Teaching the Practice of Leading Sense-Making Discussions in Science: Science Teacher Educators Using Rehearsals

ABSTRACT

Rehearsal is an increasingly important teacher education pedagogy. We explore how 3 science teacher educators thought about and used pauses within rehearsals to support secondary science teacher candidates in learning to facilitate sense-making discussions. Video data indicated that the most common purposes for pausing a rehearsal were to provide feedback about the candidate’s practice and to problem solve with the candidates. Substantively, the most common foci were attending to student thinking and attending to the use of language. Interview data indicated that teacher educators responded to candidates’ needs when making decisions about pauses. These findings suggest that rehearsals can provide rich learning opportunities for teacher candidates in ways that are interactive and responsive to students’ ideas.

KEYWORDS:

• approximation of practice
• rehearsal
• science education
• science teacher learning
• teacher education

Funding

This study has been conducted as part of the work of the Core Practice Consortium (corepracticeconsortium.com) and builds on the contributions of its members. This collective work has been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under Grant #OPP1089179 and the Spencer Foundation under Grant #201600110. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. We are grateful for the opportunity to think collaboratively with our colleagues in the Consortium and acknowledge the ways in which the ideas and methods discussed here build on that collaborative work.

Additional information

Funding

This study has been conducted as part of the work of the Core Practice Consortium (corepracticeconsortium.com) and builds on the contributions of its members. This collective work has been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under Grant #OPP1089179 and the Spencer Foundation under Grant #201600110. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. We are grateful for the opportunity to think collaboratively with our colleagues in the Consortium and acknowledge the ways in which the ideas and methods discussed here build on that collaborative work.