By Jocelyn Huber
According to a recent article in Education Week, some teacher education programs, including the University of Central Florida in Orlando, are experimenting with new technology to help train teacher-candidates. In addition to field work, teacher-candidates have the opportunity to teach students in a virtual classroom populated by avatars. Programs such as TeachME and simSchool allow pre-service teachers to practice classroom management and experiment with instruction delivery before beginning to work with actual students.
While virtual classrooms cannot replace the experience of real-life teaching, this technology can help teacher-candidates begin to develop essential instructional skills and reflect on their practice in a risk-free environment. Early evaluations of the systems show that they have helped pre-service teachers feel “more resilient in the face of instructional setbacks and more confident in trying alternative approaches.” Greater confidence and resilience may help improve teacher retention and effectiveness by enabling novice teachers to survive the stresses of their first years and making them more comfortable seeking assistance and trying new methods.
While the full impact of this technology remains to be seen, it is encouraging to see some teacher education programs beginning to rethink the way they prepare candidates for the classroom. For too long, many teacher-training programs’ low acceptance requirements and irrelevant curricula were failing teachers and students alike. If we are serious about turning around failing schools and meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population, it is essential that ALL teacher training programs produce candidates who are prepared to manage a classroom and to meet the instructional needs of every student.