Exploring the Efficacy of PBTE to Preservice Teachers' Responsive Instruction Within Online Contexts

• In Event: Examining Shifts in Teachers' Student-Centered Practices as a Result of Practice-Based Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives
During the COVID-19 pandemic, our teacher preparation program shifted to online instruction. This shift disrupted a key feature of practice-based teacher preparation: Preservice science teachers’ (PSTs) approximation of core instructional practices during extended pedagogical rehearsals called macroteaching, aimed at promoting rigorous and responsive classrooms (Author 1, 20XX; Author et al., 2009). PSTs continued macroteaching using the Zoom™ teleconferencing platform. Given this unplanned shift in practice-based teacher education, we asked:
• How did PSTs frame the purpose of macroteaching when participating in an online setting?
• How was PSTs’ participation in macroteaching, as instructors and students, shaped by the online setting?
While enacting rigorous and responsive instruction is important, preparing PSTs for such teaching is underexamined. Some researchers have focused on supporting PSTs through practice-based teacher preparation, meaning that teacher education disrupts PSTs’ images of disciplinary work and teaching by learning core practices through multiple rehearsal opportunities while building relationships with students and their communities (Windschitl & Calabrese Barton, 2016).
We used situative theory to address the complexity of examining how and why PSTs’ participation in practice-based teacher preparation might be shaped by an online setting. Situative theory is a hybrid analytical lens framing individuals’ learning through their participation in activities that occur through interactions with actors, tools, and discourses of a context (Greeno, 2006).
Methods
Fifteen undergraduate participants were peers in a secondary science methods course we co-taught. The participants self-identified as:
· 9 women (1 East Asian, 1 Iraqi-American, 7 White Americans)
· 6 men (White Americans).
The methods course in this study was the second course in two-course sequence. We met for four hours per week, two hours per class.
We collected and analyzed data from four interactive episodes: (1) requested or informal planning communication, (2) observations/video recordings of macroteaching, (3) participant-generated artifacts, and (4) two types of interviews.
We engaged in four interacting phases of analysis: (1) developing and applying codes to the initial round of interview coding, (2), using a priori codes about rigorous and responsive instruction to analyze macroteaching instruction in the online setting (see Tables 1-5), (3) pattern finding and triangulating data, and (4) member checks.
Results
We make three primary assertions. First, while PSTs wanted to enact core practices during virtual macroteaching, how they framed the purpose of macroteaching, and their subsequent planning, reflected the sudden shift to an online setting. Second, PSTs observed that participation decreased in the online medium. Third, our analysis of macroteaching aligned with the PSTs’ observations: participation became less rigorous and responsive in the online setting.
While the online setting constrained how PSTs chose to participate, the online setting helped strengthen their desire to enact rigorous and responsive instruction in the future.
Significance
We have two lingering questions. First, can online settings support practice-based teacher preparation? Second, since the PSTs were forced into a setting that did not support their emerging ideas about teaching and their participation in core practices, will they be more likely to enact rigorous and responsive instruction during their first years of teaching?

Authors

• David Stroupe, Michigan State University

• Julie Christensen, Michigan State University