Despite recent calls for improvement of teacher training, the field of teacher education struggles with several areas in which it is difficult to build consistency (Darling-Hammond, 2010). One prime example is student teaching: student teaching placements tend to be very different from one another, and naturally the students within the student teaching classrooms also have great variability from class to class and year to year. Ensuring a minimum degree of consistency in the student teaching experience is a daunting task, yet one that the field is challenged to tackle. Additionally, most teacher education programs do not have the resources to embed their teachers in authentic classroom placements throughout their entire program. As a result, teacher candidates tend to take their coursework first, participating in prolonged clinical practice only during student teaching, at the end of their program (Darling-Hammond, 2006).
Another difficulty in the field is providing timely feedback to student teachers as they practice their skills. When candidates begin their student teaching experience they are put in front of a classroom to teach, and even if a lesson goes badly, the student teacher has to struggle through to the conclusion, to the detriment of both the candidate and the children. There are few if any opportunities to catch problems as they occur, to discuss options for correcting problems, or to try things again for improvement.
This presentation will show how one teacher education program is using a mixed-reality simulation lab to provide their new teachers with hands-on teaching practice and immediate feedback, as a supplement to their coursework and student teaching. Unlike teaching in a real classroom, in a virtual classroom environment teacher candidates can stop and ask questions, brainstorm alternatives, and start their lessons over to improve them on the spot. The mixed-reality classroom, which combines real and virtual worlds, allows teachers to interact with virtual students in real time, and gives opportunities for practice and reflection that may not be available in real classrooms (Dieker, Rodriguez, Lignugaris/Kraft, Hynes, & Hughes, 2014).
In fact, practice in the mixed-reality classroom has been shown to increase new teachers’ ability to ask higher-level questions and give specific feedback to students, (Straub, Dieker, Hines, & Hughes, 2014), among other valuable skills. Additionally, these skills have been demonstrated to generalize to real classrooms. The growing body of research on the use of mixed-reality virtual classrooms as a tool to give new teachers practice and feedback shows real promise for improving a broad collection of critical teacher skills.
This presentation is ideal for school administrators, teacher educators, or anyone interested in improving the training of teachers. Attendees of this presentation will leave with a strong understanding of how a virtual simulation system can build teacher competencies in teaching and interpersonal communication, and how it could be used to improve a teacher education program, or to provide support for struggling new teachers.
References
Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Recognizing and developing effective teaching: What policy makers should know and do. Policy Brief, National Education Association.
Dieker, L.A., Rodriguez, J., Lignugaris/Kraft, B., Hynes, M., & Hughes, C. (2014). The future of simulated environments in teacher education: Current potential and future possibilities. Teacher Education and Special Education, 37(1), 21-33.
Straub, C., Dieker, L., Hines, M., & Hughes, C. (2014). Using virtual rehearsal in TLE TeachLive mixed reality classroom simulator to determine the effects on mathematics teachers. Technical report, TeachLive National Research Project.
