Preservice Teacher Education

Image of teacher facing a classroom that the viewer cannot see.In this Spotlight, we highlight how the DRK-12 portfolio is advancing the field of preservice teacher education. Twelve projects share the ways they are innovating or addressing knowledge gaps related to preservice teacher education, the unique needs and considerations at the preservice level, how they are connecting preservice experiences to in-service classroom practice, as well as available products and findings.

In this Spotlight:

Suggested Reading

We invited participating featured projects to recommend literature for those interested in learning more about preservice teacher education. We hope you enjoy the following publications that they shared!

  • Billingsley, Berry. (2016). Ways to prepare future teachers to teach science in multicultural classrooms. Cultural Studies of Science Education 11, 283-291.
  • Driver, M. K., Zimmer, K. E., Khan, O., Sadler, J. V., & Draper, E. (2024). Preparing general education teachers for inclusive settings: Integrating high-leverage ractices and mixed-reality simulation in pre-service coursework. Education Sciences, 14(4), 428.
  • Gul Aga, Z. (2024, June). Mathematics pre-service teachers’ perceptions about culturally responsive mathematics teaching and teaching mathematics for social justice. In The Educational Forum (pp. 1-18). Routledge.
  • Jaber, L. Z., Davidson, S. G., & Metcalf, A. (2024). “I loved seeing how their brains worked!”—Examining the role of epistemic empathy in responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 75(2), 141-154.
  • Haverly C., Davis, E.A. (2023). Unpacking readiness for elementary science teaching: What preservice teachers bring and how that can be shaped through teacher education. Studies in Science Education. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057267.2023.2188703
  • Kosko, K. W., Ferdig, R. E., & Roche, L. (2021). Editorial: Conceptualizing a shared definition and future directions for extended reality (XR) in teacher education. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 29(3), 257-278. https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/219894/
  • Kosko, K. W., Ferdig, R. E., & Zolfaghari, M. (2021). Preservice teachers’ professional noticing when viewing standard and 360 video. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(3), 284-297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487120939544
  • Ibourk, A., & Mathis, C. (2024). Developing preservice elementary teachers’ self-efficacy toward teaching science. International Journal of Science Education, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2024.2347154.
  • Margulieux, L. E., Enderle, P., Junor Clarke, P., King, N., Sullivan, C., Zoss, M., & Many, J. (2022). Integrating computing into preservice teacher preparation programs across the core: Language, mathematics, and science. Journal of Computer Science Integration, 5(1).
  • Margulieux, L. E., Liao, Y. C., Anderson, E., Parker, M. C., & Calandra, B. D. (2024). Intent and extent: Computer science concepts and practices in integrated computing. ACM Transactions on Computing Education.
  • Martínez Hinestroza, J. (2023). Drawn onward: Symmetry as pedagogical imagination in critical mathematics teacher education. Philosophy of Mathematics Education, 40, 1–19.
  • Martínez Hinestroza, J., Strange, M. D., & Townsell, C. D. (2024). Centering pre-service teachers' whole selves: A collaborative approach to syllabus design. Mathematics Teacher Educator, 12(2), 89–110. https://doi.org/10.5951/MTE.2023-0031
  • Passmore, C., Schwarz, C. V., & Mankowski, J. (2017). Developing and using models. In C. V. Schwarz, C. Passmore, & B. J. Reiser (Eds.), Helping students make sense of the world using next generation science and engineering practices (pp. 109–134). Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Associations Press.

Featured Projects

ASTEP logo

Aligning the Science Teacher Education Pathway. A Networked Improvement Community

PI: Michele Korb
STEM Disciplines: Science (project toolkit scaffolds for NGSS planning and discourse for unpacking curriculum)
Grade Levels: Elementary & secondary preservice teachers, science educators

Project Description: This project, Aligning the Science Teacher Education Pathway (ASTEP) functions as a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) as a vehicle to bridge gaps across four identified steps along the science teacher training and development pathways within local contexts of 8 participating universities. This NIC has co-created a shared vision and co-defined research agenda between university researchers, science educators and school district practitioners working together to reform teacher education across a variety of local contexts. In these collaborations, the ASET (Alliance for Science Educators Toolkit) resources we have devised reflect common language for discourse related to planning phenomenon-based lessons/ units or unpacking existing curriculum adopted in schools. The overarching goal of the project is to strengthen the capacity of universities and school districts to reliably produce teachers of science who are knowledgeable about and can effectively enact the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), although prepared in varied organizational contexts. Twenty science educators and science practitioner collaborators have worked together in this NIC for 10 years to develop, study, implement and disseminate a Toolkit for NGSS planning and enactment in preservice classrooms, inservice teacher professional development and at state-level visioning sessions for providing support for NGSS. This NIC has begun to widen the scope of access to the Toolkit by sharing exemplars with professional groups (NARST, AERA, ASTE) as well as partnering with national groups such at 3D Molecular Designs and Project WET in an effort to provide exemplar scaffolds for phenomenon-based science curriculum and assessment strategies. 

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Our previous NSF project (Alliance for Science Educators Toolkit (ASET)) was tasked to create a Toolkit to assist with unpacking the NGSS and providing a scaffold of common language for discourse around what constitutes NGSS aligned lessons or curriculum. This was in response to the design of the Equip Rubric that was meant for curriculum designers, but not accessible by those new to the NGSS (new teachers, new users of the NGSS and especially preservice teachers). The current NSF project (ASTEP) built on using the Toolkit in science teaching methods courses in teacher preparation programs at 8 universities and engaged others along the teacher preparation pathway in using the tools. Those others include university supervisors of field placements, inservice teachers, science specialist who are tasked at district and state level at implementing NGSS and teacher induction program directors who oversee NGSS enactment in their districts.  Our work began at the preservice level, not only to address preparing new teachers for engaging in the NGSS, but also to build the skill sets of science educators in those programs. We have since expanded our outreach to science educators groups (ASTE, NARST) and state level science membership (California Association of Science Educators, Utah State Science Educators, Michigan State Science Educators and Kentucky Association of Science Teachers) based on connections forged by our own NIC members. 

Key Considerations at the Preservice Level: We have found that, in our current ASTEP project, that connecting preservice experiences more closely with what teacher candidates experience in the field is essential. There is still a large disconnect between what candidates are learning in their teacher preparation programs and what gets implemented in classrooms. Our candidates are getting cutting edge, research-based experiences for implementing the NGSS but are not able to always practice those in the field. Our work with inservice teachers and supervisors has been limited, but we hope some of our new videos and tips for implementing the NGSS can be circulated more widely in the coming year.

Lessons Learned Through Preservice Work: We are learning that we need more time and bandwidth to disseminate our Toolkit to practitioners in a way that is easily accessed. We are addressing this by engaging more practitioners in our current publications and conference presentations. Our videos under construction are also featuring exemplar applications of our NGSS Tools that classroom teachers have devised, or preservice teachers have designed during their experiences in classrooms in our teacher preparation programs. We realize that to enact shifts in how NGSS is implemented, we need to reach practitioners directly, succinctly and clearly. This is our current focus for our last year of the project. We are also looking for ways to collaborate with others who have devised NGSS tools in order to create a “suite” of tools. If anyone has any great ideas, we would love to connect!

Advice for Prospective Awardees: We advise collaborating with other institutions who have already designed resources to engage classroom practitioners in implementing the NGSS using any existing tools. Getting these tools into the hands of district and state-level planners would be ideal.

Initial Findings: See previous answers and publications listed below. Our team has also presented papers at Far West ASTE, ASTE, AERA and NARST over the past few years as a team. More details available here.

Products: 

2nd grade student making fractions

CAREER: Affirming Bilingual Children’s Participation in Mathematics

PI: José Martínez Hinestroza
STEM Disciplines: Mathematics
Grade Levels: Early childhood to 6th grade

Project Description: This project, CAREER: Affirming Bilingual Children’s Participation in Mathematics (ABC-Par), is a collaboration among elementary school children, teachers, pre-service teachers, and a researcher—all of whom are bilingual—to figure out how adults can honor children’s ways of participating. It tends to be easier for teachers and researchers to notice normative ways of participating, including children using formal talk and traditional mathematics manipulatives. The children in this project, however, often engage in non-normative ways of participating, including translanguaging practices, flowing across languages, registers, and modalities. This project seeks to recognize and tap into these ways of participating, instead of treating them as mere precursors of idealized formal mathematics talk.

A key aspect of this study is that adults—pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and the researcher—ask children explicitly about their participation in mathematics lessons. The teachers and the researcher’s co-analyses of children’s perceptions help teachers set objectives to transform their mathematics teaching into more inclusive spaces. Pre- and in-service teachers are developing research skills to help them recognize bilingual children’s mathematically rich, yet often overlooked ways of participating. Examples of this include prompting—instead of restricting—movement in the classroom by enacting mathematical concepts, such as arrays, and eliciting—instead of silencing—children’s creative use of both Spanish and English to propose and make sense of mathematical ideas.

