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Preparing future teachers requires teacher educators to share both theory and its translation to best practice. Traditional approaches to this learning process include textbooks, case studies, role-play, observation, and eventually fieldwork in a classroom. Understanding what their future students need or appropriately responding to situations in the classroom is far different than the reality of teaching in schools. Although case studies provide an opportunity for perspective taking, collaboration, and developing problem solving skills in a safe environment, it is still a relatively passive experience. The use of virtual worlds to create engaging simulations offers a possibility in bridging this gap between theory and practice. The School of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University has designed a virtual world simulation to provide college students with the opportunity to be immersed in a virtual classroom setting in which they take on the roles of avatar teachers and grade school students who may require various modifications/accommodations. This chapter will discuss the design and implementation of this project. Data were collected on the students’ experiences in order to assess possible learning gains, affordances of the technology, and lessons learned for future educators who are considering the implementation of virtual world technologies.

While many works have reported adopting exploratory practice (EP) principles in language teaching research, only a few studies have explored the enactment of EP in an online extensive reading of students majoring in English education. Given the relative paucity of attention to the use of EP as the practitioner research in English language teaching (ELT), the present EP investigates how students understand online extensive reading practice mediated by online group discussion and extensive reading logs, where the first author served as the online extensive reading practice instructor.

The exploratory practice focuses on incorporating research into pedagogy and fastens the importance of the quality-of-life in the classroom. The data were collected through students reading logs and semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analyzed using the thematic analysis. In this case, there were six phases including familiarizing with the data, generating initial codes, searching for the themes, reviewing the themes, defining the theme and writing up.

The findings reveal that online group work driven by EP enables everybody to engage in learning activities. EP assists the students in perceiving their potential and gaining a better awareness of the need to devote themselves to the class. In the EP activities, they work together to build a peaceful situation to advance the quality of learning in EFL classrooms.

The present study’s limitation is the small sample. Apart from that, the research results cannot be generalized to other places.

This study suggests that EP is suitable to create a mutual understanding among the learners and teachers. To conclude, English language competency can be achieved in a pleasant atmosphere through EP.

The present study succeeded in adding new literature studies related to EPs by discussing online group discussions and their challenges during the learning process. These aspects were identified through reading logs and interviews with students. Thus, it focuses on the implementation and challenges of online group discussions.

It's a secret hidden in plain sight, we teach who we are. Palmer (2017)

In an effort to reinvigorate the art of teaching, educational theorists have called for teachers to learn how to teach with their “whole self” – to be with and teach their students from a position of mindful awareness, authenticity, truthfulness, compassion, and courage (Palmer, 2017; Ramsey & Fitzgibbons, 2005). The skills that support one in mindfully knowing oneself well and being able to creatively and consciously bring aspects of one's knowledge expertise and identity into acts of teaching and learning in the classroom in an authentic way has been labeled the “unnamed domain” in teacher knowledge (e.g., Taylor, 2016). In this chapter, we extend work on a conceptual, evidence-based framework for this unnamed domain. We propose that the formation of teachers who are calm in body in challenging situations, clear in mind when making decisions in complex classroom environments, and kind in approach to interactions with others is one way of describing development in this domain of teacher identity/expertise. Furthermore, we posit that mindfulness, compassion, and other contemplative practices can be useful for developing expertise in it. We present conceptual and empirical findings from a series of studies we have done on the antecedents and consequences of teachers' calmness, clarity, and kindness in the classroom and discuss directions for future research.

In an ethnographic account of a junior high school, Everhart (1983) distinguishes the “reified knowledge” of teachers on which the formal curriculum is based from the “regenerative knowledge” of students: To compensate for…and in opposition to the domination of reified knowledge, regenerative knowledge emerges in those organizational hiatuses that exist through the inefficiencies of mass education – inefficiencies in the manner by which school occupies student’s time, the amount of time that formal education “takes up,” and the standardization of tasks that “fits” so few students at any one point in time (p. 194).Recent ethnographic research on school children focuses almost exclusively on student culture or “regenerative knowledge” rather than on “reified knowledge” (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eckert, 1989; Eder, 1995; Thorne, 1993). What goes on in classrooms with respect to teaching and learning has only a shadowy presence in these research reports, often by design.¹ Understanding student or peer culture, however, cannot by itself capture children’s lives in schools. What goes on in classrooms where education is assumed to occur also plays an important part.

Simulation technology has been used as a viable alternative to provide a real life setting in teacher education. Applying mixed-reality classroom simulations to English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher preparation, this qualitative case study aims to examine how pre-service teachers (PSTs) practice culturally and linguistically responsive teaching to work with an English learner (EL) avatar and other avatar students.

Using an embedded single case study, three PSTs’ teaching simulations and interviews were collected and analyzed.

