Course Descriptions



Step 1: Inquiry Approaches to Teaching (TNTX1100/UCRS 1980)

Rationale

STEP 1 invites North Texas arts and sciences students to explore teaching as a career by teaching science/math lessons in elementary classrooms in order to obtain first-hand experience with planning and implementing inquiry-based curriculum.  Experienced secondary classroom teachers (Master Teachers) teach the course, providing students with direct access to people who love teaching and who believe that teaching is a rewarding career choice.  A low socio-economic elementary classroom and an experienced classroom teacher as mentor provide the future secondary teachers with a first taste of teaching in a diverse yet supportive environment.  An introduction to the theory and practice that is necessary to design and deliver excellent and engaging inquiry-based science and mathematics instruction provides the scaffold for the early field experience. Most students who are accepted into the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Texas have little prior experience with student-centered instruction. While TNT recognizes that an excellent lecture can be an effective tool for disseminating information efficiently, TNT students need practice in teaching through the process of guided inquiry. The TNT program uses the term “inquiry” in a manner that reflects state and national science mathematics standards such as those described in Project 2061, Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1993) and the National Research Council’s Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards (1996).

Explanation

An introduction to the theory and practice that is necessary to design and deliver excellent inquiry-based science and mathematics instruction provides the scaffold for the early field experience. The elementary classrooms are selected both for diversity of the student body and for quality of the classroom teacher. The TNT instructor/Master Teacher and the elementary mentor teacher emphasize both inquiry and classroom management techniques.


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Step 2: Inquiry-Based Lesson Design (TNTX 1200/UCRS 2980)

Rationale

Students who want to explore teaching careers become familiar with the middle school environment by observing and discussing middle school culture, and by teaching several lessons to a middle school class. They build upon and practice lesson design skills that were developed in Step 1 and also become familiar with excellent science or mathematics curricula for the middle school setting. A significant number of TNT students enjoy their teaching experiences in middle schools to the extent that they decide to pursue teaching in the middle grades. As a result of the Step 2 experiences students generally are able to make a decision as to whether they want to pursue a pathway to teacher certification through the TNT program.

Explanation

Class meets once a week on campus for 1 1/2 hours. During this time students learn about the middle school environment, and work on inquiry-based lesson analysis, design, and assessment. Aspiring mathematics and science teachers meet in separate sections; computer science majors, who generally seek computer science-mathematics certification, usually join the mathematics group. TNT students are assigned to either a mathematics or a science mentor teacher in a local middle school to observe once and then teach three inquiry-based lessons. They generally teach in a team with a partner, although occasionally a student has such limited time available for the field assignments that (s)he ends up teaching alone. Field assignments are based on the schedules and transportation needs of the students. Middle school mentors often take more than one team of Step 2 students. The course emphasizes writing good five-E lesson plans, with a focus on the importance of using appropriate questioning strategies throughout the lesson. Students develop pre- and post-assessments for performance objectives. For their final product, students analyze and modify one of the lessons they taught, taking into account the results of the assessments, their reflection on how successful the lesson was, and feedback from their mentor teachers and the course instructor who observed the lesson.

Prerequisite: TNTX1100/UCRS1980


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Knowing and Learning in Mathematics and Science (EDSE 3500)

Rationale

A traditional certification program typically includes, early on, a general purpose educational psychology course. While similarly placed in the TNT program, the Knowing and Learning course was developed as a significant alternative to such an all inclusive, all-things-to-all people course. Rather than pursue very general claims about knowing and learning across disciplines and ages and rather than being based on only one formal perspective, that of educational psychology, this course is intended to focus on knowing and learning in secondary mathematics and science as understood from a multidisciplinary perspective. The course stands on the premise that formal research on knowing and learning in mathematics and science has emerged, in itself, as a robust line of inquiry and design. This line of inquiry has tended to be situated relative to classroom practice and draw on significant insights from many fields of inquiry including psychology, anthropology, critical literacy, sociology, biology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, developmental theory, artificial intelligence, and the domains of mathematics, science and computer science proper. Some now call this integration of domains a “learning science” perspective.

Explanation

The course is not simply a general “survey” of theories of mathematical knowing and learning. Instead, the primary goal of the course is to have students begin to identify theories resonated for them and employ these theories to guide their own practice. TNT is committed to the idea that practice and theory build on each other. Any teaching practice is guided by some theory of how people learn, whether it is explicit or not. If our students are not aware of this, they are likely to adopt teaching practices without considering the full implications of theory behind them (like what kinds of students are expected to be able to learn science and mathematics and what learning means in and of itself). We want our students to be thoughtful and reflective practitioners. Theories are also seen as useful tools for organizing and animating the TNT student’s thinking and sense of creative possibility throughout the professional development course work sequence and over a lifetime of teaching mathematics and science.

