Pedagogical content knowledge

The current qualitative study focused on understanding the process of learning to
teach. Using interviews of teacher educators, the study explored the importance of a set
of teaching activities developed as part of the Teacher Self Efficacy Survey (Tschannen-
Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001) as well as the inclusion of instructional and assessment
strategies for the teaching activities and the quality of beginning teacher performance of
the activities.
Data were collected from interviews of 15 teacher educators. A process of open,
axial, and substantive coding was applied to the data to inductively identify and
categorize data relevant to the purpose of the study and to allow comparisons among and
between categories.
Findings suggested that teaching activities are critically important to and a
comprehensive description of effective teaching, and that beginning teachers struggle with differentiation and applying their learning to their practice. Further, findings
suggested that the source of beginning teacher struggles was found within the teacher
education program, within school contexts, and between the two institutions. In addition,
findings suggested that beginning teachers perform the student engagement activities and
those related to instructional strategies more proficiently than classroom management
activities, and that all three teaching activity categories were included in the curriculum,
but to different degrees and not all as part of curriculum design. A variety of pedagogies
were used to prepare preservice teachers; however, there was no reported knowledge of
assessment instruments used to measure preservice teachers’ readiness for teaching and
to obtain data on the performance of their graduates. Lastly, this study revealed that
teacher education program leaders were reluctant to participate in a study that sought to
draw direct connections between the skills taught in the program and how well beginning
teachers perform them.
Based on the findings, the researcher recommends further studies to determine the
viability of the teaching activities as a comprehensive and accurate definition of effective
teaching. Further the researcher recommends that teacher education programs and school
districts adopt the teaching activities as a consistent framework for providing preservice
education, for setting school district expectations, and for conducting teacher evaluations.

The quality of early caregiving and educational environments has a significant
effect on children’s later cognitive outcomes. Early childhood teachers are an important
determining factor in the quality of these environments. Due to inconsistencies in practice
across the early childhood field, there is a call for better prepared teachers. Teacher
preparation itself is criticized for its lack of innovative and effective practices. While
research finds that more effective teacher preparation programs are those that are steeped
in clinical practice, these types of experiences are inconsistent and fragmented in the
early childhood field. Part of the issue is the lack of knowledge on how to integrate highquality
clinical experiences carefully into early childhood teacher preparation in order to
prepare all preservice teachers successfully for the classroom.