Jennifer Aldrich

Evaluating constructivist beliefs of teacher candidates

Abstract Teacher education programs that want their future teachers to embrace and employee constructivist principles must strive to provide opportunities for teacher candidates to develop an understanding of constructivism. The paper presents a structure for embedding constructivist principles into early childhood and elementary teacher education courses and the results of a pilot study at a Mid‐Western University. The results of the study demonstrate that teacher candidates believe that constructivist practices are very to extremely important. In addition, their responses indicated that the teacher candidates believe that their role in a constructivist environment is very to extremely important. The study reinforces the importance of providing experiences in teacher education programs that will result in positive views of constructivism.

Early childhood teacher candidates’ perceptions about inclusion

Abstract The purpose of this research was to examine the beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge of early childhood teacher candidates within the state of Texas about the inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education classroom. The “Inventory of Opinions About Persons with Disabilities” (IOPD) was utilized to collect self‐report data from preservice educators in their last semester of practical experience (i.e., student teaching or final intern semester) in 10 Texas universities. The return rate of the inventories was 70.85%, with data from 172 useable inventories reported in this study. The research questions indicated early childhood teacher candidates held positive self‐perceptions (mean = 2.0388) about their beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge related to inclusion and students with disabilities. However, the participants reported less positive attitudes about training (mean = .09884).