Connecting Preservice Experience to Inservice Classroom Practice: This participatory research project includes pre- and in-service teachers collaborating in data generation and analysis. This includes pre-service teachers co-facilitating focus groups with children, and co-planning and co-teaching mathematics lessons. Participating pre-service teachers have opportunities to observe a full year of mathematics teaching and learning from second to fifth grade. Through this collaboration, pre-service teachers develop insights into ways of transforming mathematics teaching, simultaneously contributing their knowledge of the local community and their own prior experiences learning mathematics as bilingual children.

Materials and findings from the current stage of the project (based in the elementary schools) will inform a subsequent stage where the research team, in collaboration with children and teachers, will create multimedia modules for teacher educators to use in elementary mathematics teaching methods courses. The modules will allow pre-service teachers in multiple contexts to broaden their perspectives on what counts as participation in mathematics classrooms.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: The essence of this project highlights the importance of involving those directly affected by educational reform in decision-making processes. We observe and talk with children to learn with and from them. Similarly, the process of developing teacher preparation experiences can benefit from asking the pre-service teachers directly and from involving them in designing and co-facilitating these experiences. This is particularly important when working with pre-service teachers from historically marginalized communities, such as Latina bilingual pre-service teachers, because their voices, interests, and knowledge are frequently overlooked. Making pre-service teachers not only the subject but also authors of interventions and research can enhance the work of mathematics teacher educators and the learning experiences of the pre-service teachers.

Initial Findings: Preliminary collaborative data analysis suggests there were marked differences between children’s perspectives of their own participation and teachers’ perspectives of how children participated. While teachers tended to overemphasize completing work, speaking up, and showing mathematical thinking, children provided a more nuanced view of participation that included getting help and helping others, listening and observing attentively, and choosing their own problem-solving strategies, including mental mathematics that could be difficult to put in words. Children, however, were well aware of what teachers expected to see as participation, including being quiet and still, and raising their hands to speak up. During the co-design of transformations, teachers established transformation objectives that included offering opportunities for children to not be embarrassed about making mistakes, elevating writing as part of mathematics participation, incorporating movement throughout lessons, intentionally selecting multiple materials for children to use when exploring specific mathematical concepts, and infusing culturally relevant children’s books and contexts in lessons. We are currently using translanguaging moment analysis and qualitative network analysis of video-recorded lessons to study how the class legitimized non-normative ways of participating and how this participation prompted the flow of mathematical ideas.

Products:

  • Workshops
    • Martínez Hinestroza, J. (2023, September). CAREER counseling: My collaborative path to an NSF’s single PI grant. [Workshop]. College of Education Research Office (COERO), Texas State University, San Marcos, TX.
    • Martínez Hinestroza, J. (2024, August). Supporting bilingualism in the elementary mathematics classroom. [Workshop]. San Marcos CISD, San Marcos, TX.
    • Martínez Hinestroza, J., & Vaca Soria, G. (2024, June). Resisting raciolinguistic ideologies: Validating children’s ways of talking about mathematical ideas. [Workshop]. First National Meeting of Racial Justice in Early Mathematics (RJEM), Chicago, IL.
  • Presentations
    • Martínez Hinestroza, J. (2024, July). Becoming a circle: A new materialist exploration of children's understanding of shape [Paper presentation]. 15th International Congress of Mathematical Education, Sydney, Australia.
    • Martínez Hinestroza, J. (2024, June). Planning curriculum with and for communities of color: Tapping into Black and Latiné kindergartners’ mathematical brilliance.  [Keynote session]. First National Meeting of Racial Justice in Early Mathematics (RJEM), Chicago, IL.
    • Martínez Hinestroza, J. (2023, September). Strategies for funding your scholarship. [Panelist]. Scholarship and Teaching Excellence Program (STEP), Faculty Development, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX.
  • Public Engagement

Epistemic Empathy project logo

CAREER: Cultivating Teachers' Epistemic Empathy to Promote Responsive Teaching

PI: Lama Jaber
STEM Disciplines: Science, Mathematics
Grade Levels: Preservice teachers preparing to teach grades 6-12

Project Description: When students perceive that their experiences and funds of knowledge are not relevant to their science and mathematics learning, they may view these fields as inaccessible to them. This is particularly consequential for students whose cultures, backgrounds, and lived experiences, have been and continue to be marginalized in STEM. There is a pressing need, then, to prepare STEM teachers to recognize, value, and leverage students’ diverse experiential, cultural, linguistic, emotional, and other repertoires of knowledge as resources for learning and teaching in the classroom. This project addresses this need by exploring how epistemic empathy— attunement to and appreciation of students’ intellectual and emotional experiences within epistemic work—might shape teachers’ ways of responding and leveraging students’ sensemaking repertoires in their teaching. Questions guiding this work include: How can epistemic empathy be cultivated in teacher education? How does it shape teachers’ responsiveness? And how do power dynamics manifest in the work of empathy in the classroom? Using a design-based approach, the research team develops and implements educative experiences to cultivate epistemic empathy by broadening teachers’ conceptions of “what counts” as generative for science and mathematics learning and “who counts” as capable of engaging in these disciplines. 

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Recognizing that the work of empathy is powered and that learning to empathize with care and awareness requires patience and time, we find it critically important to seed and cultivate epistemic empathy early on in the teachers’ educational journeys as a target for their learning. Building on work in teacher noticing and responsive teaching in science and math (e.g., Hammer & van Zee, 2006; Louie, 2018; Robertson et al., 2016; Shirin et al., 2010; van Es et al., 2022), our project highlights that learning to listen is an essential aspect of developing empathy necessary for attending to, interpreting, and responding to students’ thinking and emotions. Listening that seeks to understand viewpoints and experiences that differ from one’s own requires a stance of curiosity, patience, and humility, as well as an invested effort on the part of the listener (in our case, the teachers and, we argue, teacher educators as well!) to interrogate one’s expectations and biases. This work requires ongoing practice and reflection and is thick with tension and uncertainty. Teacher education programs provide an ideal context for this complex, emotional, and multilayered work as they offer preservice teachers opportunities to surface, interrogate, and expand their evolving conceptions of teaching and learning and to come to appreciate listening as an inherent aspect of their work as teachers.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: Our ongoing analyses highlight the importance of attending to a range of considerations in the design and curation of resources and educative materials aimed at cultivating epistemic empathy and responsive teaching. Those include conceptual, affective, epistemological, interpersonal, cultural, and ideological aspects of teacher sensemaking that may open up or close off their opportunities to learn. For us, we found it helpful to anchor our design of learning activities in three guiding commitments to support the cultivation of epistemic empathy: 1) having an asset-based orientation to learners —  K-12 students and teachers alike, 2) recognizing the value of heterogeneity in science and math, and 3) developing political clarity. Importantly, it is crucial that teacher educators center relationality and humility in their work with preservice and in-service teachers as they endeavor to forge a trusting learning community that makes space for vulnerability and emotions, and gives grace when missteps happen. 

That said, the design and enactment of such learning experiences are inevitably situated within powered contexts and fraught with tensions, for preservice teachers and teacher educators alike. In our team, we have found tremendous value in having a Professional Learning Community (PLC) where teacher educators have a support system to reflect on tensions they experience in their efforts to cultivate preservice teachers’ asset-based, empathetic, and responsive instructional practices. Such PLCs provide spaces for teacher educators to express frustrations and vulnerabilities, brainstorm ideas and instructional moves, and experience solidarity in advocating for just and equity-centered teaching, especially in contexts and states where such work is contested, for both teachers and teacher educators. 

Initial Findings: Across a range of enactments and reflections, we have found that preservice teachers’ epistemic empathy supported their implementation of more responsive and equitable teaching practices in the classroom. These findings contribute to our understanding of how epistemic empathy can be channeled as a pedagogical resource for teachers to leverage students’ varied intellectual, emotional, and cultural sensemaking repertoires and support more meaningful and equitable engagement in the discipline. That said, across our project cycles, preservice teachers grappled with multiple tensions in their efforts to empathize with learners, tensions that complicate the role of empathy in responsive teaching, including: 1) the challenge of making sense of multiple lines of reasoning, which requires intensive effort and awareness to interpret varied ideas and ways of communicating; 2) the challenge to “think on your feet” and develop comfort with the uncertainty that arises from empathizing with students in moments of teaching; 3) tensions related to responding in ways that honor student reasoning and experiences while also targeting disciplinary objectives; and 4) epistemological, ideological, and sociopolitical tensions related to how teachers frame teaching and learning and the role of empathy therein.

