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What Simulation-Based Mentoring May Afford: Opportunities to Connect Theory and Practice

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Games and Simulations in Teacher Education

Part of the book series: Advances in Game-Based Learning ((AGBL))

Abstract

In this chapter, we contribute some insights from project SimTeach (Herbst P, Chieu VM, SIMTEACH: What can practical knowledge modeled in a teaching simulator contribute to support mathematics teacher learning? National Science Foundation Grant, EHR, DRL-1420102, 2014) concerning the role that technologically mediated teaching simulations can play in learning to teach. We examine opportunities to learn about the teaching of mathematics afforded by the use of a digital simulation of a lesson in the context of simulation-based apprenticeship encounters between a novice teacher and four different experienced teachers who, in paired encounters, mentored her by sharing their thinking as they went through the simulation. These encounters gave opportunities to connect abstract concepts of teaching to practical ways in which they might be experienced in classrooms. We present this as a contribution to the perennial problem of connecting theory and practice in learning to teach.

In memoriam Karen King

Work described in this chapter was done with resources from NSF grant DRL-1420102 (P. Herbst, PI). An earlier version of part of this material was shared at the 2017 NCTM Research Conference, San Antonio, TX.

Vu-Minh Chieu participated of this work when he was an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Michigan. He is currently a Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com, Inc.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    CPCTC stands for corresponding parts of congruent triangles are congruent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Patricio Herbst, Nicolas Boileau, Mollee Shultz, Amanda Milewski & Vu-Minh Chieu

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  1. Patricio Herbst
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  2. Nicolas Boileau
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  3. Mollee Shultz
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  4. Amanda Milewski
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  5. Vu-Minh Chieu
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Correspondence to Patricio Herbst .

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  1. School for Graduate Studies, SUNY Empire State College, Latham, NY, USA

    Elizabeth Bradley

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Herbst, P., Boileau, N., Shultz, M., Milewski, A., Chieu, VM. (2020). What Simulation-Based Mentoring May Afford: Opportunities to Connect Theory and Practice. In: Bradley, E. (eds) Games and Simulations in Teacher Education. Advances in Game-Based Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44526-3_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44526-3_7

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