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Classsim: Preparing Tomorrows Teachers For Classroom Reality, Lisa K. Kervin, Brian Ferry, Lisa A. Carrington

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on an on-line simulation that we have developed to support our pre-service teacher education program. The purpose of this paper is three fold: first it reports on the need identified within the literature for pre-service teacher education to make stronger connections between the theory of their university experience with classroom reality; second it reports on the creation of a prototype version of simulation software (ClassSim) developed to engage pre-service teachers in decision-making processes within a virtual classroom environment; third it reports on our research where the software was used with a cohort of 186 pre-service teachers.

From Classroom Reality To Virtual Classroom: The Role Of Teacher-Created Scripts In The Development Of Classroom Simulation Technology, Lisa K. Kervin, Brian L. Cambourne, Janice B. Turbill, Brian Ferry, John Hedberg, David H. Jonassen, Sarah Puglisi

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes a specific kind of teacher narrative (the teacher created script) to support the design of a classroom simulation to be used in pre-service teacher education. We intend to share our experiences in exploring and developing the kind of narrative text which can be developed from a large reservoir of ethnographically generated data collected from the teachers and classrooms we have closely observed and documented over the last two decades. In particular, we explore the role which these narratives play within the development of the kind of classroom simulation we have produced.

Reflection has long been acknowledged as …

Online Classroom Simulation: Using A Virtual Environment To Prepare For Classroom Reality, Brian Ferry, Lisa K. Kervin, Sarah Puglisi, Janice Turbill, Brian Cambourne, David Jonassen, John Hedberg

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Research over past decades consistently shows that traditional pre-service teacher preparation programs are not adequately preparing beginning teachers for the reality of classrooms. The purpose of this paper is threefold. We describe the development of an online classroom simulation, the specific design features in our initial prototype version of the software and our research into our first trial of this with pre-service teachers. The classroom simulation allows the user to take on the role of the teacher of a virtual Kindergarten classroom, working with students aged 5 to 6 years of age. During the simulation the user is required to …