A Continuum of Pedagogies for Preparing Teachers to Use High-Leverage Practices

This article provides a framework and description of pedagogies that may be used in teacher preparation across a range of settings from college classrooms to P-12 settings to support teacher candidates as they learn to use high-leverage practices (HLPs). These “pedagogies of enactment” must include a continuum of opportunities to use teaching practices in increasingly authentic settings, ranging from video analysis, case studies, rehearsal, and virtual simulations to use of practices with coaching support in a classroom (e.g., lesson study, structured tutoring, and aligned field experiences). In this article, we use research on the development of professional expertise and from cognitive science to identify pedagogies from the teacher education research base that have promise for promoting candidates’ learning and describe how these pedagogies might be scaffolded over the duration of a teacher education program to promote learning.

Facilitating Authentic Practices in Teacher Education Through Pedagogies of Enactment

There has been a renewed interest in practice-based teacher education, in which teaching candidates don't just learn about teaching but actually acquire instructional experiences during their time in the educator preparation program. Teacher educators and scholars have called for the creation and acceptance of a coherent curriculum centering around a research-based set of core or high leverage practices. Grossman's pedagogy of enactment framework has provided one method of studying how teacher educators prepare future teachers for enacting successful instructional practices. In this pedagogy of enactment framework, teaching candidates learn about effective instructional practices through artifacts and other representations, decompositions of these practices, and then approximate the practices through rehearsals in simulated environments. This chapter specifically details three cases studies of authentic practice that one university program uses to prepare teacher candidates within this framework of practice-based teacher education and high leverage practices.

Teacher Practice Spaces: Examples and Design Considerations

Teacher practice spaces are learning environments, inspired by games and simulations, that allow teachers to rehearse for and reflect upon important decisions in teaching. Practice-based teacher educators use a variety of approaches to simulation in methods courses and other professional learning opportunities, and existing simulations often attempt to holistically replicate authentic teaching conditions. We extend this work by developing new kinds of practice spaces that do not attempt to fully simulate teaching, but rather offer playful and creative opportunities for novice teachers to develop skills and dispositions valuable for teachers. We summarize six different practice spaces developed through design research, and then articulate a set of design considerations emerging from this work to expand the genre of pedagogies of enactment in teacher professional development.

Learning to See Students: Opportunities to Develop Relational Practices of Teaching through Community-Based Placements in Teacher Education

Background For decades, scholars have argued that teaching and learning depend fundamentally on the quality of relationships between teachers and students, yet there is little research about how teachers develop relationships with students or how teacher education prepares teachers to do this work. Arguably, articulating the relational practices of teaching is critical for those aiming to prepare teachers to reach across differences, educate from a social justice perspective, and teach an increasingly diverse population of students. Noting the emphasis on relationships in community-based organizations (CBOs), the authors investigated preservice field placements in CBOs as potentially strategic contexts for learning about relational aspects of teaching. Objective The authors engaged the questions: What do candidates learn in CBO field placements? What are sources of variation between candidates’ learning outcomes? What are individual and contextual factors that shaped candidates’ opportunities to learn in CBOs? Specifically, which factors influenced candidates’ inclination and capacity to enact relational teaching practices (e.g., the methods and skills associated with learning about and connecting with students, families, and communities)? Research Design This study was a 3-year longitudinal investigation. Authors followed two cohorts of candidates from their first quarter of preparation into their first year of teaching. Qualitative methods, such as interviews, observations, and document review were employed in this inquiry of 12 case study candidates. To examine questions of variation, authors also conducted an in-depth comparative case analysis of a subset of two candidates and their CBO placement contexts. Findings CBO placements facilitated opportunities for candidates to “see students”: candidates developed deeper understandings about children and more nuanced conceptions of diversity; experienced and examined school from an out-of-school perspective; and demonstrated greater attentiveness to the role of context in learning. The more detailed comparative analysis of two cases revealed variation in candidates’ experiences and their enactment of practices involved in building relationships with children and families. This analysis identified individual and situational factors (in coursework and CBOs) that facilitated and impeded candidate learning in CBOs. Conclusions Findings from this study highlight the types of learning outcomes that preser-vice community-based placements potentially afford, as well as factors that make some placements more educative than others. The authors offer a theoretical lens that attends to variation in learning, which could be leveraged in future empirical work. This research contributes to the field's developing efforts to identify key social justice teaching practices and to conceptualize pedagogies of enactment for such practices.