Using and Adapting Simulated Teaching Experiences to Support Preservice Teacher Learning

This chapter provides a set of recommendations for teacher educators interested in using simulated teaching experiences to support teacher learning of pedagogical practice in the post-COVID era. Built from existing research, the recommendations from the study come from lessons learned as five elementary mathematics and science teacher educators used a simulated teaching experience to support preservice teacher learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors begin by situating this work in the larger context of practice-based teacher education and then provide an in-depth description of how five teacher educators at different universities integrated a simulated teaching experience into their elementary mathematics or science methods course. The chapter ends with a discussion of lessons learned and how educator preparation programs and teacher educators can leverage the opportunities created by using simulated teaching experiences in the post-COVID era.

Sensemaking of University and District Stakeholders in Implementing a Teacher Residency Policy in Louisiana

A growing body of research has identified teacher residency’s potentials for improving and sustaining preservice teacher learning through a stronger district–university partnership. Drawing on sensemaking perspectives on education policy implementation, this qualitative case study examines how a variety of university and district stakeholders make sense of and implement a state-mandated teacher residency in Louisiana. Findings reveal that stakeholders are primarily making sense of the residency in isolation, leading to incoherent understandings and varied implementation practices. Opportunities to improve stakeholders’ collective sensemaking and collaborative implementation and to optimize the benefits and potentials of teacher residency partnerships are discussed. This study has implications for teacher education policy implementation and continuous inquiry into the complexities of teacher preparation.

A Research Review of Literacy Tutoring and Mentoring in Initial Teacher Preparation: Toward Practices That Can Transform Teaching

Our goal through this literature review is to report and synthesize the findings from research into literacy tutoring and literacy mentoring in initial teacher preparation. We identified a total of 62 published articles that met our selection criteria. We identified four conceptual areas of focus to organize and represent our findings: (a) the structural and design features of the one-to-one or small-group experiences, (b) preservice teacher learning and growth within the tutorial/mentoring experience, (c) preservice teacher learning and growth beyond the tutorial/mentoring experience, and (d) mediating factors associated with preservice teacher growth. We discuss the challenges and promises for this line of research for transforming teacher preparation through the attention to third and hybrid spaces for mentoring experiences.

Pivoting From Evaluative to Educative Feedback During Post-Observation Conferencing

In disentangling the, often conflated, evaluative and educative functions of preservice teacher supervision, the authors reimagine supervisory practice within the specific context of the post-observation conference. Claiming the post-observation conference as a teaching space provided the impetus leading to the design of a theoretically grounded post-observation conference protocol foregrounding the educative function of supervision, leveraging the mediating role of the university supervisor in supporting preservice teacher learning, and reflecting the principles of effective feedback. A critical feature of the protocol is the intentional focusing of feedback on one of four superordinate elements of teaching that provides continuity and consistency across post-observation conferences allowing preservice teachers to connect knowledge and skill related to the development of complex practice.