Additionally, our recent explorations highlight the deeply racialized and gendered power dynamics inherent in the work of empathy. These dynamics are especially salient in preservice teachers’ efforts to envision and enact empathetic, responsive teaching practices in a sociopolitically contested context, particularly for preservice teachers with racial, ethnic, and gender identities that continue to be marginalized and made vulnerable by historical and contemporary legislation concerning public education. Our findings show that, for these preservice teachers, empathizing with students across powered lines of difference is a form of inequitable–and often invisible–emotional labor. These findings motivate the need to make such labor visible in teacher preparation and for teacher educators to act as political agents in solidarity with preservice teachers. 

Relatedly, our work as teacher educators and researchers in this project has helped us recognize the need for teacher educators to enact a stance of empathy and compassion in their own interactions with preservice and in-service teachers, to attend to and make space for teachers’ vexations, concerns, and pushback, as they grapple with and learn to take up more responsive and equitable teaching practices in their K-12 classrooms. Throughout our work with teachers, we continue to refine an evolving framework of “responsive teacher education” that aims to describe and characterize considerations and interactional moves that teacher educators can embody, spanning across conceptual, epistemological, ideological, affective, and social levels, with the hope of becoming more empathetic and responsive in our own practice and research efforts.

Products:

  • Davidson, S., Jaber, L. Z., & Metcalf, A. (2024). Learning to listen: Cultivating pre-service teachers’ attunement to student thinking. Journal of Science Teacher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2024.2302694.
  • Jaber, L. Z., Davidson, S. G., & Metcalf, A. (2024). “I loved seeing how their brains worked!”—Examining the role of epistemic empathy in responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 75(2), 141-154.
  • Metcalf, A., Jaber, L. Z., & Davidson, S. (2023). Expanding preservice teachers’ conceptions of science teaching and learning. In Blikstein, P., Van Aalst, J., Kizito, R., & Brennan, K. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS (p. 1482-1485). Montreal, Canada: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
  • Jaber, L. Z., Dini, V., & Hammer, D. (2022). "Well that's how the kids feel!" Epistemic empathy as a driver of responsive teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 59(2), 223-251.
  • Jaber, L. Z. (2021). "He got a glimpse of the joys of understanding" – The role of epistemic empathy in teacher learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 30(3), 433-465.
  • Jaber, L. Z., Southerland, S., & Dake, F. (2018). Cultivating epistemic empathy in preservice teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 72, 13-23.

CAREER: Developing Elementary Teachers’ Self-Efficacy to Teach about Climate Change Using Community-based Practices

PI: Amal Ibourk
STEM Disciplines: Science & Technology (with a focus on environmental and climate science)
Grade Levels: Preservice teachers preparing to teach grades K-6

Project Description: This five-year project explores the impact of a community-based, justice-centered climate change instructional model utilizing the web-based inquiry science environment (WISE) platform. The goal is to enhance both in-service and preservice elementary teachers' (PSETs') self-efficacy, or confidence and attitudes, in teaching climate change science. The program aims to improve teachers' content knowledge and their climate change identity—how they perceive their role and agency in climate change education, and whether they engage with the justice aspects of climate issues. Through place-based and community-based practices, the project seeks to empower both pre-service and in-service elementary teachers to effectively teach climate change. It also aims to foster fifth-grade students' climate literacy, stimulating early interest in environmental issues through hands-on projects like community gardens and composting. PSETs participate in a justice-centered curriculum adapted from WISE modules, focusing on understanding solar radiation, the greenhouse effect, and the impact of human activities on global warming. Interactive simulations and models help PSETs identify human contributions to climate change and explore the inequitable effects of rising temperatures, such as urban heat islands. The program concludes with PSETs developing their own climate action plans to reduce global warming and raise awareness of its disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities.

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: This project helps on building foundational knowledge around climate change education in elementary science education that is developmentally appropriate by introducing PSETs to climate change education and building their self-efficacy around it.

Key Considerations at the Preservice Level: Key consideration at the pre-service level is to make it contextual to the preservice teachers and relatable; but also, to analyze the anthropogenic causes of climate change and addressing the various non-normative ideas around it (e.g., ozone hole,) through simulations and models.

Connecting Preservice Experience to Inservice Classroom Practice: This project is examining preservice experiences by looking at  how their stories shape their perceptions and positioning within the climate justice discourse. It also uses an intersectional lens to explore the complex interplay of how intersectional social identities shape their climate change identity.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: The best advice is attending to the contextual factors and needs of the communities you work with. To approach the work from a place of  humility, curiosity, and ethics of care.

Findings: Findings are available in the following publications:

  • Ibourk, A., Wagner, L., Morrison, D., Young, S., & Milledge, J. (2024). Community Gardens as Places for Ecological Caring in Action. Science and Children, 61(2), 83–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/00368148.2024.2315673.
  • Two Publications have been accepted and will be published in 2025:
    • Ibourk, A., & Burns, K. (Accepted). Local Waters, Global Impact: Inspiring Young Minds through Place-based Environmental Education . .National Science Teachers Association Science & Children Journal Special Issue on Human Impacts. March/April 2025.
    • Ibourk, A., Wagner, L., & Zogheib, K. (Accepted; Minor Revisions). Developing elementary in- service teachers' climate change self-efficacy and climate change content knowledge through learning technologies. Special Issue: Leveraging technology for teaching and learning about environmental science and geohazards in the Journal of Science Education and Technology. 1-30 pages.

Products: In addition to the publications listed above, the following article was published for practitioners:

Critical Mathematics Education project logo

CAREER: Preparing Middle and High School Pre-service Teachers for Critical Mathematics Education

PI: Zareen Aga
STEM Discipline: Mathematics
Grade Levels: Middle & High School

Project Description: Promoting equity-focused mathematics education requires models that will prepare and support mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) who will question existing norms and advocate for all their students. This project will develop a model of support for middle and high school mathematics PSTs to support them in becoming critical mathematics teachers (CMTs), teachers who address the needs of diverse students, are mindful of achievement disparities, and aware of their own biases. The main objective of the project is to develop a cohesive system of support for middle and high school PSTs to become CMTs. The objective will be achieved by supporting PSTs in their methods courses and their fieldwork. Support in fieldwork will be provided in collaboration with cooperating teachers and university supervisors through extended professional development focused on critical mathematics education, including supporting PSTs in creating lessons relevant to students' lives and introducing the cultural and historical origins of mathematical ideas.

Research activities include developing instructional materials for methods courses to help PSTs develop the habits of CMTs. Additionally, cooperating teachers and university supervisors will attend monthly extended professional development meetings focused on critical mathematics education. The project adds to the current body of research on mathematics teacher education by extending existing work on critical mathematics education and by developing an integrative model for preparing middle and high school PSTs through extended professional development. This provides dual support for tackling the problem of discrepancies between PSTs’ classroom and fieldwork experience, specific to critical mathematics education.

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Field experience personnel, such as cooperating teachers (CTs) and university supervisors (USPs), play an important role in supporting mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) to learn about equitable teaching practices. We employed case study methodology to explore the perceptions of CTs and USPs about mathematics identity. We submitted a brief research report proposal to the PMENA conference, to share our CTs’ and USPs’ ideas about their own mathematics identity, their students’ mathematics identity, and how these ideas influence their teaching practice. Our findings have implications for redesigning field experience in teacher education programs.  

Given the important role that field experience personnel play in supporting mathematics PSTs to incorporate these practices we wanted to learn about their own ideas about mathematics identity. In particular, our research question was: What are field experience cooperating teachers’ and university supervisors’ perceptions about mathematics identity?

Our case study findings have implications for PSTs’ field experience. CTs and USPs guide PSTs as they try to connect their coursework-related learning to the teaching practice experienced in actual field experience classrooms. PSTs may learn new pedagogical ideas in their methods courses but it is important that these ideas are reinforced and modeled during their field experience. For instance, if we want our PSTs to develop equitable teaching practices that support the development of students’ mathematics identity, we must learn about pedagogical beliefs held by CTs and USPs. We noticed that all participants were deeply interested in supporting their students’ learning; however, they had different ideas about what it meant to develop their students’ mathematics identity. Some believed that experiencing success on state tests would do the trick, while others believed that being able to solve real life problems using mathematics might help their students develop a positive mathematics identity. Work is needed to support field experience personnel in their development of equity-based practices. In addition, continued collaboration is needed between MTEs, CTs, USPs, as well as PSTs.

It is through a cohesive network of support that our PSTs can be successful in developing equitable teaching practices. MTEs, CTs and USPs must collaborate, to develop tools and procedures in order to become effective mentors for PSTs. This collaboration can help align PSTs coursework and field related experiences. In particular, such an alignment is needed to support PSTs’ development of equitable teaching practices that can support the development of students’ mathematics identities.

Products: Initial findings will be presented at the PMENA 2024 conference.

