Dear reader,

After yet another hiatus from writing, I thought I would enter my second year of “blogging” by sharing a piece of academic writing from my first year—one that I was (dare I say it) even proud of to some extent. In general, I did not get much feedback from professors during my first year in my education doctorate program; however, for this particular essay, the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. My professor suggested that I publish this essay somewhere, so as to reach a wider audience. After some searching, I could not quite find the right avenue and did not know where to start with getting published. In the end, I thought I would share my thinking here, for in many ways, this blog is an intimate part of my academic journey. I realize that, as an academic piece, this may bore some of my younger readers who may gravitate toward my Instagram posts; but, given that so many of my younger readers are my own former students, I hope this essay provides some insight into my own philosophy of teaching. To other readers who may know me personally or may be acquainted with me in some capacity, I hope this is a worthwhile read! To those who may have fortuitously found this page, perhaps as a graduate student yourself, I hope this read offers some value, perhaps in the form of language or writing approach. After all, I owe much of my academic writing skills to reading the writings of others.

So with all that said, this is me sharing one of my last papers written during my first year of graduate school at Teachers College, writing as Catherine Cheng (I am now legally Catherine Stahl). Here, I reflect on the tendency of teacher preparation programs to overemphasize practice rather than to provide a rich education that supports teachers in recognizing the aesthetics of teaching. I argue for a recognition of and, perhaps, a return to an “art” of teaching that takes into account the affective dimension and emotional labor of working with students.

Warm regards,

Catherine

Have We Lost Touch of the Art of Teaching?
A Critique of Simulated Environments in Teacher Preparation Programs

Catherine Y. Cheng
Teachers College, Columbia University

In their article, Dieker, Rodriguez, Lignugaris/Kraft, Hynes, and Hughes (2014) argued that mixed-reality, avatar-based simulated environments have a place in teacher preparation programs and will continue to shape teacher education in the future. According to the authors, among the affordances that such simulators offer preservice and in-service teachers are repeated practice in a fully immersive environment, a cyclical process for feedback that supports personalized learning, and the “suspension of disbelief” (p. 25) provided by a physical space that gives the “feeling of actually being in the ‘real’ environment” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 29). What the article contributes to the literature is a profile of an innovative technology that invites teachers to take a more active role in developing teaching practices.

In writing this essay, I am momentarily suspending my own disbelief of the use of simulation in the field of teacher education. While I believe the authors’ support for simulators in teacher preparation programs comes from a good place, I wish to push back on their sanguine claims after exposing a set of assumptions underlying their argument. In doing so, I aim to shed light on the conceptual and methodological limitations that Dieker et al. (2014) overlooked in their “objective” analysis of the tool they promoted. In response to the authors’ technocratic and mechanistic view of teaching, I argue that learning to teach is as much an art as it is a science, and that simulated environments do not allow for “other ways of knowing, relating to, and creating the world” (Coleman & Ringrose, 2013, p. 4) of teaching. In informing my position, I draw inspiration from scholarly work surrounding affect, as well as from Deborah Britzman’s (2003) writings on practice. I end by contemplating the next steps of teacher education and offer my thoughts on the drawbacks of simulated environments in teacher preparation programs.

Dieker et al. (2014) centered their analysis on one particular simulated environment, the TLE TeachLivE Lab founded at the University of Central Florida (UCF). This simulator was used by teacher education programs at Utah State University (USU) to support preservice teachers’ work with student avatars with severe, moderate, and mild disabilities. The findings compiled from several studies revealed that teacher practices (e.g., discrete trial training, preference assessments, instructional and behavioral management routines) produced visible positive changes in the student avatars’ behaviors, even in more complex contexts. The authors asserted that these data support their hypothesis that “students will be more likely to learn from teachers who have experienced virtual environments” (p. 28). Encouraged by the data, they affirmed that simulated environments will have a “strong and lasting impact” on teacher education, especially with ongoing efforts to make simulation technology “more user-friendly and affordable” (p. 29) for teachers and teacher preparation programs, respectively.

