"I Appreciate Your Confusion as a Point of Discussion": Learning to Teach via Virtual Education Environments

• In Event: The Pursuit for Responsible Educators Creating Equitable Learning Opportunities: A Cross-Institutional Conversation

Abstract

While most teacher preparation programs rely on courses, fieldwork, and student teaching in the teacher preparation of their students, many preservice teachers (henceforth referred to as PSTs) have limited opportunities to practice learning to teach for their future multicultural and multilingual classrooms (Korthagen & Kessel, 1999; Moore, 2003), specifically the practice of taking-up the professional discourse of teachers (Rex, 2006). This disconnect, we believe, may stem from what Korthagen and Kessel (1999) posit as differences between epistemic knowledge and phronesis knowledge (p.7). They noted that while the majority of content learned in teacher education courses is epistemic knowledge, that is, general concepts related to teaching and learning; instead, the emphasis should be on phronesis knowledge, which focuses on perceptions of real situations confronted in classrooms followed by opportunities to discuss and reflect upon ways to react (Korthagen & Kessel, 1999). Concurring with the view that technology is a way through which PSTs can apply theory to practice and enter into the culture of the classroom (Luke, 2000; Karchmer-Klein, 2007), our study focused on PSTs’ phronesis knowledge by examining their discourse strategies of taking-up or not of students’ questions and ways they interacted with content-area teaching in mathematics, science, philosophy and social studies during their teaching demonstrations with Mursion’s (a mixed-realty platform) virtual simulation classroom.
Data consisted of a 2-hour video recorded simulated session that took place in Fall 2019 among 4 groups 17 PSTs in a college of education in California. Using video, we transcribed classroom discourse, (via message units (Green & Wallat, 1981)) exchanges among the PSTs and student avatars during their content-area-teaching segments. Discourse analysis involved unpacking message units with a focus on instances of PSTs’ learning opportunities into the craft of teaching or lack of it as they responded in real-time to unanticipated questions from the student avatars in a simulated classroom, as well as during the peer-to-peer and student-teacher debrief shortly after the session.
Two key findings were discovered. First, there was a potential use of the virtual education environments in imparting phronesis knowledge to our PSTs; that is, the engagement in the real situations confronted in classrooms followed by opportunities to discuss and reflect upon ways to react. The PSTs had to think on their feet and respond to students’ unanticipated questions relating to the content taught. Through this kind of take-up, the PSTs learned to think and respond in-the-moment on what classroom teachers are asked to do daily; and therefore, they had the opportunity to learn the professional discourse of teachers (Rex, 2006) and their future profession. Second, the study makes visible the singular pedagogical focus of the PSTs when delivering their instruction contributed to the missed learning opportunity to make connection of the cultural aspects that students bring to the lesson being taught. The PSTs did not realize that space and time are an important and essential part in teaching and that cultural relevance is connected to all of the content presented to students, even if we plan to do so.

Authors

• Ravy S. Lao, California State University - Los Angeles

• Christina Restrepo Nazar, California State University - Los Angeles