Prerequisite: TNTX1100/UCRS1280 and TNTX1200/UCRS2980


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Classroom Interactions (EDSE 4000)

The Classroom Interactions course continues the process of preparing students to teach mathematics and science in upper elementary and secondary settings. The specific objectives of this course are to:

  • Demonstrate to students how learning theories (from the Knowing and Learning course) manifest themselves in instructional settings (usually classrooms), allow students to design and implement instructional activities from their own understanding of knowing and learning mathematics and science, and evaluate the outcomes of those activities based on evidence from student artifacts

  • Provide students with frameworks for thinking about equity issues in the classroom and larger school settings and their effects on learning and provide students with strategies for teaching diverse students equitably.

Classroom Interactions begins with the assumption that students have conducted and analyzed a number of clinical interviews in science and mathematics as part of Knowing and Learning. Students must understand that the process of concept acquisition must encompass learners’ prior formal and informal knowledge, the importance of task construction in eliciting student thinking, and the critical role of reflection and language in the construction of knowledge. While in Knowing and Learning students study the meaning behind understanding a particular content area from an individual perspective, in Classroom Interactions the perspective shifts to studying how classroom events might promote or discourage learning mathematics and science and student equity. In this class, students typically participate in several learning activities and consider how the activities reveal and change their own understanding before implementing similar activities in high school classrooms. These activities allow students to evaluate their own learning and understanding of a subject. Bringing together students from different disciplines allows them to see their subjects from the perspective of a novice and to consider how different perspectives might affect the same curriculum. Participating in learning activities also allows students to consider equity issues. For example, is it fair for only the fastest students to contribute to an activity? How would learning be different if all students were not only allowed but required to participate? Is it fair that some students are learning in a language that is not their first? The class considers the implications of deficit thinking (e.g., blaming the student) in classroom outcomes. The culminating activities of the course are the opportunities for students to teach in a high school and to learn whether they enjoy and are good at it. A major component of the Classroom Interactions course is the opportunity for students to reflect on and evaluate their own work as teachers.

Prerequisite: EDSE 3500 and a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher


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Functions and Modeling (MATH 2100)

This course is a requirement for math majors in the TNT program. In this exploration of secondary mathematics concepts, prospective mathematics teachers are expected to:

  • Deepen and broaden function-related mathematical content knowledge from Algebra through Calculus.

  • Make connections between college mathematics and secondary school mathematics.

  • Build preliminary knowledge of professional and state mathematics curriculum standards.

  • Use reflective and collaborative learning, and develop a stronger sense of professionalism and leadership.

  • Create efficient seekers and presenters of mathematics content knowledge and history.

  • Explore and learn appropriate use of technology in the mathematics classroom. A point is made to cover content that is traditionally glossed over by secondary teachers but is essential to preparing students for university mathematics courses. This slighted content includes (but is not limited to) parametric and polar objectives, linear and matrix algebra, regression aspects of statistics, and growth and decay exponential models.


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Perspectives on Science and Mathematics

Rationale

Perspectives has several interlocking purposes: First, it is intended to help future math and science teachers learn how to think about math and science “from the outside”: to ask questions about what scientists and mathematicians do and why, about where science and technology came from and how they got to be so important in the world today, about what kinds of questions scientists and mathematicians have tried to answer and why. Being able to think about science historically and philosophically, studying changes over time in scientists, scientific ideas, institutions, and practices, can help teachers reach science and math students in different ways from standard textbook approaches. A knowledge of science’s historical contexts will also help both teachers and their students to become more informed citizens in making decisions about scientific issues before the public. Second, it is designed to teach students the skills of the liberal arts: sophisticated research and information analysis, fluent writing, and substantive argument. Third, it requires students, having acquired all these perspectives and skills, to put them to work in science and math pedagogy.


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Research Methods (BIOL 4700/CHEM 4700/PHYS 4700)

Most scientists agree that learning about science has two aspects. The first is to learn material that has already been established: the structure of DNA, how to find forces on

blocks being pushed up a ramp, the definition of an acid, and so on. Most high school and college science courses are mainly devoted to presenting knowledge of this sort. The second is to learn how scientists gained this knowledge, how new discoveries gain authority and are adopted by the scientific community, how to evaluate scientific claims when they conflict, and how to design and carry out investigations to answer new questions. Education in this aspect of science has traditionally been left mainly to graduate school. TNT believes it should become part of high school and college curricula as well, because this second aspect of science is the most important in the long run for most citizens to know.

