Using a qualitative, interpretive research design, this study examined the development of intercultural awareness of preservice teachers in a service-learning setting. We believe that intercultural awareness is a critical disposition for the teaching profession. Data sources included electronic reflection journals of 130 service-learning course participants, comprised of mostly White, undergraduate university students working with elementary school children in culturally diverse settings. Findings illustrated that students increased their intercultural awareness in multiple contexts including linguistic diversity, socioeconomic challenges, home culture norms, and military life. We concluded that preservice teachers' capacity to recognize and work with learners' different needs builds as they become aware of cultural differences. Increasing preservice teachers' intercultural awareness is a critical professional disposition to develop given the extensive student diversity in today's schools.

Findings of this study suggest that scientific argumentation can play an effective role in addressing complex socioscientific issues (i.e. global climate change). This research examined changes in preservice teachers' knowledge and perceptions about climate change in an innovative undergraduate-level elementary science methods course. The preservice teachers' understanding of fundamental concepts (e.g., the difference between weather and climate, causes of recent global warming, etc.) increased significantly. Their perceptions about climate change became more aligned to those of climate scientists. A key assignment was to develop and present an evidence-based scientific argument based on an adaptation of Toulmin's argumentation model (1958). The participants were assigned a typical question and claim of climate skeptics and asked to conduct research on the scientific findings to prepare a counter-argument (rebuttal). The preservice teachers indicated that the integration of scientific argumentation was an effective strategy for increasing their understanding and perceptions about climate change as a socioscientfic issue.

ABSTRACT This study examined students' knowledge, perceptions, and capability to communicate about climate change before and after taking a graduate-level global climate change education course. The 15 students in this study, as typical of many environmental education students in the master's program, had diverse backgrounds, often with weak academic preparation in science. This course was not only designed to help these students understand climate change education, but also to review fundamental Earth, life, and physical science concepts. Students' knowledge of climate change increased significantly after completing the course. Students' perceptions about climate change became significantly more aligned to those of climate scientists. Students' postcourse questionnaires and science journals were analyzed for insights into the effectiveness of the curriculum and instructional approach of the course. Because these students will pursue informal and formal environmental education careers, this study has important implications for the communication of science, and climate change in particular, in the context of public environmental education and formal school settings.

Research into literacy and school subject performance focuses overwhelmingly on identifying and addressing risk factors associated with underachievement. Strenuous efforts are devoted to diagnosing the causes of literacy failure that are patterned by ethnicity, social class, and gender. This study explores the possibility that equal, or even greater insights, may be achieved by investigating instances of successful school literacy practices. The purpose is to develop contextualized theories to explain the phenomena of success in children from working-class families to identify social and pedagogical factors associated with success. Six case studies of successful students in English, general science, physics, catering, mathematics, and economics are presented. Each case is composed of a triad including the student, teacher, and parent. Data includes interviews with all triad members, classroom observations, and student journals. This paper reports the findings of the present study and comments on how they compare with those international studies of scholastic success in contexts of school and home factors.

The field of professional development is moving towards the notion of professional learning, highlighting the active learning role that teachers play in changing their knowledge bases, beliefs and practice. This article builds on this idea and argues for creating professional learning that is guided by a collaborative action research (CAR) theoretical framework, founded on an action research philosophy. CAR components include: motivation – teacher orientation and self-efficacy; knowledge – adding to knowledge bases about disciplines and students relevant to teachers’ interests; action – change in teaching practice perceived to improve student achievement; and reflection – the cornerstone of the entire learning process in which teachers are afforded time and support to connect new experiences to their teaching practice. This article argues for professional learning developers to consider utilizing these four CAR components as a framework. A current professional learning project that was based on the CAR framework is employed to illustrate how it can be implemented.

Given the recent media attention on the public’s shift in opinion toward being more skeptical about climate change, 154 preservice teachers’ participated in an intervention in an elementary science methods course. Findings indicated that students developed a deeper level of concern about climate change. Their perceptions on the evidence for climate change, consensus of scientists, impacts of climate change, and influence of politics also changed significantly. The curriculum and instruction appear to be an important factor in increasing understanding of climate change and developing perceptions more aligned to those of climate scientists. More broadly, this study provides preliminary support for the value of providing a careful framing of the topic of climate change within the context of science methods courses.

