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To prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to work with diverse populations of PreK-12 students, teacher educators are incorporating a variety of field-based experiences into teacher preparation. Service-learning courses can provide PSTs with additional field experiences beyond formal student teaching. This study is concerned with the experiences of a group of undergraduate PSTs as they tutor in an alternative school as part of a service-learning course. To make sense of their experiences at the alternative school, these PSTs compared their own PreK-12 experiences and those of the students they tutored. In this study, the students at the alternative school served as the most influential contributors to PSTs' developing conceptions of teaching and of schools-a finding that has implications for teacher preparation.

During fall 2022, a resurgence of invasive group A Streptococcus (iGAS) infection in children and adolescents was observed in two of CDC's Emerging Infections Program (EIP)* surveillance sites: Colorado (Denver metropolitan area) and Minnesota (entire state). This increase followed historic declines in invasive bacterial diseases during 2020, concurrent with mitigation strategies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic † (1). Whereas reports of iGAS increased among all age groups, including adults, the increase among children and adolescents was notable, occurred earlier than seasonal increases during previous years, and accompanied a resurgence in hospitalizations for respiratory viral illnesses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza. Viral infections, such as influenza and varicella, have been identified as risk factors for iGAS infection in children, adolescents, and adults (2) and can be reduced by vaccination.Surveillance for iGAS is conducted by 10 U.S. sites as part of EIP's Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs). § An analysis of cases among Colorado and Minnesota EIP site residents aged <18 years who met criteria for iGAS ¶ was conducted using ABCs data from the Colorado and Minnesota surveillance sites. Case counts, age distribution, and clinical characteristics of patients with iGAS infection were compared over three periods:

This study investigates the learning reported by a set of volunteer participants from three university teacher education programs: from one Southwestern U.S. University, the program in secondary English/Language Arts Education and the program in Elementary Education; and from one Southeastern U.S. University, the program in secondary English/Language Arts Education. Based on interviews conducted between the end of coursework and the beginning of student teaching, this study uses a sociocultural perspective to consider not only the manner in which the teacher candidates’ learning was mediated by a host of factors, including formal teacher education courses and mentor teacher guidance, but also a wide range of factors that introduced competing conceptions of effective teaching. The interviews were analyzed collaboratively by the two authors, who relied on a sociocultural analysis attending to the pedagogical tools, attribution of learning to specific sources and the settings in which they were located, the areas of teaching in which the tools were applicable, and goals toward which the pedagogical tools were deployed. Findings suggest that even with the three programs having radically different structures and processes, the teacher candidates reported very similar learning, yet with variations conceivably following from their program structures. Furthermore, teacher education emerged as one of several sites of learning named by teacher candidates, rather than serving as their sole or even primary source of learning. The study concludes with a consideration of the many factors that contribute to teacher candidates’ conceptual understanding of effective teaching and the role of teacher education programs within this vast complex of goals, epistemologies, and practices.

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