Internet resources abound for preservice teacher (PST) use today, but we do not know how they choose and describe their implementation of them. This study investigates 158 elementary PSTs’ lesson plans across eight courses to describe plan inspiration and justification. PSTs reported being inspired by cooperating teachers (CTs), friends and family members, university courses, and Internet resources. In some cases, these PSTs simply followed lesson plans given to them. In other cases, they collected, curated, synthesized, and applied ideas based on inspirations, showing dispositions of New Literacies Theory. This study provides evidence that teacher educators need to engage PSTs in intentionally developing the skills of curation by acknowledging and modeling the depth and breadth of resources, including those that are not necessarily sanctioned. Implications include ways that teacher educators can frame PSTs’ understandings as they critically consume online resources through Critical Curation Theory.

This study examined 158 lesson plans at one institution across two teacher education programs, inclusive early childhood and elementary education, to determine the impact of Internet usage as inspiration on preservice teachers’ lesson plans. Fisher’s exact test determined statistically significant differences between the Internet use of preservice teachers in the two programs. The data revealed that the preservice teachers in the elementary education program used more Internet resources when planning lessons compared to the preservice teachers in the inclusive early childhood program. Follow-up interviews suggest that the preservice teachers in the inclusive early childhood program had more practicum field experiences, thus increasing their use of physical resources and reducing their use of Internet resources.

Online teacherpreneurs are teachers who use social media platforms to create, sell, and distribute educational resources to others. For many teachers, they have become the new curriculum developers in our virtually intensive world. Curriculum development in mathematics education has a large impact on how students understand concepts, but little is known about these online mathematics teacherpreneurs influences on the curriculum. Therefore, as part of a larger study investigating the top 500 free elementary mathematics educational resource developers on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT), we surveyed the teacherpreneurs who created these top resources. Using the constant comparative method, we analyzed 58 responses to learn more about the online mathematics TpT teacherpreneurs: who they are, how they believe they became popular, and what they believe their teacher customers want when searching for resources. We found these teacherpreneurs identified themselves as teachers with typically over 10 years of experience creating classroom resources. Many attributed their popularity to advertising their resources via social media and having a large number of products available for teachers. They identified beliefs that teachers want easy to use, free, quality materials that are visually appealing. Implications, including findings that indicate a misalignment between what teachers say they want and what the teacherpreneurs believe teachers want, are discussed.

Working at a teaching intensive university, it is often challenging to balance the demands of teaching and research. It is even more difficult to incorporate undergraduate research into the mix, despite knowing the benefits of this practice, when that culture is not present in your particular program. This article offers insight into how one group of teacher educators embedded undergraduate research into an existing research project and the lessons the faculty and students learned along the way.

Accessible and engaging, this text provides a comprehensive framework and practical strategies for infusing content-area instruction in math, social studies, and science into literacy instruction for grades K-6. Throughout ten clear thematic chapters, the authors introduce an innovative Content-Driven Integration (CDI) model and a roadmap to apply it in the classroom. Each chapter provides invaluable tools and techniques for pre-service classroom teachers to create a quality integrated thematic unit from start to finish. Features include Chapter Previews, Anticipation Guides, Questions to Ponder, Teacher Spotlights, "Now You Try it" sections, and more. Using authentic examples to highlight actual challenges and teacher experiences, this text illustrates what integrating high-quality, rich content-infused literacy looks like in the real world. Celebrating student diversity, this book discusses how to meet a wide variety of students’ needs, with a focus on English Language Learners, culturally and linguistically diverse students, and students with reading and writing difficulties. A thorough guide to disciplinary integration, this book is an essential text for courses on disciplinary literacy, elementary/primary literacy, and English Language Arts (ELA) methods, and is ideal for pre-service and in-service ELA and literacy teachers, as well as consultants, literacy scholars, and curriculum specialists.