Global climate change, referred to as climate change in this paper, has become an important planetary issue, and given that K-12 students have numerous alternative conceptions or lack of prior knowledge, it is critical that teachers have an understanding of the fundamental science underlying climate change. Teachers need to understand the natural and human-induced factors affecting climate, and the potential consequences, and ways to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This study focusses on assessing preservice and inservice teachers' knowledge about climate change at the beginning and end of an instructional intervention embedded in an elementary science methods course. This paper describes the development of an instrument derived from the constructive modeling approach framework. The four components of this approach (the construct map, items design, outcome space, and measurement model) are discussed. In addition, the instructional intervention is described along with findings from the study and an analysis of the instrument.

This study examines a “small moments” writing strategy to nur ture reflection in undergraduate college students participating in a course-based service-learning activity. Using grounded theory methodology to analyze reflection journal entries, the authors identified themes that indicate that, by writing “small moments” reflection journal entries, undergraduate students demonstrate awareness that can build insight, identify discrepancies, increase awareness of community, solve problems, and build confidence. Writing “small moments” reflections allowed the constructivist nature of student learning in a service-learning setting to become visible and evident to both the students and the instructors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among science content knowledge, understanding the Learning Cycle, and self-efficacy among preservice teachers. Preservice teachers enrolled in an elementary science-methods course were categorized as Fearful, Disinterested, Successful, or Enthusiastic science learners based on differing background characteristics in the variables of science interest, performance in science courses methods courses. Analysis revealed that the four categories increased differentially in their science content knowledge, understanding of the Learning Cycle, science teaching self-efficacy, and confidence to learn science. Fearful science learners demonstrated less increases in science content knowledge and understanding of the Learning Cycle than the other three categories. Disinterested science learners demonstrated fewer gains in science content knowledge than Enthusiastic science learners. Fearful science learners were less confident to learn science than other categories.

This study took place at a professional development school (PDS) that opened in 2002 as a K-5 public charter school in collaboration with a local public university in Southern California. The exploratory interpretive study examined how teachers defined professional development and collaboration from their own perspectives. Group interview data and direct field observations were conducted and analyzed employing grounded analytic techniques. Teachers expressed that they were meeting their expectations for personal professional development and felt empowered and renewed to teach in accordance with both research findings on best practices and their own craft knowledge based on years of teaching experience.

Approaching reflection from the perspective of a teachable skill set implies that research may inform how to help students reflect. Employing a framework of making connections often used in reading comprehension, this study aimed to characterize how making connections between the service-learning experience (SLE) and prior experiences in similar settings, personal life experiences, and knowledge gained in the world, helped students make better sense of their SLE. We also discovered that particular words and phrases—reflection markers—are useful in teaching students how to write reflections. The study concludes with practical suggestions for service-learning instructors to facilitate quality student reflections.

This study examined changes in personal science teaching self-efficacy (PSTE), outcome expectancy (STOE), and science conceptual understanding and relationships among these in preservice teachers. Seventy preservice teachers enrolled in science teaching methods courses participated in this study. PSTE, STOE, and science conceptual understanding increased significantly during participation in the course. The study established that novice learners with minimal prior knowledge could not be expected to understand and employ core concepts in their learning schema without extensive guidance. The relationship between science learning confidence and science teaching confidence has not been theoretically delineated in the area of science teacher education. Findings suggest there may be important connections between the 2 for preservice teachers that would be fruitful areas for future research.

Organotin polyamine ethers containing acyclovir in their backbone were synthesized in moderate to high yield employing the aqueous interfacial polycondensation system. The products are high molecular weight polymers. Infrared spectroscopy of the products shows new bands characteristic of the formation of Sn-N and Sn-O bonds consistent with the proposed structure. MALDI-TOF MS below 2000 Da shows the presence of organotin and acyclovir units containing these two moieties. The products show moderate inhibition of a number of cancer cell lines and exhibit the ability to inhibit a number of viruses, particularly the herpes simplex virus-1 and varicella zoster virus that are responsible for herpes, chicken pox and shingles.