Spreading Computational Literacy Equitably project logo

CAREER: Spreading Computational Literacy Equitably via Integration of Computing in Preservice Teacher Preparation

PI: Lauren Margulieux
STEM Disciplines: Science, Mathematics, Computer Science
Grade Levels: PreK-12

Project Description: This project works to spread computational literacy by preparing pre-service teachers of all disciplines and grade levels to integrate computing activities into their instructional practices. The project is unique because I work with teacher education faculty in each discipline and grade band to co-design tailored activities that teach disciplinary learning objectives with computer science tools and serve their specific needs. Our shared goal is to improve instructional practices with these powerful tools and create sustainable activities, not to add one more thing to the curriculum. I am passionate about this work because it gives all students the opportunity to engage with computer science concepts and tools. This kind of low-stakes activity in formal education helps to broaden participation in computing. I have seen so many teachers and students, who were originally wary of programming, discover that they are capable of creating solutions through computer science and that they enjoy it.

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Much of the teacher professional development in computer science targets in-service teachers. This approach better serves teachers in districts with the resources to support it. By working at the preservice level, the project prepares a full range of teachers to integrate computing.

Connecting Preservice Experience to Inservice Classroom Practice: Many of our teachers will try out the integrated computing activities during their student teaching, which is almost universally a good experience. The students are often eager to try out these tools, and the teachers value the engagement afforded by the tools.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: Preservice teachers appreciate tools that help them better serve their students, so I try to frame all of the project's activities through this lens so that it doesn't become just another learning objective to complete.

Initial Findings: One major breakthrough finding was treating programming like teaching the computer how to do something because teaching is a good way to learn. If students can teach the computer a problem-solving process (i.e., write a program), resolving misconceptions/bugs along the way, then they must deeply understand that process. This approach resonates well with our teachers.  Another major finding was in conceptualizing how people with no CS background approach problems compared to those with CS knowledge and skills. Those with CS knowledge approach computing problems as a way to automate the problem-solving process. Those without CS knowledge seem to not understand that automating information processing is possible. I believe that this is at the crux of computational literacy and defines a more basic version of computational thinking than current conceptualizations.

Products: Links to products for practitioners, presentations, and publications are available at https://laurenmarg.com/research/. Video tutorials for activities can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@laurenmarg/videos.

Expansive Sensemaking logo

CAREER: Teacher Learning Through Expansive Sensemaking in Science

PIs: Jessica Watkins
STEM Discipline: Science
Grade Levels: Middle & High School Teachers

Project Description: Preservice secondary science teachers often experience science learning in narrow and marginalizing ways in their science coursework. These experiences cause harm, particularly for preservice teachers of color. They also limit the disciplinary resources they can develop for later teaching science in ways that value and sustain their students' ways of knowing and being in the natural world. Our research explores possibilities for cultivating novel spaces for preservice secondary science teachers (PSTs) and inservice science teachers to engage in science. In a content-focused education course, we design for and study PSTs’ engagement in expansive and connective sensemaking, incorporating heterogeneity, power, and historicity in pursuits of explanatory accounts of the natural world. PSTs explore and model phenomena in ways that allow them to draw on not just what they learned in their science courses, but also resources from their families and communities. They consider different ways of communicating their understandings and ways of relating to the natural world, while also reflecting on the entanglement of identity, culture, history, and future-making in their explorations. Ultimately, this course is designed to help PSTs experience what it actually means, looks like, and even feels like to expand beyond narrow stances of what counts in science learning. 

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: In this era of deprofessionalization, teachers (preservice and inservice) often are positioned as conduits for particular teaching practices or curricula, rather than humans and professionals deserving of care, dignity, and respect. Our project focuses on fostering more affirming teachers’ relationships to science not just because we think that will support them to create more affirming spaces to learn science in their classrooms. We believe they deserve to experience science in ways that allow them to bring together parts of themselves–their cultural practices, communication forms, and ways of relating to the world as scientists and future educators. We seek to create a space for PSTs to be critical of the harm that science has caused and continues to cause, while also inviting them to imagine more life-affirming science teaching and learning.  

Connecting Preservice Experience to Inservice Classroom Practice: It is complex to make connections between preservice experiences (particularly those not in a methods course) and later classroom practice given the various other influences on teaching, including later coursework, mentor teachers, teaching contexts, and their students and families. One way we position this course is that it opens up space to re-imagine what we can do in science teaching and learning. We acknowledge to students that this course does not have the same constraints that they will have in their classroom practice, but that if we always limit ourselves to those constraints, even when they are not in place, then we cannot think beyond those boundaries. In follow-up interviews several years after PSTs–now practicing teachers–had taken this course, they described that it helped them reflect on “what is possible.” The teaching artifacts they share with us often do not reflect their everyday practice, but when they felt they could push boundaries in their teaching.

Initial Findings: The final project in the course is inspired by a quote from Braiding Sweetgrass (Kimmerer, 2013): “Isn't this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for good in the world?” (p. 239).  PSTs are asked to create a final project that reflects their “gifts” in science, how these could be disruptive and do good in the world. Our analysis of these projects highlights how students attuned to diverse ways of knowing, communicating, and relating in science and how they made deep connections with their identities and future-making, yet had fewer connections to sociohistorical narratives and structures. Our re-design of the course has focused on strengthening the connections to history. For instance, during our unit on light and color, we discussed three videos showcasing different historical, cultural, and political perspectives on color, including a colonial history of the color indigo, racial discrimination in color film development, and the revival of ancient Japanese techniques for dye production. During our plant unit, we presented local histories of our campus and the relation to the plants we observed. These re-designs are supporting deeper discussions on the ways that our science inquiry is embedded in historical, cultural, and political contexts. 

Products:

  • Watkins, J., De Lucca, N. A., & Pao, S. R. (2024). Fostering expansive and connective sensemaking with preservice secondary science teachers. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 61(5), 1093-1133.
  • For our in-service teacher community that builds on our pre-service teacher course: www.scienceteachercircles.org

XRi Logo

Design and Implementation of Immersive Representations of Practice

PI: Karl Kosko | Co-PIs: Richard Ferdig, Qiang Guan
STEM Disciplines: Mathematics
Grade Levels: Preservice Elementary Teachers

Project Description: Our project examined how immersive representations of practice (XR and VR) facilitate preservice teachers’ professional knowledge and noticing related to fractions and multiplication/division. We focused on how preservice teachers’ embodied perceptual resources could be facilitated to improve their professional noticing of recorded classroom scenarios. This included use of 360 video using only one fixed location (single perspective) or multiple camera locations (multi-perspective) allowing viewers to move from one point in the classroom to another, and able to look in any direction at any of these given points. We also studied the role of directional audio, eye-tracking and head gaze to better understand how teachers’ tacit physical actions were associated with what they attended to in a mathematics lesson.

XRi Infographic

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Teachers’ noticing is as much an embodied activity as anything else. By having 360 videos, we have been able to have shared video experiences that introduce much more complexity but, because of this, are much more similar to actually having gone into a classroom together. The conversations are more real and allow a deeper conversation about classroom practice. Not only does where one looks (or listens) matter, but these behaviors can be facilitated with 360 video in ways that you can’t with standard video. 

Connecting Preservice Experience with Inservice Classroom Practice: One of the most common things you hear when having folks watch a video is a statement how “these aren’t like students in my class.” We have not heard this as much with 360 video and believe it is because you see much more of the classroom (not just what is “selected” a priori) and how we ask folks to view the videos. I suggest that you have teachers view them twice. The first time is to assess and examine the whole class and the second viewing is to focus on a particular group of students (for conversation). You’ll find that teachers will end up focusing on different groups (sometimes noticing similar things), but the conversations are richer because of these dual viewing experiences.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: If you simply wish to use recorded 360 videos (which we have shared many), there are a few things that can help facilitate their use. We suggest using classroom maps for referring to where things are in the classroom (students, desks, etc.). We put letters designating students so that we can more easily talk about who is saying what at any given point. 

If you are thinking of creating your own 360 videos, we’ve created tutorials but many others have created more recent tutorials as the technology evolves. Rather, 360 videos have become much easier to work with over the past few years, and allow more flexibility than standard cameras. You can use a 360 camera to record a regular video but need not set it at a specific angle. I would recommend purchasing a 360 video camera because of its sheer utility and growing ease of use. If I can recommend a brand, I’d recommend Insta360 given it’s superb customer service and focus on simplifying the user experience.

Initial Findings: The project includes over 40 peer-reviewed publications with numerous results and findings. One key finding is that teachers’ professional noticing is inherently embodied. Where teachers look within a classroom informs who, what and how they attend to children’s mathematics (Ferdig et al., 2023; Gandolfi et al., 2022; Kosko et al., 2021; Kosko et al., 2022; Kosko et al., 2024), and teachers’ professional knowledge and prior classroom experiences affect where they look within a classroom (Kosko et al., 2023). We have found numerous other relationships with aspects of embodied experience to noticing, including directional audio (Ferdig et al., 2020) and heart rate (Kosko & Ferdig, 2023). A second key finding is that the more immersive 360 video can be, the more beneficial it is to future teachers’ learning to notice. Multi-perspective 360 video is superior to single-perspective (Kosko et al., 2022), directional audio is superior to stereo or monophonic (Ferdig et al., 2023; 2020), and 360 video is superior to standard video (Kosko et al., 2021). However, adoption of 360 video is still relatively low (Austin et al., 2022) and this is primarily due to lack of familiarity and a fear of an unfamiliar technology amongst teacher educators.

