Digital practice spaces and clinical practice in teacher preparation: Current uses and future possibilities

Abstract

This paper explores how the use of digital practice spaces (DPSs) can inform teacher preparation through a reimagining of clinical practice in teacher preparation by addressing the question: what roles might DPSs play in the ecology of apprenticeship opportunities for future educators? We leveraged AACTE’s Essential Proclamations and Tenets for Highly Effective Clinical Educator Preparation as an analytical framework to examine our own experiences using DPSs in our teacher education coursework. We discuss the alignment between these proclamations and the theoretical, conceptual, and practical underpinnings of DPSs. Finally, we consider the remaining proclamations that represent the horizons of DPSs within teacher preparation, a task we undertook as a set of informed provocations, envisioning how DPSs could be designed to support the proclamations not currently supported.

Additional information

Funding

Funding provided by the Hewlett Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Joshua Littenberg-Tobias

Joshua Littenberg-Tobias, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist at MIT with an appointment in the MIT Teaching Systems Lab. His research focuses on studying and measuring learning within technology-mediated environments such as simulations with a focus on equity and civic engagement.

Sarah Kaka

Sarah J. Kaka, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Education at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she teaches secondary methods courses, social studies methods, supervises field experiences and student teaching, and Role of the School. Her main area of focus is secondary social studies. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and has presented at local, state, national, and international conferences. Her research strives to support educator preparation programs in creating effective, long-term educators in all settings, in addition to assisting in-service teachers in becoming more effective. Prior to making the shift to higher education, she taught high school social studies for a decade in Virginia and Colorado. She is currently the Associate Editor of the Ohio Social Studies Review.

Taylor Kessner

Taylor Kessner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Texas at Arlingtony. Taylor studies games and simulations in the context of K-12 history and social studies education. As a learning scientist and social studies educator, Taylor is interested in how games and simulations might be designed and facilitated in ways that position learners as problem solvers who use disciplinary knowledge, skills, and concepts as tools to confront deep questions of who is included in society, when, and in service of what common vision of the future.

Anthony Tuf Francis

Anthony Tuf Francis, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Teacher Development and Educational Studies at Oakland University and is coordinator of the Secondary Teacher Education Program. He received his B.Ed. from the University of Toledo in 1996 and taught history and social studies in Toledo Public Schools from 1997 – 2007. He received his M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from Bowling Green State University in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Educational Studies from the University of Michigan in 2013. Currently, his research focuses on initial teacher preparation and social studies education, focusing on the development of skilled practice in novices and teacher education programmatic development.

Katrina Kennett

Katrina Kennett, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at University of Montana Western. She is deeply interested in how pre-service teachers integrate authentic literacy practices and contemporary technology tools into their instruction. Her research focuses on how teachers plan for student learning and she coaches in-service teachers as they design sustained opportunities for student inquiry in their curriculum. Katrina coordinates – and teaches in – the Rural Fridays program at UMW. She also serves as a university supervisor for student teachers.

Justin Reich

Justin Reich, Ed.D. is the Mitsui Career Development Professor of Digital Media at MIT, the director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab (tsl.mit.edu), and the author of Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education from Harvard University Press (failuretodisrupt.com).