Appendix a: preparing for licensure

If you live in the United States or another country that certifies or licenses teachers with some form of test or assessment of knowledge of teaching, you will find the following case studies helpful in preparing for at least the test. The cases each deal with a realistic teaching problem or dilemma. They are followed by a few questions that can, in principle, be answered in short (half-page) essay format. (This style parallels the style of the PRAXIS II examination taken by many future teachers in the United States.) The content or topic of the cases parallel major topics of the chapters of Educational Psychology— one case per chapter.

Readers who are planning to take the PRAXIS II test, especially the version called “Principles of Learning and Teaching”, will know that the test also includes a number of structured, multiple-choice items. We have not included any examples of multiple-choice test items here, but they are widely available in various published study guides for the PRAXIS II. Perhaps the most authoritative is the one published by the administrators of the PRAXIS itself, the Educational Testing Service:

Educational Testing Service. (2004). Study guide for Principles of Learning and Teaching, 2 nd edition. Princeton, NJ, USA: Author.

Preparing for licensure : the decline and fall of jane gladstone

See also [link] , The learning process; [link] , Classroom management and the learning environment.

Jane Gladstone was student teaching in a sixth-grade classroom. She had been there for several weeks, helping with activities and occasionally leading specific activities that she had devised herself. She liked the students and felt that she had been developing good relationships with them.

One morning Ms Wilson, her supervising teacher, had to leave unexpectedly. “Something’s come up, Jane, and the principal needs me to come to a meeting right away. It could be awhile before I’m back, so you’ll need to take care of things. But you know the routines now, don’t you?”

Jane was surprised and a bit worried, but also excited by the challenge. She did indeed know the routines, so she smiled cheerfully as Ms Wilson went out the door. “OK, everyone”, she said. “We’ll start with language arts. Turn to where we left off yesterday, page 46.”

“But Ms Gladstone”, said Paul, “We actually left off on page 32.”

“No, dummy!” chimed in Katherine, “You were absent yesterday, and the day before we had an assembly. Remember?” Suddenly three or four students were discussing where in fact the class had left off in the book, and therefore where Jane ought to begin. Jane was wondering that herself.

“Page 46!” she said firmly—actually more firmly than she had intended. But the students agreed, and the lesson began. The lesson turned out to be a short story about an athlete who trained hard as a runner for a local competition. Students took turns reading selections from the story, and in this way got about half way through it. Then Joe raised his hand.