Products: 

  • Project Website: We have a list of publications and products, as well as several 360 videos available for use on our website.
  • YouTube Channel: Our active YouTube channel includes 360 videos of classroom practice, as well as tutorials, and several other newer videos related to other aspects of extended reality and experience. 

Ed+gineering logo

Ed+gineering: An Interdisciplinary Partnership Integrating Engineering into Elementary Teacher Preparation Programs

PIs: Jennifer Kidd | Co-PIs:  Kristie Gutierrez, Krishnanand Kaipa, Pilar Pazos Lago, Stacie Ringleb
STEM Disciplines: Engineering
Grade Levels: PreK-6

Project Description: Engineering education, with its emphasis on developing creative solutions to relevant problems, is a promising approach to increasing elementary students' interest in scientific fields. Despite its potential, engineering education is often absent from elementary classes because many teachers feel underprepared to integrate it into their instruction. In Ed+gineering, undergraduate elementary education majors team with undergraduate engineering majors in an interdisciplinary course project to develop and teach engineering lessons to elementary students in both in-school and out-of-school settings. 

In this project, over 500 elementary education majors taught design-based engineering lessons to over 1,600 elementary students, many of whom came from groups underrepresented in engineering (e.g. girls, Black and Latino students). The standards-based lessons emphasized student inquiry, constructive student-to-student interactions, and were tailored to build from students' interests and strengths. The lessons provided the elementary students the opportunity to engage in engineering practices and to develop solutions to real-world problems, similar to the work of professional engineers. Ed+gineering has resulted in positive outcomes for the elementary education majors and provides a model for improving future elementary teachers' confidence and ability to teach engineering. Simultaneously, many elementary students have had the opportunity to experience engineering and discover how innovative applications of science can be used to solve problems in the world around them.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: One critical lesson we have learned in our journey is that the project has been very successful in positively influencing preservice teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about engineering education, however, the translation into classroom practice has been more challenging. To ensure that new teachers can and do integrate engineering into their classroom instruction, K-12 administrative advocacy is essential. We recommend researchers and educators interested in supporting preservice teacher preparation for engineering integration partner with school and district level personnel who can guarantee that teachers will have the time and resources to integrate engineering activities into their instruction. We have discovered that new teachers find it challenging to fit engineering into their full schedules, especially in a context where reading and math are prioritized, and pacing guides allow little leeway to deviate from prescribed schedules. Furthermore, engineering lessons typically require supplies and preparation time. If these resources are unavailable, teachers are unlikely to try out engineering in their classes. In contrast, when teachers are immersed in a school context that embraces engineering instruction, there can be a seamless transition from preservice learning to inservice implementation and new teachers can successfully bring engineering into their classrooms.

Initial Findings: Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined the engineering knowledge and beliefs of preservice teachers participating in the Ed+gineering project as compared with preservice teachers in alternate classes. Leveraging both quantitative and qualitative data, we have found the Ed+gineering project had a positive effect on all five of our outcome variables. 

  • Engineering Pedagogical Knowledge -  Large effect size
  • Knowledge of Engineering Practices - Large effect size
  • Beliefs about K-6 Engineering Integration - Small effect size
  • Self-Efficacy for Engineering Instruction - Medium effect size
  • Intention to Integrate Engineering - Small effect size

We found the strongest effects for preservice teachers early in their program and for students who participated in the Ed+gineering project for multiple semesters. Examining the interaction between the project and preservice teacher beliefs, we discovered a mediation effect where the project most strongly influences the preservice teachers’ self-efficacy which in turn influences their beliefs about engineering integration and their intention to integrate engineering. Acknowledging the importance of preservice teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching engineering, we examined the ways in which the project influences the development of preservice teachers’ self-efficacy. We found that many factors within the project contribute to preservice teachers’ feelings of teaching self-efficacy including their interactions with their instructors, teammates, and the elementary students, as well as their perceptions of the success of their lessons. We discuss the complex interplay of contextual and interpersonal factors in preservice self-efficacy for teaching engineering in a published conference proceeding and in an upcoming publication.

As mentioned above, while the project has been very successful in enhancing preservice teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about engineering, we have found less evidence that participants have been able to integrate engineering into their classrooms once they graduate and transition to K-12 contexts. We are currently preparing manuscripts describing the barriers and enablers inservice teachers report to teaching engineering in elementary school classrooms. The most reported barrier has been time. Many teachers have difficulty finding space in their daily schedules to teach lessons that incorporate engineering activities. An upcoming publication elaborates on the challenges teachers perceive to integrating engineering into elementary instruction.

Products:

