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Facilitating discussions is a key approach that science teachers use to engage students in scientific argumentation. However, learning how to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions is an ambitious teaching practice that can be difficult to learn how to do well, especially for preservice teachers (PSTs) who typically have limited opportunities to tryout and refine this teaching practice. This study examines secondary PSTs' perceptions and engagement with a science performance task--used within an online, simulated classroom consisting of five middle school student avatars--to practice this ambitious teaching practice. Findings showed that the PSTs had a strong understanding of the discussion's primary goal and perceived the task components to be easy to understand, useful in helping them prepare for the simulated discussion, and an authentic representation of what middle school students would say and do. In addition, while the PSTs attended to similar content and pedagogical features within their facilitated discussion, they varied in their ability to successfully facilitate the discussion. This study adds to the growing literature on innovative, technology-based solutions for supporting teacher learning and points to one productive approach that can be incorporated within science teacher education as an approximation of practice of this ambitious teaching practice.

Engaging students in scientific argumentation is a hallmark of high-quality science instruction. Despite the importance of this practice, it is not a ubiquitous one within K-12 classrooms since scientific argumentation is complex and difficult to learn how to do well. In this study, we examined similarities and differences in how preservice teachers (PSTs) and in-service teachers (ISTs) facilitate an argumentation-focused discussion with five upper elementary student avatars in an online, simulated classroom. Developing a better understanding of how science teachers at different stages of their career foster scientific argumentation will support teacher educators and researchers in designing more directed interventions to scaffold teacher learning of this complex practice. Findings showed that most teachers provided opportunities for students to engage in both argument construction and critique during these discussions. In addition, both PSTs and ISTs frequently prompted students to reference data or observations to engage in argument construction and were most likely to prompt students to agree or disagree and explain the reason for their agreement or disagreement to engage in argument critique. Finally, findings showed that ISTs used a wider variety of talk moves and used them more frequently in an integrated fashion throughout the discussions to engage the students in scientific argumentation. Implications for studying and promoting teacher learning of this complex teaching practice and for integrating simulated classrooms as practice-based tools in science teacher education and professional development settings are discussed.

In this report of an action research study, the authors describe how one elementary science teacher educator used transcript coding of simulated classroom discussions as a pedagogical approach to learn about her elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs') abilities to notice key aspects of scientific argumentation discussions. Elementary PSTs (n = 19) enrolled in a science methods course engaged in transcript coding before and after facilitating their own argumentation discussions in the Mursion® simulated classroom environment with five upper-elementary student avatars. The first transcript was from a PST outside of the course; the second was from PSTs' own discussions. The study examined how PSTs' coding of the transcripts could provide the teacher educator with insights regarding PSTs' noticing about engaging students in argument construction and critique. The study also aimed to investigate PSTs' perspectives on the utility of transcript coding. Findings showed that PSTs can code with accuracy, yet they may be more apt to miss coding teacher prompts that encourage students to share reasoning. Results also revealed that PSTs sometimes coded nonexamples of argument construction and critique, suggesting a need for more targeted learning experiences to connect teaching principles with classroom interactions, and the PSTs perceived coding their own and other's transcripts as uniquely valuable learning experiences.

The purpose of this research study was to examine in-service teachers' perceptions about, attention to, and use of two different types of written formative feedback designed to support them in developing their ability to engage in one core teaching practice: facilitating discussions that engage students in scientific argumentation. This core teaching practice has been nominated as important for building students' scientific literacy and has been perennially difficult for teachers to learn how to engage in successfully. This study used an online, simulated classroom made up of five upper elementary student avatars as the practice-based space where the participating in-service teachers facilitated two science discussions. Following the first discussion, each teacher received one of two types of written formative feedback (namely, specific feedback or scoring level feedback) based on their discussion. Findings indicated that the teachers perceived both types of feedback as useful and strongly attended to areas of improvement suggested in the written feedback, regardless of feedback condition. Study results suggest that the use of specific or scoring level feedback can serve as one valuable mechanism to support improvement when using online simulations with elementary science teachers.

Providing opportunities for students to talk directly with their peers is a critical dimension to facilitating discussions in mathematics and science, including argumentation‐focused discussions in which students construct arguments and critique others' arguments. Research suggests that supporting student‐to‐student talk and facilitating argumentation discussions are complex and challenging practices for preservice teachers (PSTs). Elementary PSTs from two mathematics and two science methods courses practiced facilitating student‐to‐student talk within the context of an argumentation‐focused discussion. This study's main purpose was to explore the prompts that 29 PSTs used to encourage student‐to‐student talk in a simulated classroom. Findings show the PSTs were able to use direct prompts that encourage student‐to‐student talk but were just as likely to use prompts that may discourage students from talking to each other. Most direct prompts PSTs used to encourage student‐to‐student talk were for the purpose of argumentation construction and/or critique. PSTs were more likely to use indirect prompts, much like Talk Moves, that encourage students to consider others' ideas rather than requesting that students talk with each other. These findings have important implications for future research, as well as for teacher educators and professional learning facilitators who support teachers learning to encourage student‐to‐student talk during argumentation‐focused discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging children in argumentation‐focused discussions is essential to helping them collaboratively make sense of scientific phenomena. To support this effort, teachers must listen and be responsive to students' ideas to move the discussion forward with the goal of reaching consensus. Given the complexity of this ambitious science teaching practice, in lieu of traditional field experiences, online simulated teaching experiences provide opportunities for preservice teachers to practice implementing these strategies in a low‐risk, high‐support environment. Limited research has explored elementary preservice teachers' responsiveness while navigating an argumentation‐focused discussion, particularly in an online simulated teaching experience. The purpose of this study was to examine preservice teachers' responsiveness to students' ideas while eliciting students' initial constructed arguments and encouraging argument critique in two online simulated teaching experiences. Findings showed that preservice teachers' responsiveness to students' ideas was high in both online simulated teaching experiences when asking students to share evidence as well as engage in critique. However, their responsiveness varied when prompting for reasoning and was often low when eliciting students' claims. These findings provide empirical evidence that such online simulated teaching experiences can be used as productive spaces for PSTs to practice being responsive to students' ideas during argumentation‐focused discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]