This project focused on the development and use of a new, innovative, technology-based approach to help elementary teachers learn how to teach. The simulated classroom environment, provided by Mursion^TM, allows teachers to interact with and lead a discussion among five student avatars. The avatars are controlled by a trained actor called an interactor or simulation specialist, but the teachers do not see the interactor; instead they view the students on a laptop or television screen. Our focus was on helping preservice teachers currently enrolled in university-based teacher preparation programs practice facilitating argumentation-focused discussions. Facilitating argumentation-focused discussions is traditionally difficult for new teachers to learn to do well, and new teachers are unlikely to become good at leading such discussions without support. At the same time, engaging students in argumentation-focused discussions is a type of teaching practice that is known to be critical for student learning in both mathematics and science.

Working across four implementation sites (two implementations in mathematics methods courses, two in science methods courses), the project worked with teacher educators to implement three cycles of enactment into each course. Each cycle of enactment included: (1) the teacher educator preparing the class to lead a simulated discussion; (2) each preservice teacher individually leading a simulated discussion up to 20 minutes long and then receiving written feedback and a video of the simulated discussion provided by our team; and (3) a teacher educator leading reflection/debrief. While all of the preservice teachers were able to complete the simulation, only the subset who consented to participate in additional survey activities (n=65) are represented in our data. Additionally, each preservice teacher completed a simulated discussion at the start and end of the semester without any support from the teacher educator, so that we could measure improvement. To control for the amount of learning that might have happened in the course even without the simulations, we asked a separate group of preservice teachers enrolled in the same methods course with the same teacher educator in a prior year to complete the pre/post measures (n=43).

One project goal was to determine whether it was possible to design and implement high-quality, content-intensive simulated tasks around the challenging teaching practice of facilitating argumentation-focused discussions. We were able to do so, and one contribution that the work makes is the public release of the simulated discussion tasks themselves, including the written task the preservice teacher sees, a comprehensive set of training materials for interactors, and information about how to score discussion performances. This information is archived in the Qualitative Data Repository (https://data.qdr.syr.edu/) accessible by creating a free account and searching for “Go Discuss”.

A second set of questions we addressed was about how the simulations were used and how successful that use was. We examined this by looking at survey and interview data in which the teacher educators and preservice teachers reflected on how useful the simulations were, and by looking at direct evidence of preservice teacher improvement in leading argumentation-focused discussion between the pre and post timepoints. Our most critical finding is that the preservice teachers improved in their ability to lead argumentation-focused discussions over the course of the semester, and that that improvement was statistically significant in comparison to the no simulation group, even when controlling for differences in initial scores. This finding suggests a strong potential for simulation-based approaches to impact preservice teachers’ learning across different university contexts. Self-report data complement this finding, as teacher educators and preservice teachers alike overwhelmingly found the experience useful and would recommend the approach to others.

We also found that the cycle of enactment around the simulations was a driver of preservice teacher learning. Preservice teachers identified both the feedback they received and the class activities their teacher educators led as critical in their learning. Analysis of preservice teachers’ interviews (for a subset of participants) compared to their performances provided evidence that the preservice teachers paid close attention to the feedback they received, were able to make sense of it, and often applied it directly to the next cycle of enactment. Teacher educators also reported learning from the video records, feedback, and scored simulated discussions, citing these as helping them to monitor individual preservice teachers’ progress and to notice patterns within the class and adjust instruction accordingly.  

These findings suggest that feedback, particularly actionable and specific feedback, is an important support for learning from simulated teaching. They also point to the usefulness of teacher educators’ work to prepare preservice teachers for simulated tasks by helping them understand what argumentation-focused discussion is, unpacking the content of the task, and supporting productive reflections between discussions. Finally, findings suggest that teacher educators can be more responsive to their preservice teachers’ needs when they have the type of rich formative information that is provided by simulations.

Last Modified: 08/25/2021
Modified by: Jamie Mikeska