Using Simulated Parent–Teacher Conferences to Assess Interns' Ability to Partner With Families

• In Event: 72.038 - Community Knowledge and Creating Partnerships With Families

Abstract

Partnering with families in ways that support children’s learning is central to high quality teaching. Therefore, teacher education programs must support interns in learning “partnering practices."
In this paper we report on our efforts to design simulated parent-teacher conferences, a key site for leveraging family resources, as a means for assessing interns’ capacities to interact with and learn from diverse families in order to better support the needs of students. We report on our analyses of these simulations, guided by the following questions: (1) What practices are interns engaging in during the parent-teacher conference? (2) What are the indicators of strong and weak enactments of partnering practices?

Authors

• Debi Khasnabis, University of Michigan

• Simona Goldin, University of Michigan

• Matthew Ronfeldt, University of Michigan