"Concealed Carry Is Above My Pay Grade": Inviting Preservice Teacher Voice Through Online Role-Play

• In Event: 66.070 - Connected Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

This qualitative study examines the use online role-play in pre-service teacher education for English education. In the days and weeks following the school shooting in Parkland, FL, many public officials, community leaders, and in some cases school administrators issued a “call to arms” for teachers, claiming that allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons would be the best solution to keeping schools safe. While some teachers embraced the call (Sandell & Valiente, 2018), others refused the call with Twitter protest like #ArmMeWith and #MarchForOurLives, which seeked to highlight more global educational issues of importance (Morris, 2018). For preservice teachers, just emerging as professionals within the field, such responsibilities were difficult carry.
One approach to processing such difficult questions and conflicting demands was through the simulation-based learning of online role-play, in which preservice teachers are asked to harness fictional personas to research and debate the best solutions to the increasing occurrence of in-school shootings. Through collaborative sharing of news reporting and popular culture texts, pre-service students were able to use anonymity within a social network platform (Schoology) to organize and evaluate, and negotiate the shifting expectations that educators face in an age of too frequent school shootings.
This study draws upon previous research around online role-play as a technique for perspective taking, collaborative investigation, and collective change (Author, 2011) as well as broader learning approaches that center interest-driven and production-centered learning such as connected learning (Garcia, 2014; Ito, et. al., 2013; Mirra, 2014))
This study draws upon the case study data of a larger study that asks how, if, and when technology integration practices taught in the English teacher education program impact teacher candidates’ dispositions toward teaching and learning with technology. The study uses qualitative research methods to examine specifically the online role-play learning activities, asking how they provided a platform for play, inquiry, and production related to emerging professional identities.
Preliminary analysis of online role play postings, survey results, and in class reflections reveal that several factors contributed to the collaborative knowledge building and inquiry experienced throughout the online role-play discussions. Such factors include, elements of play and fiction, multimodality, online research, and anonymity of social network platform. Each element provided unique invitations to explore professional stances on the issue of school safety and the changing professional responsibilities of teachers.

Author

• Candance Doerr-Stevens, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee