Exploring the Black Box: Using Mixed-Reality Simulation in Preservice Teacher Education

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: Innovative Technology Use in Preservice Teacher Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the findings of a qualitative collective case study that explored the use of mixed-reality simulation to understand how preservice teachers understand threshold concepts. The use of mixed-reality simulation in pre-service education has the potential to bridge the theory to practice divide for situated cognition, supporting the notion that what is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned and used (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Findings indicated that threshold learning emerged through the liminal learning space of mixed reality simulations. Participants demonstrated transformative, integrative, irreversible, troublesome and bounded concepts as part of their experience of developing professional identities within the simulations.

Authors

• Catherine M O'Callaghan, Western Connecticut State University

• Jody S. Piro, Western Connecticut State University