Learning Pedagogical Reasoning Through Collaborative Sensemaking: Teaching Abortion in a Mixed-Reality Teaching Simulation

• In Event: Innovative Models in Teacher Education for Social Studies Discussions

Abstract

Objectives
Little scholarship has attended to how teachers learn to implement controversial issue discussions (CIDs) effectively amidst political polarization. In the face of a “conflict campaign” of politically-motivated intimidation and hostility to classroom considerations of controversial issues (Pollock et al., 2022), it is increasingly important that teachers learn to facilitate CIDs amidst sociopolitical hostility in ways that foreground equity and justice. This paper emerges out of a larger design-based research (Sandoval & Bell, 2004) project designed to support preservice teacher (PST) learning of contentious CID facilitation through Mursion mixed-reality simulation (MRS) technology, in which participants teach a group of digital avatars–digital puppets voiced and operated by a trained actor.
In this paper, we analyze episodes of pedagogical reasoning to illuminate important considerations in the design of the teaching simulations; these design considerations were both responsive to contextual and relational factors for the teacher educators and PSTs and also proleptic (Vossoughi, 2011) designs intended to prompt particular learning and sensemaking. Grounded in situated sociocultural theories of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and practice-based teacher education (Grossman et al., 2009), this paper responds to the research question: How did PSTs reason collectively about designed dilemmas in facilitating a CID about abortion and Dobbs v. Jackson?

Theoretical Framework
We incorporate a situated sociocultural perspective on teacher learning, understanding learning as contextual, relational, and cultural (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) within a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). We suggest that as we use it in relation to the MRS, pedagogies of practice (Grossman et al., 2009) function as a mechanism to create a common learning experience for PSTs to engage in shared pedagogical reasoning and sensemaking. Thus, the approximation of practice in our project is less about individual skill rehearsal than it is about creating a shared text around which PSTs can reason collectively and co-construct knowledge and meaning about CID facilitation.

Method
Data were collected in the author’s social studies curriculum course for preservice teachers (N=22) through a mini-unit on CIDs using MRS progressively structured around pedagogies of practice (Grossman et al., 2009) on the topic of abortion, the 14th Amendment, and Dobbs v. Jackson (2022). Data sources include field notes, simulation transcripts, participants’ written planning documents, and written individual and shared reflections. The data were coded in multiple cycles of structural and descriptive coding, open coding using a constant comparative method, and code mapping (Saldaña, 2016).

Findings
Findings qualitatively explore pedagogical consequences of design choices made in the simulation and its facilitation. For instance, we designed to prompt reflections on teacher political disclosure, and one PSTs’ fear of appearing biased meant they effectively silenced a staunchly pro-choice girl avatar. We explore the choices, subsequent discussions, and consequences of our instructional choices.

Significance
While teaching simulations are often used for discrete skill rehearsal, we find that its employment as a mechanism around which PSTs can reason collectively about pedagogical choices may prompt teacher learning about some of the more nuanced, challenging aspects of CID facilitation. However, such learning depends on careful simulation design and facilitation.

Authors

• Rebecca Cooper Geller, University of Georgia

• Jamie D. Gravell, California State University - Stanislaus