Participate and share: Interactive session 
Recorded Session
Participants will benefit from the simEquity experience by changing instructional practices through: a) awareness of biases, b) additional professional development provided through debriefing feedback, and c) bias mitigation in real-time, during a simulation session. Context appropriate recommendations for improvements in equity-based teaching practices will provide teachers with the tools needed for reducing implicit bias in instruction.
The topic is highly relevant to the educational technology field including educators and administrators. The simulated teaching environment includes research-based outcomes that show improvement in teaching efficacy and culturally diverse teaching practices. The simulation allows educators to complete professional development on a variety of content areas any time.
Connections between teachers’ sense of efficacy, culturally responsive pedagogy (Callaway, 2016), and student achievement (Oyerinde, 2008; Tucker et al., 2005) have been shown to exist. In order to increase low academic achievement among culturally diverse students, efforts should be made to increase teacher self-efficacy (Callaway, 2016; Tucker et al., 2005). Highly efficacious teachers are more likely to persist in helping struggling students, and are able to design and create more engaging lessons for their students (Bandura, 1997; Kitsantas, 2012; Protheroe, 2008).
SimSchool promotes pedagogical expertise by re-creating the complexities of classroom decisions through mathematical representations of how people learn and what teachers do when teaching. From its inception, simSchool’s underlying artificial intelligence model was envisioned to include research-based psychological, sensory and cognitive domains similar to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Bloom, Mesia, & Krathwohl, 1964). The Five-Factor Model of psychology (McCrae & Costa, 1996) served as the foundation of the student personality spectrum. This model includes the characteristics of extroversion, agreeableness, persistence, emotional stability, and intellectual openness. A simplified sensory model component with auditory, visual and kinesthetic perceptual preferences comprises the physical domain. Together the physical, emotional and academic factors were demonstrated to represent salient elements of classroom teaching and learning (Christensen et al., 2011; Gibson, 2007).
SimSchool’s inference engine draws upon several instructional models and frameworks to simulate the authentic human behaviors and reactions that one experiences when teaching in simSchool (simSchool, 2018-19). These extensively researched and validated models include: 1) Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory of Intelligence (Schneider & McGrew, 2012); 2) OCEAN model of Emotion (McCrae & Costa, 1996); 3) Interpersonal Circumplex Theory (Smith, 2013); 4) Standard models of language learning and language proficiency used to diagnose ELL students (Phakiti, Hirsh, & Woodrow, 2013); and 5) Structural functional (Case, 1993) and social constructivist theories of learning (Dweck, 1999; Vygotsky, 1962). These models are distilled into “cognitive and behavioral states” within simulated students and “cognitive and behavioral requirements” within instructional tasks. When a student has a certain quantitative reasoning ability, for example, an assigned math task has a quantitative reasoning requirement already coded. How the student performs and behaves is a direct reflection of how well-matched expectations are to students’ capabilities.
Included in the simulated environment are short, focused videos and other resources to support the use of the system with very little instruction.
Entire school systems have adopted the simulation for various teacher professional development continuing education and tracking is included for administrators, if requested. In addition, teacher preparation programs have adopted the program to allow more “observation” hours, which are accepted by many states for up to 12 hours of observation for the teaching programs. Currently, the program is being piloted with Career Technology Education teacher education programs in high schools to allow for more practice and feedback in a safe, teaching environment.
• Content and activities: The simulated teaching environment will introduced and an overview of how to teach withing the environment. At the end of each simulated teaching session, feedback is provided to the user/educator to improve the next session. Best practices for using the feedback to employ best teaching practices will be shared.
The participants will be provided with a link to sign up and complete a 15-minute teaching session (based on their selected grade band) and receive system generated feedback. The presenter/facilitators will be walking around to answer questions and make sure participants are able to log in and complete the module.
Reflection questions are included following the simulation. Part of this session will include discussion of the reflection questions to determine the impact of the session.
• Time:
Introduction and overview: 10 minutes
Walk through of simulation module: 10 minutes
Participants completing module and viewing personalized feedback: 25 minutes
Discussion of feedback and reflection questions: 10 minutes
• Process: Planning guides will be provided to aid participants in seeing all options for selection of teaching activities at a glance. (These are provided as a pdf in the simulation system as well). Most of this session will be hands-on participation and discussion among peers and facilitators.
Research on the use of simSchool has shown improved educator understanding in teaching skills (Christensen et al., 2011; Knezek et al., 2015), classroom management (Christensen et al., 2007), motivation (Tyler-Wood et al., 2017), multicultural awareness, literacy (Collum, Christensen et al., 2019), self-reported educator bias (Collum, Christensen, Delicath, & Knezek, 2020) and instructional self-efficacy (Knezek & Christensen, 2009). The key innovation of the program is that it provides teachers and teacher trainees many learning trials with simulated students, thereby increasing teacher confidence and competence, which in turn improves student learning. Repetition of many trials is important in changing habit complexes such as implicit bias (Malone, 2016).
Publications related to topic
Christensen, R. & Knezek, G. (2022). Impacting culturally responsive teaching strategies by decreasing bias through simulation experiences. Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Learning, 7(2), 39 – 56. Doi: 10.3280/exioa2-2022oa15077
Tyler-Wood, T., Estes, M., Christensen, R., Knezek, G., & Gibson, D. (2015). SimSchool: An opportunity for using serious gaming for training teachers in rural areas. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 34(3), 17-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/875687051503400304
Christensen, R., Knezek, G., Tyler-Wood, T. & Gibson, D. (2011). SimSchool: An online dynamic simulator for enhancing teacher preparation. Invited paper. International Journal of Learning Technology, 6(2). 201-220.
Knezek, G. & Christensen, R. (2009). Preservice educator learning in a simulated teaching environment. In (Ed.) C. Maddux Research Highlights in Technology and Teacher Education 2009, 161-170.
Meritt, J., Gibson, D., Christensen, R., & Knezek, G. (2015). Teacher training using interactive technologies: Performance and assessment in second life and simschool. In P. Isaías, J. M. Spector, D. Ifenthaler, & D. Sampson (Eds.), E-learning systems, environments and approaches: Theory and implementation. New York: Springer.
Hettler, L., Gibson, D., Christensen, R., Zibit, M. (2007). simMentoring: Guiding development from virtual to real teaching! (2008). CurveShift: Stowe, VT
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