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Abstract

Traditionally, teacher educators provide structured lectures for their pre service teachers to impart knowledge of what will be encountered in the field once they begin teaching in schools. However, in this paper, two reading professors who are proponents of constructivist teaching, decide to provide choice in their seminars. Allowing choices provided an opportunity for students to encourage motivation, maximize performance, help increase independence and self-management skills and provide a feeling of control with their learning situation. Choices are evident in both informal and formal assignments throughout the semester. Pre service teachers who were able to share new knowledge in their self-selected forms, were able to show more critical thinking in their responses.

Author Biography

Tami Morton, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Reading in the Curriculum and Instruction department at Texas A&M University-Commerce. She teaches undergraduate and graduate Reading foundations courses while serving as the Reading Master’s Coordinator. She is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Teacher Action Research (JTAR). Her primary research interests are teacher preparation and multicultural children’s and adolescent literature. She can be reached at tami.morton@tamuc.edu. Dr. Agnes (Aggie) Stryker is a Senior Lecturer in the Curriculum and Instruction department at Texas A&M University-Commerce. She is currently teaching undergraduate reading courses and is involved in the field based education program supervising student teachers. She can be reached at Agnes.Stryker@tamuc.edu

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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