using hierarchical linear modeling found that 38% of the variance in student gain scores occurred between teachers. Two variables significantly predicted student learning: teacher experience and activity structure. Teachers who had previously taught the inquiry-oriented curriculum had greater student gains. For activity structure, students who completed investigations themselves had greater learning gains compared to students in classrooms who observed their teacher completing the investigations as demonstrations. These findings suggest that it can take time for teachers to effectively use innovative science curriculum. Furthermore, this study provides evidence for the importance of having students actively engaging in inquiry investigations to develop understandings of key science concepts. (c) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 149-169, 2011

How do educators capitalize on students' comfort with ubiquitous communications in order to develop information literacy skills required in the 21st century? A curriculum materials librarian and a professor in the School of Education present an approach that uses library instruction, online research scaffolds, and peer evaluation within a class wiki to enhance student research practices and academic achievement. The explosion of information sources and access to networked technologies has provided the opportunity to "ratchet up" the expectations for student research in higher education. The Association of College & Research Libraries's information literacy standards for higher education provide a framework for setting these expectations. The authors describe features of an introductory education course that seeks to enhance honors freshman students' knowledge of library research resources, efficient research skills, and scholarly writing, as described in these standards.

There is a rich history of researchers developing curricular materials aimed at enhancing student learning in American classrooms. Though many of these innovations have been successful on a small scale, institutionalizing them so they become part of a district's instructional culture has been a challenge. As large districts try to scale up and sustain the use of successful innovations, they are faced with the task of supporting many teachers with varied levels of experience with the materials on an ongoing basis. This article describes our efforts within a mature district–university partnership to build the district's capacity for providing this support. In this effort, university researchers have participated with district curriculum specialists in a workcircle to support district lead teachers as they plan and conduct professional development around reform‐based curriculum materials. Our approach has been to build on the classroom expertise of the lead teachers by providing them with access to theoretical and research‐based knowledge relevant to their work as professional developers. We use two examples of our work with the lead teachers to describe how theoretical ideas from the learning sciences guide our efforts. These ideas include the situated nature of knowledge and learning, the role that communities of discourse and practice play in refining practitioners' understandings, and the use of a cognitive apprentice model to scaffold lead teachers' understandings and enhance the district's capacity to scale and sustain reform.