  • Websites:
  • Project Videos
  • Publications & Book Chapters
    • Cima, F., Pazos, P., Lee., M., Gutierrez, K., Kidd, J., Ayala, O., Ringleb, S., Kaipa. K., & Rhemer, D. (accepted). Developing teamwork skills in undergraduate engineering students: A comparison between disciplinary and cross-disciplinary projects. IEEE Transactions on Education.
    • Kidd, J., Pazos, P., Gutierrez, K., Rhemer, D., Ringleb, S., Kaipa, K., Kumi, I., Ayala, O., & Cima, F. (accepted). From Carnival Games to plastic filters: Preparing elementary preservice teachers to teach engineering. In T. Cherner & R. Blankenship (Eds.), Research Highlights in Technology and Teacher Education 2024. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
    • Rhemer D., Kidd, J., Parker, K., Gutierrez, K., & Ringleb, S. (Accepted). A new take on elementary preservice teacher education: Learning to promote student sensemaking by teaching an engineering lesson. Science and Children. 
    • Gutierrez, K. S., Kidd, J. J., Lee, M. J. Pazos, P., Kaipa, K., & Ayala, O. (2023). Preparing undergraduates for the post-pandemic workplace: Teams of education and engineering students teach engineering virtually. Humanities & Social Science Communications, 10(849). 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02383-6
    • Pazos, P., Cima, F., Kidd, J., Gutierrez, K., Kaipa, K., & Ayala, O. (2023). EIPECK: Assessing educators’ pedagogical content knowledge for engineering integration in K-12. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 13(2), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1336
    • Pazos, P., Cima, F., Kidd, J., Gutierrez, K., Faulkner, D., Lee, M., Kaipa, K., & Ayala, O. (2023). Predicting engineering integration in K-12 from the perspective of pre-service teachers. International Journal of Engineering Education 39 (2), 441-452. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10447499
    • Harris, T., Lee, M. J., Gutierrez, K., & Kidd, J. (2023). River’s edge construction: Students engineering solutions to prevent local flooding. Science and Children. https://www.nsta.org/science-and-children/science-and-children-mayjune-2023/rivers-edge-construction
    • Kidd, J., Kaipa, K., Gutierrez, K., Lee, M.J., Pazos, P., & Ringleb, S.I. (2023). COVID-19 as a magnifying glass: Exploring the importance of relationships as education students learn and teach robotics via Zoom. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 12(2), Article 8. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jpeer/vol12/iss2/8/
    • Gutierrez, K.S., Kidd, J.J., Lee, M.J., Pazos, P., Kaipa, K., Ringleb, S.I., & Ayala, O. (2022). Undergraduate engineering and education students reflect on teamwork experiences following transition to virtual instruction caused by COVID-19. Education Sciences, 12(623). https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12090623
    • Cima, F., Pazos, P., Kidd, J., Gutierrez, K., Ringleb, S., Ayala, O., & Kaipa, K. (2021). Enhancing preservice teachers’ intention to integrate engineering through a cross-disciplinary model. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 11(2), 7. https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10352023
    • Gutierrez, K., Kidd, J., & Lee, M. (2021). It’s virtually possible: Rethinking preservice teachers’ field experiences in the age of COVID-19 and beyond. In R.E. Ferdig & K. Pytash (Eds.), What teacher educators should have learned from 2020 (pp. 169-181). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/p/219088/
    • Pazos-Lago, M., Ringleb, S., Kidd, J. & Jones, R. (2019). Scaffolding project-based learning in an engineering and education partnership using open-access technology. Special issue Open Source & Collaborative Project Based Learning in Engineering Education. International Journal of Engineering Education, 35(5), 1306-1315.
  • Published Conference Proceedings
    • Kaipa, K., Kidd, J., Kumi, I., Ringleb, S., Ayala, O., Gutierrez, K., Pazos, P., Cima, F., & Rhemer, D., (2024, June 23-26). Reflections of undergraduate engineering students completing a cross-disciplinary robotics project with pre-service teachers and fifth graders in an electromechanical systems course. Abstract Submitted to ASEE 2024 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).
    • Ayala, O., Gutierrez, K.. Kaipa, K., Ringleb, S., Cima, F., Kumi, I., Rhemer, D., Pazos, M.,& Kidd, J. (2024, June 23-26). Long-term impact of a semester-long multidisciplinary service-learning assignment in a fluid mechanics course. Abstract Submitted to ASEE 2024 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).
    • Kumi, I., Ringleb, S., Cima, F., Ayala, O., Kaipa, K., Kidd, J., Gutierrez, K., Pazos, M., & Rhemer, D. (2024, June 23-26). The benefits of interdisciplinary learning opportunities for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. Abstract Submitted to ASEE 2024 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).
    • Kidd, J., Pazos, P., Gutierrez, K., Rhemer, D., Ringleb, S., Kaipa, K., Kumi, I., Ayala, O., & Cima, F. (2024, March). From carnival games to plastic filters: Preparing elementary preservice teachers to teach engineering. In Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1684-1693). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
    • Ringleb, S. I., Pazos, P., Cima, F., Kumi, I. K., Ayala, O., Kaipa, K., Kidd, J., Gutierrez, K.S., & Lee, M. J. (2023). The Impact of a Multidisciplinary Service-Learning Project on Engineering Knowledge and Professional Skills in Engineering and Education Students. In Proceedings of ASEE 2023 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). https://peer.asee.org/44457
    • Kumi, I.K., Ringleb, S.I., Ayala, O., Pazos, P., Cima, F., Kaipa, K., Lee, M. J., Gutierrez, K.S., & Kidd, J. (2023). How does working on an interdisciplinary service-learning project vs. a disciplinary design project affect peer evaluation teamwork skills? In Proceedings of ASEE 2023 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). https://peer.asee.org/43368
    • Kaipa, K., Kidd, J., Noginova, J., Cima, F., Ayala, O., Pazos, P., Gutierrez, K. S., & Lee, M. J. (2022). Can we make our robot play soccer? Influence of collaborating with preservice teachers and fifth graders on undergraduate engineering students’ learning during a robotic design process. In Proceedings of ASEE 2022 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). https://peer.asee.org/41343
    • Ayala, O., Gutierrez, K. S., Cima, F., Noginova, J., Lee, M. J., Ringleb, S. I., Pazos, P., Kaipa, K., & Kidd, J. (2022). Experiences during the implementation of two different project-based learning assignments in a fluid mechanics course. In Proceedings of ASEE 2022 Conference. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). https://peer.asee.org/41801
    • Lee, M.J., Kidd, J. & Gutierrez, K. (2022). Lessons learned from two teacher educators: What COVID-19 can teach us about preparing elementary preservice teachers to teach the next generation of students. In E. Langran (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1479-1484). San Diego, CA, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/p/220910.
    • Cima, F., & Pazos, P., & Kidd, J. J., & Gutierrez, K. S., & Ringleb, S. I., & Ayala, O. M., & Kaipa, K. (2021, July), Enhancing preservice teachers’ intention to integrate engineering through a multi-disciplinary partnership. (Evaluation) Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. https://peer.asee.org/37084
    • Ringleb, S. I., & Pazos, P., & Noginova, J., & Cima, F., & Ayala, O. M., & Kaipa, K., & Kidd, J. J., & Gutierrez, K. (2021, July). The influence of participation in a multi-disciplinary collaborative service learning project on the effectiveness of team members in a 100-level mechanical engineering class. Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. https://peer.asee.org/37872
    • Kidd, J., Kaipa, K., Gutierrez, K., Pazos, P., Ayala, O. & Ringleb, S. (2020). “Zooming In” on robotics during COVID-19: A preservice teacher, an engineering student, and a 5th grader engineer robotic flowers via Zoom. In E. Langran (Ed.), Proceedings of SITE Interactive 2020 Online Conference (pp. 503-512). Online: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved November 6, 2020 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/218194/.
    • Pazos, P., & Cima, F., & Kidd, J. J., & Ringleb, S. I., & Ayala, O. M., & Gutierrez, K., & Kaipa, K. (2020, June). Enhancing teamwork skills through an engineering service-learning collaboration. Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online. https://peer.asee.org/34577
    • Gutierrez, K., & Ringleb, S. I., & Kidd, J. J., & Ayala, O. M., & Pazos, P., & Kaipa, K. (2020, June). Partnering undergraduate engineering students with preservice teachers to design and teach an elementary engineering lesson through Ed+gineering. Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online. https://peer.asee.org/35039
    • Kidd, J. J., & Kaipa, K., & Sacks, S. J., & Ringleb, S. I., & Pazos, P., & Gutierrez, K., & Ayala, O. M., & de Souza Almeida, L. M. (2020, June). What do undergraduate engineering students and pre-service teachers learn by collaborating and teaching engineering and coding through robotics? Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online. https://peer.asee.org/35498
    • Ringleb, S. I., & Kidd, J. J., & Pazos, P., & Gutierrez, K., & Ayala, O. M., & Kaipa, K. (2020, June), The first year of an undergraduate service learning partnership to enhance engineering education and elementary pre-service teacher education. Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online. https://peer.asee.org/35320
    • Kidd, J., Kaipa, K., Sacks, S. & de Souza Almeida, L.M. (2020). Introducing coding into teacher education: An interdisciplinary robotics experience for education and engineering students. In D. Schmidt-Crawford (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1303-1310). Online: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved July 14, 2020 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/216040/.
    • Kidd. J., Kaipa, K., Sacks, S. (2019, March). 5th/6th graders and preservice teachers explore engineering and coding in a combined after-school technology club/educational technology course. In Proceedings of SITE 2019--Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference. Washington, D.C. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/p/207858/
    • Ringleb, S., Kidd, J., & Pazos-Lago, P. (2018, August 8-11). Introducing engineering and biomechanics to preK-6 students through a service learning partnership. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Biomechanics, Rochester, Minnesota (173-174).
    • Kidd, J., Ringleb, S. & Pazos, P. (March, 2018). Engineering made easier: Education and engineering students collaboratively plan and teach engineering lessons to elementary school students. In Proceedings of SITE 2018--Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference. Washington, D.C. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
    • Ringleb, S.I., Ayala, O.M., Kidd, J. (2017). Implementing peer-review activities for engineering writing assignments. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference Proceedings, June 25-28, 2017, Columbus, Ohio. https://peer.asee.org/28483
    • Ringleb, S., Kidd, J. and Pazos, P. (2017). WIP: Introducing engineering principles into PreK-6 through a service learning partnership. ASEE Conference Zone II Proceedings, Mar 2-5, 2017, San Juan, Puerto Rico. http://se.asee.org/proceedings/2017%20Zone%20II%20Proceedings/papers/proceedings/s201.html
       

Teach SIM logo

Leveraging Simulations in Preservice Preparation to Improve Mathematics Teaching for Students with Disabilities

PIs: Julie Cohen, Marissa Suhr | Co-PIs: Lynsey Gibbons, Vivian Wong
STEM Disciplines: Mathematics
Grade Levels: K-8

Project Description: Preservice teachers in general education typically enter the field with limited preparation to work with students with disabilities (SWD). Despite this lack of preparation, nearly all teachers will work directly with these students in their general education classrooms.  Special education researchers have identified several promising teaching practices that could be leveraged to support SWDs in general educators’ mathematics classrooms.

The long-term goal of our work is to provide pre-service elementary teachers with opportunities to learn to use mathematics teaching practices known to support SWDs in ways that align with principles of “good teaching” articulated by mathematics teacher educators. In other words, we wanted to build curricular materials that “made sense” in general education mathematics methods courses. To accomplish this aim, we conducted consensus-building panels to develop shared understandings of teaching practices that are responsive to both fields. Based on panel findings, we developed learning units for use in elementary mathematics methods courses. We then conducted a multi-site randomized control trial with 150 preservice teachers at two large, public teacher education programs. Teachers in the treatment condition learned about high leverage practices by engaging with interactive modules focused on: disability justice, challenges students with disabilities often face when in engaging in mathematics word problems, and research-based teaching skills. They then practiced applying those skills in mixed-reality simulations, coupled with coaching. The “business as usual” condition was an approach often used in teacher education: reading about the same content and responding to reflection questions.

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Many preservice teachers in general education do not enter the field adequately prepared to support the needs of students with disabilities who they will inevitably work with as in-service teachers. Our research suggests that mathematics teacher educators rarely have knowledge of practices known to support SWDs. There is an urgent need to develop resources that better prepare elementary mathematics teachers to support the learning needs of all students. With the end goal of addressing this need, our project focused on building consensus between mathematics and special education around high-leverage practices that could support the needs of all students. Our work suggests such bridge building is possible, though it necessitates time and resources. 

