In this article, the authors present a framework for collaborative, field-based early childhood teacher preparation, situating birth-though-grade-12 teacher education in diverse community contexts and involving school and community personnel to achieve universal 21st-century goals for the teaching and learning of young children. The authors conclude that effective early childhood teacher education must be firmly grounded in the established theories and standards of early childhood education, but also well-positioned to meet the needs of diverse young children and to adapt to a context of increased accountability and demographic shifts.

In this study, the authors wanted preservice teachers’ (PSTs) to understand and recognize that their beliefs and stereotypes about math, along with their level of math anxiety, have a direct correlation to how they teach math, both positively and negatively. Negative math experiences lead PSTs to think they are not good at math. This lack of math knowledge and confidence then impacts the type of math teacher they become. In order to provide the PSTs alternative ways to teach math, this study implemented research-based practices aimed to math anxiety and change their negative beliefs and stereotypes. The authors found that PSTs loved the variety of ways math manipulatives were taught and used. This evidence suggested that the specific strategies utilized by the professor would have a positive impact on the PSTs’ beliefs and stereotypes about math, along with decreasing their level of math anxiety.

This study investigated the effects of the Big Five personality traits on academic success as measured by the final grade and study satisfaction of college and university students in early childhood education in Germany. As expected, students with higher conscientiousness also had better college and university GPAs. The findings indicated that conscientiousness corresponded with better GPAs for college and university students in early childhood education. Furthermore, school-leaving GPA was quite a good predictor of college and university GPA in this study of early childhood education. In addition, higher conscientiousness was associated with higher study satisfaction but only for college students.

In this study, the authors investigated co-learning between cooperating teachers (CTs) and their preservice teachers (PSTs). Using frame analysis, the authors contrast three problems-of-practice addressed by 23 dyads: problems of developing novice teachers, problems of improving teaching, and problems of improving student learning. The authors describe ways in which knowledge became shared, actors assumed new roles, and new types of tools, activities, and forms of discourse emerged for contextualizing collective work. Based on this study, the authors propose three process measures: the quality of student discourse CTs and PSTs support, the quality of discussion among dyads about students’ ideas, as well as the quality of newly created or evolving social routines and tools.

This study examined the professional development of teacher educators and differences in learning preferences between less and more experienced teacher educators and between university-based and school-based teacher educators. The findings show that significant differences were found between school-based and university-based teacher educators. While most university-based teacher educators were mainly interested in improving their teaching, less experienced school-based teacher educators were more focussed on aspects such as coaching skills.