Unpacking assumptions surrounding teaching, teacher education, and disabilities

Among the many assumptions underlying Dieker et al.’s (2014) affirmative position on the use of simulators are four that I will illuminate. Later in this essay, I will interrogate the first two further. First, the authors assume that teaching is a teacher-centered activity that involves teachers transferring learned content and behaviors to a passive classroom setting. As such, through “virtual rehearsals” of a “classroom management technique, a teaching strategy, behavior management techniques, or explaining content” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 24), teachers can improve their teaching without involving real students in the process. Second, the authors assume that a main objective of teaching involves “fixing” students who display problematic behaviors. In other words, teaching is a largely managerial activity that involves children who need to learn proper ways of behaving and being (i.e., teaching involves disciplining unruly bodies into productive ones). In the studies’ simulators, even the most complex student identities and challenging behaviors came pre-formed (read: programmed), were predictable, and could be anticipated (read: managed). Third, the authors presuppose that the main difference between a successful and a less successful teacher is practice, in which practice is viewed as a set of “correct” teaching behaviors. In this light, teachers improve by acquiring and honing set of behaviors through repeated practice. Finally, as the authors did not problematize how student avatars with disabilities were encoded, I assume that they view learning disabilities as situated in individuals rather than in a society. Through this view of disabilities, then, it follows that problematic aspects of students can be fixed through a personalized regimen. This is a position to which I do not assent and is counter to that of critical dis/ability scholars (e.g., Baglieri, Bejoian, Broderick, Connor, & Valle, 2011; Ferri & Connor, 2010; McDermott & Raley, 2008).

Problematizing objectivity, rationality, and teacher control

As I unpack the authors’ claims, what stands out as a key methodological limitation is their mode of data collection and analysis. It is curious that Dieker et al. (2014) described “greater teacher learning gains” (p. 29), but did not provide accounts of the teachers’ learning experiences beyond reporting increased deltas in their implementation of scripted routines. Similarly, despite all the iterative reflective practices that teachers engaged in alongside the simulators, the substance of that reflection was never revealed in the article. At no point did data from and not of teachers emerge. It is precisely the absence of participant voices in the whole article that I find most disconcerting and troublesome. Likewise, the authors made references to “the self-esteem of students,” “positive learning environments” (p. 30), and students’ “individualized needs” (p. 28); yet, they neglected to provide concrete evidence of how practice with simulators improved the learning experiences of real students. It is one thing to use quantitative data to show that virtual students improved their attention span, demonstrated more teacher-sanctioned behaviors, and became more motivated, and another to claim that such improvements translate to real students in living, breathing classrooms.

This critique thus surfaces the authors’ worldview that is intimately connected to the aforementioned methodological limitation: much of teaching can be reflected by a computer simulator and subsequently, be assessed and measured by neoliberal standards of what constitutes meaningful data; these data, deemed “objective,” can be used to make claims about teaching real students in actual classrooms. It is evident that the authors adopt a post-positivist worldview of “a single approximal reality” (Ponterotto, 2005, p. 130) of teaching that researchers alone can capture and make meaningful through a data analysis process; participants are not needed to confirm the accuracy of the research findings. My concern here is not so much with the authors’ ontological and epistemological stances as it is with their efforts to conceal their value biases when reporting on the various benefits of the simulator. Their positionality, which was not acknowledged openly and which I do not consider neutral, raises some issues for me. As current and former researchers at UCF (the founder of the TLE TeachLivE Lab) and USU (the external partner of UCF), the authors were committed to simulation technology, particularly in the context of teacher preparation with a focus on special education. Furthermore, these authors all received funding for this research from the National Science Foundation, Lockheed Martin, and/or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, so they had a stake in this work and were likely driven by measurable outcomes that they could report on. Taken together, I find the lack of both transparency and critical views to be problematic, particularly given their “detached” role.

There are also conceptual limitations to the authors’ argument. While I acknowledge that there are a set of skills that preservice teachers ought to learn to help them navigate the intricate and dynamic classroom space, I am wary of the added emphasis on classroom management skills and ways of “fixing” problematic behaviors that students (particularly those with disabilities) exhibit. Lurking behind the TLE TeachLivE Lab is a “technocratic impulse” with a “desire to simplify…complexity” and “magnify the application of discrete techniques” (Britzman, 2003, p. 239). There is the danger that the highly rational modes of teacher practice (read: teacher training) that these simulated environments promote “displace the slower work of understanding” (Britzman, 2003, p. 241) that students—with or without disabilities—need to thrive. What does it even mean that “10 minutes in a simulator is equal to 45-60 minutes in the real world” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 29)? In what “real world” is community-building streamlined and personal transformation sped up? Have the authors forgotten about the timeless importance of building trusting teacher-student relationships, which cannot be practiced or measured?