Preservice teachers need more low-stakes opportunities to practice instructional skills and receive targeted feedback throughout their coursework, prior to working with children. To that end, our project included opportunities for candidates to learn about how and why specific practices help support SWDs, while also providing numerous opportunities for practice and coaching. Our lab has conducted research on the benefits of simulated practice for almost a decade, and we have consistently found that “practice does not make perfect.” Preservice teachers need external feedback from coaches to expedite their improvement. This model is the heart of the curricular materials we built.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: Developing tools that are responsive to different research communities is hard work but well worth the effort. The teacher educators and preservice teachers we worked with said that they had no opportunities to engage with content about supporting SWDs outside of the materials we developed. Because we spent over a year trying to understand what high leverage practices (HLPs) would resonate in a general education context, we had much more success recruiting teacher educators and ensuring that messages of our curricula “made sense” with the other lessons learned in mathematics methods courses. 

In addition, one of our primary outcome measures in the study was a set of short “performance tasks,” video recorded sessions (similar to Flipgrid) in which we asked pre service teachers to think aloud about how they were making sense of the quantities in mathematical word problems in the way they would in teaching a classroom full of elementary students. We were  mazed at the sophisticated ways in which the teachers engaged in these tasks. They clearly spent a tremendous amount of time developing their instructional explanations, and many had prepared visual diagrams or other representations to explain mathematical ideas. We have done validation work on these assessments and found them to be significantly predictive of instructional quality in student teaching placements. Given that they were free to administer and straightforward to collect, we see them as a promising assessment tool for mathematics teacher educators. Our participating teachers also reported that they were a helpful formative tool for their own development as mathematics instructors, and that they rewatched their videos, which afforded them new insights into their strengths and areas for growth.

Initial Findings: Because preservice teachers were randomly assigned to either the treatment (our curricular materials and simulation and coaching sessions) or the business as usual conditions (reading and answering questions about the high leverage practices), we can determine the causal effect of the treatment on a set of outcomes that include performance on a set of outcomes including  the  short  “performance tasks” described above, as well as in  student teaching placements. In both cases, we asked preservice teachers to use the primary focal high-leverage teaching practice, metacognitive modeling, to help students make sense of the quantities in mathematics word problems.

To measure the readiness of candidates to teach students with disabilities, we rated teacher candidates’ skills during performance tasks and student teaching placements using multiple observation tools. Our measurement approach captures a range of outcomes that differ in alignment with the intervention. The most proximal outcome is a researcher-developed rubric focused squarely on the quality of metacognitive modeling in the performance tasks. Next, we used the same rubric to assess the quality of metacognitive modeling in participants’ student teaching videos. We also scored those student teaching videos using the Quality of Classroom Instruction (QCI), a special education observation tool that captures related skills not directly targeted by the intervention. We see these skills as moderately aligned with the intervention. Finally, we scored the student teaching videos with the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), which assesses general mathematics teaching skills not targeted by the intervention. We consider the MQI to be a less-aligned outcome of the intervention.

The observed treatment effects across outcomes decrease in a pattern consistent with theorical alignment of the intervention outcomes. The average effect on candidates’ metacognitive modeling quality during the performance tasks is the largest and statistically significant (b = 0.944, p < .001). The next largest effect is the average effect on candidates’ metacognitive modeling quality during the student teaching videos observation, which is also large and statistically significant (b =0 .757, p < .001). The average effect on candidates’ QCI quality scores is moderate and statistically significant (b = 0.421, p = .001). The average effect on the least aligned outcome, the candidates’ MQI quality scores, is smallest, but still statistically significant at the p<.1 level (b = 0.260, p = 0.061).

Products:

Online Practice Suite: Practice Spaces, Simulations and Virtual Reality Environments for Preservice Teachers to Learn to Facilitate Argumentation Discussions in Math and Science

PI: Jamie Mikeska | Co-PIs: Heather Howell, Pamela Lottero-Perdue, Meredith Park Rogers, Justin Reich

STEM Disciplines: Mathematics & Science
Grade Levels: Elementary & Middle School

Project Description: In this project, researchers from ETS, Indiana University, MIT, Towson University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill designed and used suites of interactive, online digital teaching simulations to support elementary and secondary preservice teachers (PSTs) in learning how to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions in mathematics and science. Each online practice suite (OPS) included two or three digital simulations, presented in increasing order of complexity (e.g., a simulation involving eliciting a scientific or mathematical argument from a single student was followed by one involving facilitating an argumentation discussion among five students). The simulations included: (a) focused practice spaces to engage PSTs in eliciting and responding to students’ content-focused ideas and interactions, (b) performance-based tasks where PSTs practice facilitating discussions with five student avatars in a simulated classroom, and (c) a virtual reality environment that allows PSTs to become immersed in the classroom as an avatar (see Figure 1). Our team developed four different versions of the OPS used by a total of 19 teacher educators (TEs) from colleges across the US and experienced by their PSTs, 175 of whom were research participants. Each version addressed a different grade level, content area, and instructional topic: elementary mathematics, fractions (4 TEs, 45 PSTs); elementary science, conservation of matter (5 TEs, 53 PSTs); secondary mathematics, proportional reasoning (5 TEs, 45 PSTs); and secondary science, heat transfer (5 TEs, 32 PSTs). Throughout the project, we facilitated a community of practice to support the TEs. 

OPS Figure 1
Figure 1. Image of Eliciting Learner Knowledge, Avatar-Based Simulation Classroom, and the Virtual Teaching Simulator. Image of the Avatar-Based Simulation Classroom provided courtesy of Mursion, Inc.

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Learning to teach demands that PSTs have robust, authentic, and consistent opportunities to practice engaging in the work of teaching—ideally across different contexts, with diverse student populations, and for varied purposes. Although traditional field experiences in K-12 classrooms are critical to supporting PSTs’ learning, it is difficult to scaffold appropriately to ensure the learning experience is robust. PSTs often do not have access to opportunities to rehearse components of teaching, to do so in a safe environment that is not consequential for themselves or students, or to try out a lesson. Our project is designed to directly address this challenge by developing and using a set of scaffolded, digital teaching simulations to support PSTs in one core teaching practice: facilitating argumentation-focused discussions.

Initial Findings: Our project had two primary research aims. First, we examined whether and how PSTs learned from engaging with the simulations in the OPS. We used survey and observational data to investigate potential changes in four main PST outcomes from the beginning to the end of the semester: PSTs’ ability to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions, their beliefs about their preparedness to teach and about instruction, their understanding of argumentation, and their noticing skills. Findings showed that using the OPS produced significant shifts in: (a) elementary and secondary PSTs’ instructional beliefs and preparedness to teach, especially regarding their confidence to teach argumentation and to address the focal content topics, and (b) elementary PSTs’ proficiency in facilitating argumentation-focused discussions. Qualitative analysis of open-ended survey responses also suggested an increase in PSTs’ belief that argumentation is important and supports student learning. Both PSTs and TEs reported that PSTs learned from the OPS, and both strongly endorsed the approach as appropriate for teacher preparation. The most frequently mentioned learnings were that it is important to prepare for argumentation discussions and that argumentation is important to include in mathematics and science education. These results suggest that there is viability in the approach of a tiered progression in complexity when using simulations to support PSTs in developing their ability to facilitate productive mathematics and science discussions and in impacting PSTs’ beliefs.  
 
Second, we investigated how TEs integrated the OPS into their methods course via a three-component instructional cycle to help PSTs prepare for, engage in, and reflect on each simulated learning experience. We observed TEs throughout this cycle; collected artifacts such as course syllabi, class assignments, and course readings; gathered survey responses from TEs after each simulation’s instructional cycle; and conducted end-of-semester interviews with each TE. We found that during preparation, elementary TEs emphasized developing PSTs’ content knowledge, including their understanding of student work samples, as well as their knowledge about how to organize a discussion. During reflection, elementary TEs often asked PSTs to analyze specific aspects of their discussion and how they organized the discussion. Most secondary TEs identified instructional goals and implemented class activities related to argumentation, questioning, disciplinary content, attending to student ideas, and encouraging student-to-student interaction during the preparation and reflection components of the simulation instructional cycles. TEs found the OPS to be useful to support PST learning as it provided PSTs with (a) practice in learning to plan for and conduct discussions, (b) opportunities to unpack student thinking, and (c) additional time to learn and teach mathematics or science ideas.  
 
TEs reported that their participation in the community of practice was beneficial. It provided them with an opportunity to work together in groups, share ideas, and collaborate with other TEs, impacting their own OPS implementation. The community of practice helped the TEs consider how to increase PSTs’ engagement in the OPS to address course goals. It also provided TEs with an opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across institutions and disciplines; many have co-authored papers and presentations with OPS team members. 

Products: Our team has produced the following publicly available products. Asterisks indicate the products that were co-authored or developed with one or more teacher educators from our project’s community of practice.  

