Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of using simulated teaching practice to improve preparedness and confidence for professional experience.

Professional experience is a vital component of initial teacher education. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) are most effective when they feel confident in their ability to perform the role as expected. Repeated opportunities for micro-teaching in a safe environment support PSTs to feel confident and prepared. Rapid advances in immersive technologies and an emerging research base have brought to light the opportunities that simulation using immersive technologies can provide teacher educators and PSTs. To add to this, we employed concurrent mixed methods and the lens of social constructivism to collect and analyse survey data of PSTs’ self-reports of confidence and preparedness for professional experience before and after (n=32) participating in two x fifteen-minute simulated micro-teaching sessions along with 200-word reflections (n=41). Micro-teaching sessions were conducted in SimLab™, a virtual environment that combined artificial intelligence (virtual avatars) and live actors (human interactors) to create authentic learning simulations. Findings suggest that participation in SimLab™ marginally increased PSTs' feelings of preparedness for professional experience while PSTs feelings of confidence remained almost the same. Many PSTs reported SimLab ™ to be an authentic experience because they felt that the avatars were real students and there was a sense of presence. This enabled PSTs to plan and practice behaviour management strategies and contributed to feelings of preparedness and confidence. Nonetheless, some PSTs noted challenges in engaging the avatars as they were unable to use resources and materials they would normally use in classrooms, especially in the early years. The important finding from this study is that pedagogy developed in face-to-face contexts does not simply transfer to SimLab™ and possibly other simulated teaching experiences. This suggests that the design and facilitation of SimLab™ was instrumental, where the technology was viewed as a tool. Future studies that examine whether PSTs preparedness and confidence can be more effectively developed by harnessing a post-digital perspective would be beneficial. This would support PSTs to conceive immersive technologies such as SimLab™ as multi-dimensional spaces where pedagogy, technology, the human and material are connected, and to consider ways to best interact and engage simulated students in this space.