The teacher-centric view adopted by Dieker et al. is also concerning. The authors claimed that one of the main assets of the TLE TeachLivE Lab is its provision of both an “authentic simulated environment” and a “safe, controlled” one, in which teachers could “reenter…to fix errors with avatars and ensure student success” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 30). Here, the tension could not be more evident when applying an affective lens. For one, a real classroom environment is far from controlled and predictable (cf. Niccolini, 2016; Ohito, 2016). Moreover, without considering students’ perspectives, it is difficult to pinpoint the reason underlying individual students’ “problematic” behavior. A real student “acting out” could be attributed to many entangled factors and could also serve active functions, such as seeking attention, care, and even love. By focusing teacher practice on what teachers should do to students—through practices that can be broken down into “steps” to be implemented with “100% accuracy” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 28)—the authors overlooked how students’ ways of being might also affect teachers and shape their practice. Their technocratic impulse runs the risk of preparing teachers who take the “dynamics of classroom life for granted” (Britzman, 2003, p. 241).

Unlike the authors’ view of teaching in supposedly “realistic environments” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 26), I embrace the concept of teaching as a phenomenon produced by “intra-actions” (Barad, 2003) among teachers, students, texts, objects, and ideas. According to Karen Barad, phenomena do not pre-exist relations or intra-actions among things; rather, a phenomenon—in this case teaching—comes into being when bodies and things engage in intra-activity and shape one another in a bidirectional manner. When one views teaching in this way, it becomes clear that pedagogy can never truly be neatly “transferred” from “one environment to the next” (p. 29) by a teacher, even with the availability of “multiple types of students” that teachers can encounter and “practice with…prior to encountering real students in their classrooms” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 29). Instead of viewing teaching as occurring within a vacuum, I echo Elizabeth Ellsworth’s (2005) perspective that “learning and teaching are affectively charged events” (as cited in Niccolini, 2016, p. 230). Indeed, in her study of a first-year secondary science teacher, Kathryn Strom (2015) illuminated the complexity of enacting pre-professional learning in a real classroom setting, describing teaching as a “collectively negotiated activity” (p. 321) and an assemblage with many connected elements “work[ing] together for a particular purpose” (p. 329). This image of teaching could not be further from Dieker et al.’s (2014) view of teaching as a set of practices carried out by the teacher in an inert classroom.

Taken together, unless the goal of simulated environments is to prepare one-dimensional teachers to teach students who are either “typically developing or not-typically developing” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 25), with little regard for complexity in identity construction (e.g., race, social class, gender, sexuality, language ability, immigration status), and with little awareness of the constraining institutional structures in place, these simulators will do little to prepare teachers for the attunement (Ahmed, 2017; Niccolini, Zarabadi, & Ringrose, 2018; Stewart, 2007), the “emotional labor” (Boler & Zembylas, 2003, p. 126), and the “entanglements” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) that characterize real teaching in the current era. 

Next steps of teacher education: Away from practice, toward experimentation

Technological developments will continue to be on the rise, and there are bound to be other innovations in teacher education. As much as I am intrigued by novel ways of supporting teachers in their practice, I am hesitant to embrace the TLE TeachLivE Lab. I adopt Britzman’s (2003) critical stance that “we must move from celebrating the unique to critiquing the problematic” (p. 241). Thus, I urge teacher preparation programs to thoughtfully weight the affordances and limitations of preservice teachers investing their time and energy into simulated teaching. Classroom management aside, what other areas of teaching might warrant greater attention and care, and how might these domains be targeted in teacher education such that preservice teachers can experience more growth? In helping teachers “refine and practice basic teaching repertoires” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 27) with repeated supervised practice under the same conditions, might simulators limit teachers’ capacity to interact openly and creatively with students? Might such practice also take away the joy and wonder of encountering the infinite scenarios that organically emerge in a real classroom?

Perhaps it is also worthwhile for teacher preparation programs to ask their graduates what the most challenging aspects of teaching are and how programs could better prepare preservice teachers. When I look back on my own teacher education experiences, I immediately recognize the lack of exposure I had to uncomfortable situations and complex, sensitive topics. I was deprived of anti-racist, culturally relevant, and social justice-oriented teaching experiences. I was deprived of honest discussions of how learning disabilities are often a product of the systemic structures we have in place. I was also deprived of ways to work through emotionally charged interactions with students, colleagues, and parents. What I did have was plenty of practice.   