Research Methods simultaneously provides students specific techniques needed to address scientific questions, and an example of how to provide this sort of training for students through individualized instruction.  The purpose of this course is to present TNT students with the tools scientists use to solve scientific problems. These tools enable scientists to develop new knowledge and insights, the most important of which are eventually presented in textbooks and taught in more conventional science classes. These tools include:

  • Use of experiments to answer scientific questions
  • Design of experiments to reduce systematic and random errors
  • Use of statistics to interpret experimental results and deal with sampling errors
  • Use of probes and computers to gather and analyze data
  • Ethical treatment of human subjects
  • Laboratory safety
  • Finding and reading articles in the current scientific literature<
  • Mathematical modeling of scientific phenomena
  • Applying scientific arguments in matters of social importance
  • Writing scientific papers
  • Reviewing scientific papers

  • Oral presentation of scientific work
Research Methods is primarily a laboratory course, and most of these topics are developed in connection with three independent inquiries TNT students design and carry out.

Prerequisite: EDSE 3500


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Project-Based Instruction (EDSE 4500)

Rationale / Explanation Project-Based Instruction (PBI) is the capstone course in the sequence of required education courses, and is required before TNT students do their student teaching. In Classroom Interactions students gain experience designing a sequence of several lessons that they teach to a high school class. In PBI students design full units of connected lessons, a skill that will be required in student teaching. PBI also provides students with the experience of managing lessons and students outside of a classroom, in a field setting. The name of the course belies the fact that it emphasizes more than project-based instruction. An emphasis is placed on choosing from a variety of appropriate teaching styles, dependent on the type of material and the learning objectives. Project-based instruction is not the only alternative. Students are required to incorporate various technologies into the units they plan.

This course has three essential components. The first is a theory driven perspective accounting for what we know of how people learn and how project-based instruction may be among our most informed classroom learning environments for bridging the gap between theory and practice. The second component is technological and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) competence that will assist the enrolled students in developing their own project-based unit. The third component is a field component consisting of two parts:  1) observation of well-implemented project-based instruction in local schools and 2) implementation of a mini project-based instruction unit with area high school students on a study trip.

Prerequisite: EDSE 4000 and a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher


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Student Teaching (EDSE 4108/4118)

An underlying philosophy of the TNT program is that with extensive, individualized, and on-going coaching, the pre-service teachers’ skills will improve at an accelerated rate.  Our Student Teaching Program illustrates this belief. In addition to the mentoring provided by the classroom teacher to which the Student Teachers are assigned, trained observers with vast teaching experience observe and provide extensive feedback a minimum of 10 times during the semester. All observations of the Student Teacher throughout the semester focus on parts of a larger cohesive document called the Teacher Development Rubric (TDR), which is aligned with the state standards. Because the Student Teachers have taught at various levels in previous TNT courses, they assume teaching responsibilities quickly in their final teaching semester and maintain their role as teacher for the equivalent of two six-week (grading) periods. Furthermore, each required weekly seminar on campus focuses on two of the state standards for new teachers. Student Teachers concentrate on teaching lessons each week in which they demonstrate competency of the particular state standards.

The purpose of Student Teaching is to offer TNT students a culminating experience that provides them with the tools needed for their first teaching jobs. In Student Teaching, students are immersed in the expectations, processes, and rewards of teaching. When making placements, we consider each TNT Student Teacher’s characteristics and abilities as well as the Cooperating Teacher’s teaching and mentoring styles. Our hope is that the complementary strengths of the TNT Student Teacher and Cooperating Teacher will generate a synergism that benefits both people professionally.

TNT reinforces and augments teaching strategies that students have developed through their coursework and field experiences. The program also attempts to fill in any gaps students’ professional development. In particular, TNT focuses on:

  • Classroom management and time management strategies
  • Parent-teacher communication strategies
  • School culture and school dynamics that make up an effective middle school and high school system
  • Legal and logistical issues in teaching
  • Final portfolio
  • State certification examinations
Because TNT students engage in numerous field experiences prior to the apprentice teaching, TNT Student Teachers assume a teaching role very early in the semester. They also explore professional development opportunities beyond the classroom, including attending conferences, subscribing to education journals, joining professional organizations, and conducting presentations in educational settings. Our goal is to provide the experiences, information, and coaching that will enable them to be successful teachers, but teachers who are leaders in their schools and communities.

Prerequisite: EDSE 4500 and a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher


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Last updated: May 23, 2008 | AA/EOE/ADA | Privacy Statement | Disclaimer
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