  • a pre-conference workshop shared at the 2021 National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference introducing participants to a suite of three practice-based online simulations that can be used for synchronous and asynchronous integration within online and face-to-face elementary science education courses;  
  • one video that was presented as part of the 2021 STEM for All Video Showcase and described the three types of teaching simulations included in the project’s online practice suite and the project’s key goals and anticipated outcomes;  
  • a poster presented at the 2021 NSF DRK12 Principal Investigators meeting providing an overview of the online practice suite activities, the project’s research design, the main project phases, and the project’s anticipated impact; 
  • proceedings from the 2021 North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA) conference examining transitions in elementary preservice teachers’ understanding of, and skills in, leading argumentation-focused discussions in mathematics during participation in three different practice-based online simulations;   
  • an exploratory session* as part of the 2022 Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) conference to share innovative activities from four of our participating science teacher educators that were used with preservice teachers to prepare them for facilitating and/or reflecting on their teaching of argumentation-based discussions with one or more of the online practice suite simulations;  
  • a manuscript published in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education examining secondary preservice teachers’ perceptions and engagement with a science performance task—used within an online, simulated classroom consisting of five middle school student avatars—to practice facilitating an argumentation-focused science discussion;  
  • proceedings from the 2022 Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) conference examining four elementary teacher educators’ perceptions about using these practice-based activities within their elementary mathematics or science methods course; 
  • proceedings from the 2022 North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA) conference examining transitions in secondary math preservice teachers’ professional identities as they engaged in online practice-based, virtual simulations designed to support the development of their skills to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions;
  • proceedings from the 2022 North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA) conference examining a performance task that was designed for preservice teachers to practice facilitating an argumentation-focused mathematics discussion in a simulated classroom environment;
  • a project website providing information about the project’s purpose, the teaching simulations in the online practice suite, project staff and roles, and presentations and publications; 
  • pre-registration for our elementary main study that provides information about the study’s background and theory of action, research questions, anticipated sample, data collection instruments and processes, and data analysis approaches;
  • a manuscript published in Behavioral Sciences exploring preservice teachers’ engagement in the Eliciting Learner Knowledge (ELK) simulation;
  • proceedings from the 2024 Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference examining preservice teachers’ self-assessment and scoring from training raters when using digital teaching simulations; 
  • a manuscript published in Science Education reporting on elementary preservice teachers’ responsiveness in online simulations; 
  • a manuscript published in Computers & Education: X Reality examining the connection between preservice teachers’ discussion performance in an avatar-based simulation with their self-reported goals and success in facilitating discussions;
  • a manuscript* published in School Science and Mathematics that focuses on elementary preservice teachers’ use of prompts to encourage student-to-student talk during simulated argumentation discussions;
  • a manuscript published in the Journal of Science Teacher Education examining what and how secondary science preservice teachers learn from using a suite of online simulations;
  • a book chapter* published about preservice teachers’ noticing of discourse practices they used to position students as “knowers” in equitable science discussions; and 
  • free and public access to our project materials in Databrary’s online repository.

We have also made 27 conference presentations across the last four years at a variety of national and international conferences including the following: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE),  American Educational Research Association (AERA), Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE), Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE), Connected Learning Summit, National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA), and Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE). 
 

Preparing Mentors to Support Novices in Eliciting Student Thinking During Mathematics Discussions: Developing and Testing a Simulation-Based PD Program

PI: Julie Cohen | Co-PIs: Nicole Garcia, Matthew Ronfeldt, Meghan Shaughnessy
STEM Disciplines: Mathematics
Grade Levels: K-5

Project Description: Effective mentoring is essential to high-quality teacher preparation. Unfortunately, those tasked with mentoring prospective teachers rarely receive support around how to do this important job well. Experienced teachers may be accustomed to teaching in ways that “look” quite different from those approaches promoted in teacher preparation coursework. This contributes to less coherent learning experiences for prospective teachers, who need to reconcile the practices they learn about in coursework with those modeled in clinical placements. At the same time, being a strong teacher of children does not always translate to effectively coaching adults. Mentor teachers likely need development in how to provide specific, actionable feedback to the prospective teachers working alongside them in their classrooms.

This project seeks to build mentors’ skills in both teaching and coaching, focusing on the high leverage practice of eliciting student thinking in mathematics. Mentors complete a two-part asynchronous professional development course. The first part focuses on building mentors’ knowledge of eliciting and interpreting student thinking in mathematics. The second part focuses on building mentors' toolbox of coaching skills, with a focus on providing actionable feedback around eliciting. The messages of the PD are reinforced through mixed-reality simulations that provide mentors opportunities to practice new strategies with expert coaching support. Mentors also come together to discuss lessons learned and build community. Throughout their participation in the project, mentors strengthen their understanding of themselves as modelers of strong teaching and build skills to positively support the prospective teachers with whom they work.

Importance of Project Work at the Preservice Level: Eliciting and interpreting student thinking is a high leverage practice that is critical to learning about student thinking, and, in turn, designing instruction that leverages children’s mathematical ideas. In this way, it is crucial for helping students learn mathematical content and developing positive mathematical identities. It is also a nuanced skill that typically takes teachers years to develop. Prospective teachers may learn about it in coursework, but then struggle to understand the mechanics of how experienced mentor teachers implement it in their classrooms. This project seeks to make the invisible decision-making that leads to effective eliciting more visible to prospective teachers by providing mentors with a shared language to discuss this effective elicitation. By making this complex skill more visible for in clinical placement, this project hopes to increase the effective use of elicitation of prospective teachers when they begin teaching independently.

Connecting Preservice Experience with Inservice Classroom Practice: The purpose of this project is to ensure mentors are serving as modelers of strong teaching for their prospective teachers in their classrooms and also positioning themselves as active participants in those teachers’ skill development. By developing mentors’ ability to talk about how and why they elicit students’ thinking, we hope to build stronger connections between messages about strong mathematics teaching communicated at in courses and what prospective teachers experience in clinical placements. We also know that mentors do not always see themselves as coaches, and so an additional goal is helping mentors get more comfortable in this new role.

Advice for Prospective Awardees: Our project is just beginning this fall, but we have already learned how important it is to pilot new resources and tools with multiple teachers working in a range of contexts. The professional development program we are launching now is the result of many rounds of feedback and revision.

Initial Findings: We are just beginning data collection and do not have findings to share yet, but we look forward to sharing our learnings in the years to come.

Additional Projects

We invite you to explore a sample of the other recently awarded and active projects that focus on preservice teacher education in the DRK-12 portfolio.

Related Resources

References

Austin, C. K., Heisler, J. L., & Kosko, K. W. (2022, January). Exploring the relationship between preservice teachers’ mathematical noticing and their 360 video viewing. In Proceeding of the 44rd annual meeting of the North American Chapter for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Psychology of Mathematics Education-North America.

Ferdig, R. E., Gandolfi, E., Lenart, C., & Clements, R. (2023). Building an augmented reality system for consumption and production of hybrid gaming and storytelling. Interaction Design & Architecture (s)–IxD&A Journal, (56), 53-68.

Ferdig, R. E., Kosko, K. W., & Gandolfi, E. (2020). The use of ambisonic audio to improve presence, focus, and noticing while viewing 360 video. Journal For Virtual Worlds Research, 13(2-3).

Gandolfi, E., Ferdig, R. E., & Kosko, K. W. (2022). Preservice teachers’ focus in 360 videos: Understanding the role of presence, ambisonic audio, and camera placement. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 30(3), 321-339.

Kosko, K. W., Austin, C. K., & Zolfaghari, M. (2023, January). Exploring teacher knowledge and noticing with eye tracking and 360 video. In Proceedings of the 50th annual meeting of the Research Council of Mathematics Learning. Research Council on Mathematics Learning.

Kosko, K. W., & Ferdig, R. E. (2023, January). Relationships between prospective teachers’ heart rate variation and noticing of children’s mathematics. In Proceedings of the 46th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. International Group-Psychology of Mathematics Education.

Kosko, K. W., Ferdig, R. E., & Zolfaghari, M. (2021). Preservice teachers’ professional noticing when viewing standard and 360 video. Journal of Teacher education, 72(3), 284-297.

Kosko, K. W., Gandolfi, E., & Egbedeyi, T. (2024). Examining Preservice Teachers’ Embodied Noticing when Viewing Traditional and Holographic Videos of Students’ Fraction Division. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 32(1), 99-122.

Kosko, K. W., Heisler, J., & Gandolfi, E. (2022). Using 360-degree video to explore teachers' professional noticing. Computers & Education, 180, 104443.

Kosko, K., Zolfaghari, M., & Heisler, J. (2022). How immersive should virtual field experiences be? A comparison of single and
multi-perspective 360 Video. In E. Baumgartner, R. Kaplan-Rakowski, R. E. Ferdig, R. Hartshorne, & C. Mouza (Eds.) A
retrospective of teaching, technology, and teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic (pp. 101–107). Association
for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

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