In retracing some of my own experiences, I am not suggesting that the TLE TeachLivE Lab should expand to simulate charged environments and engage teachers in a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler & Zembylas, 2003). Quite the contrary, in bringing tension and affect into my critique, I want to shed light on the embodied, emotional experiences of teaching in real classrooms and how repeated sessions with a simulator cannot prepare teachers for the animacy of affect. Affects are “not something we can plan for, replicate, or train…[and] their effects, wonderfully and frighteningly, are not up to us to decide” (Niccolini, 2016, p. 246). Even so, affect can open up spaces in which to collectively address charged, messy, and entangled concerns, and as such, I believe we should be mindful of its potential and willing to embrace its unpredictability. This, I believe, is part of the art of teaching. I also believe that it is through collective struggle and emotional labor (Boler & Zembylas, 2003) that teachers will improve their “understanding [of] behavior, diversity, disability, and effective instruction in inclusive settings” (Dieker et al., 2014, p. 26, emphasis added), not through practice. In this way, I am advocating for a shift away from scripted practice (with or without simulation technologies) toward experimentation that creates openings in our thinking, teaching, and being.

By experimentation, I mean that I support the teacher-as-researcher movement that Britzman (2003) described and wish to highlight the importance of “acknowledge[ing] the voices of those learning to teach” (p. 240). This movement is not unlike the “inquiry as stance” (p. 288) construct that Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle (1999) advocated. Instead of practicing standardized reflection that Dieker et al. (2014) promote, I hold the position that teachers and students alike would benefit from teachers developing “reflexive analytical skills” that support the development of “sensitive practices” (Britzman, 2003, p. 240). These forms of attunement might help teachers “honor significantly different bodies and ask what they can do” (Manning, 2016, p. 4). By learning to become more in touch with and attuned to others’ at times discordant lives, teachers might learn in unexpected ways. By shifting from a goal of “mastery” of teacher practice that simulated environments privilege to a goal of sustained inquiry, teacher preparation programs could “challenge not just the ways in which teachers work with students but the ways in which everyone involved can imagine who they are becoming” (Britzman, 2003, p. 241, emphasis added). This, in essence, is the “art” in the art of teaching.

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373377

Baglieri, S., Bejoian, L. M., Broderick, A. A., Connor, D. J., & Valle, J. (2011). [Re]claiming “inclusive education” toward cohesion in educational reform: Disability studies unravels the myth of the normal child. Teachers College Record, 113(10), 2122–2154.

Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831.

Boler, M., & Zembylas, M. (2003). Discomforting truths: The emotional terrain of understanding difference. In P. P. Trifonas (Ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social change (pp. 116–139). Retrieved from http://choicereviews.org/review/10.5860/CHOICE.40-6553

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Ferri, B. A., & Connor, D. J. (2010). ‘I was the special ed. girl’: Urban working‐class young women of colour. Gender and Education, 22(1), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250802612688

Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/teacherscollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4528997

McDermott, R., & Raley, J. D. (2008). “The tell-tale body.” The constitution of disabilities in schools. In W. Ayers, T. M. Quinn, & D. Stovall (Eds.), Handbook of Social Justice in Education (pp. 431–445). Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/teacherscollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=432743

Niccolini, A. (2016). Animate affects: Censorship, reckless pedagogies, and beautiful feelings. Gender and Education, 28(2), 230–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2015.1121205

Niccolini, A., Zarabadi, S., & Ringrose, J. (2018). Spinning yarns: Affective kinshipping as posthuman pedagogy. Parallax, 24(3), 324–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2018.1496582

Ohito, E. O. (2016). Making the emperor’s new clothes visible in anti-racist teacher education: Enacting a pedagogy of discomfort with white preservice teachers. Equity & Excellence in Education, 49(4), 454–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2016.1226104

Ponterotto, J. G. (2005). Qualitative research in counseling psychology: A primer on research paradigms and philosophy of science. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52(2), 126–136. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.52.2.126

Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390404

Strom, K. J. (2015). Teaching as assemblage: Negotiating learning and practice in the first year of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(4), 321–333. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487115589990