This study found PST participants made meaningful connections between theory and practices of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, particularly by connecting academic concepts to students’ life experiences, promoting cultural diversity, using instructional scaffolding and creating a safe environment. Nevertheless, they needed further improvement in incorporating cultural diversity into content lessons, creating a challenging and supportive classroom and developing interactional scaffolding for ELs’ language development. The findings also show that while PST participants perceived simulation technology as very beneficial, expanding the range of technological affordances could provide PSTs an opportunity to undertake a full range of critical teaching strategies for ELs.

This research contributes to broadening the realm of mixed-reality technology by applying it to ESOL teacher education and has implications for both ESOL teacher educators and simulation technology researchers.

This chapter explores how Jass Easterman (the author's avatar name) teaches education students concurrently, both pre-service teachers and postgraduate, in Second Life. It discusses how a virtual world can be a valuable teaching and learning tool for the whole group even though they have a variety of overall goals and learning outcomes. Jass brings distant university students located around the world studying at the one institution together to liaise with each other in Second Life. She has created an innovative tutorial model where students go on virtual tours, visit other educational institutions, attend guest lectures, undertake role play activities, and go on Web quests and learn basic building and scripting skills, all from their own homes. Adult learning theories and communities of practice, in a virtual world, underpin all activities. Why Second Life was chosen for these students and what the students say about this type of learning are discussed in this chapter. The value of this tutorial model will be explored and reflected upon and conclusions made of its efficacy.

The author examines the experiences of learning about Japanese elementary education from the perspective of a Canadian teacher. She suggests through a year-long study in a Japanese third grade classroom that the teaching practices and philosophies underlying curricular and pedagogical decisions made by teachers are shaped by the culture and society of which schools are part, such that learning about Japanese schooling highlights the influence of social, societal, cultural, linguistic factors outside, as well as inside, school. In line with narrative inquiry research practices, the author also acknowledges her own stance as a certified elementary level teacher who was educated and certified in Canada, in contributing to shaping her analysis of teacher knowledge of her teacher participants. She argues that the process of learning about schooling in a country or culture different from the one in which an individual was educated and learned to teach, involves immersing oneself into the research context to learn about the experience from the perspective an insider. Realization of the extent to which this expansive interweaving of school and society is apparent in many aspects of schooling in Japan, in turn, reinforces the idea that this interconnection may also underlie schooling in other societies as well, such that one's experiences in one's own culture may form the foundation for understanding and interpreting knowledge gained about schooling in another culture or community. The notion of cross-cultural teacher knowledge, then, may be grounded in personal and professional experience of teaching and being taught in one's own culture.

This chapter provides an overview of inclusive pedagogy, also referred to as the inclusive pedagogical approach (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011). Conceptually, the approach is predicated on a shift in pedagogical thinking away from conventional approaches that work for most learners existing alongside something additional or different for those (some) who experience difficulties, towards one that involves providing rich learning opportunities that are sufficiently made available for everyone, so that all learners are able to participate in classroom life. By focusing on how achievements in learning are realised through participation in the community of a classroom, the inclusive pedagogical approach acknowledges that there are individual differences between learners but avoids the problems and stigma associated with marking some learners as different. The second part of the chapter explains how the approach can be incorporated into the daily life of classroom activity using the Inclusive-Pedagogical-Approach-in-Action framework that was developed as a tool for assessing and gathering evidence about practice (Florian, 2014; Florian & Spratt, 2013).

The past decade has witnessed a growing appreciation of the role of emotions in cognition, motivation, decision-making and many other areas of research in psychology and education. This chapter draws upon the contents of the book as well as other sources to consider three questions: What emotions do teachers experience in schools and what shapes those emotions? How do emotions and relationships affect life in classrooms? What should be done to incorporate this knowledge into teacher education? Given the powerful role that emotions and relationships play in teaching and learning, it is critical for teacher education in both preservice and inservice settings to support the development of knowledge and skills for emotional self-regulation and the nurturing of relationships in classrooms.

Through this exploration of subject matter knowledge and teacher knowledge, we present two stories of teaching social studies in the sixth grade. Using a narrative inquiry approach, we share the complexities and complications of teaching children content within standards related to world history and religions. We call on the writings of Schwab to consider these experiences. Using Schwab’s concepts of deliberation, the balanced negotiation between the commonplaces of curriculum in a meaning-making process, first, exposes tensions and the teacher’s acts of negotiating between the learners’ needs and the subject matter (the standards). The teacher stretches to meet the requirements of the standards in different ways that take care of herself and her students. Schwab’s commonplaces are used in a more straightforward exploration of the second story. The interplay between the commonplaces is less nuanced and less deeply understood, coalescing in tensions between the commonplaces. The stories and our analyses illustrate Schwab’s assertion that there is no right alternative. Daily, and moment-to-moment, teachers are in the position of deliberating – making the best choice of many alternatives. “Ramifying consequences must be traced to all parts of the curriculum” (Schwab, 1978, p. 319). Schwab, we find, counsels that the consequences of a chosen action must be considered by all those who must live with those consequences.