Developing Micro-Teaching with a Focus on Core Practices: The Use of Approximations of Practice

Abstract

Micro-teaching as a pedagogical approach is practiced in many higher education programmes focused on building knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes that can be applied in a professional setting. The previous literature attests to the usefulness of micro-teaching experiences in supporting the development of the beginning professional. This paper describes the design and implementation of a micro-teaching programme in one teacher preparation programme with a dual focus on core practices and Approximation of Practice (AoP). AoPs, in this instance, are defined as opportunities to engage in core practices that are proximal to the practices of a particular profession. The paper begins by exploring practice-based education, focusing on core practices and approximations of practice. Micro-teaching as a pedagogical approach is briefly introduced before describing the design and implementation of a specific enactment of pedagogy, a micro-teaching programme using core practices and AoPs. Opportunities and challenges of designing and implementing the micro-teaching programme are discussed and problematised. Finally, some practice considerations are offered to the broader higher education audience regarding the use of AoPs in higher education in the preparation of beginning professionals.

1. Introduction

The international literature focuses on teacher effectiveness and problematises the concept from a variety of perspectives, including the quality of teacher preparation [1,2,3]. With increased policy and practice focus on teacher effectiveness comes an emphasis on what we do as teacher educators and the learning experiences included in teacher preparation that can optimally prepare students to be effective teachers in the classroom. Thus, we bring our attention to the enactment of pedagogy in preparing professionals for practice, and the campus-based learning experiences versus the practical expectations of the professional role [4,5,6]. In an effort to connect campus-based coursework with fieldwork, a number of researchers have advocated for practice-based teacher preparation [7,8,9], which includes a focus on core practices of teaching [8,10] and practice-based pedagogies including representation, decomposition and approximation [8,11,12]. It is within this context that we, as teacher educators, share one example of our enacted pedagogical practice: micro-teaching. Micro-teaching focuses on the development of teaching skills via the practice of expert modelling while the novice observes, deconstructs and replicates. This idea has been developed with the identification of a number of practice foci, including classroom observations, discussion, video observations, dialogic teaching and formative assessment practices [8,13,14,15]. This focus on core practices is central to the conceptualisation of approximation of practice (AoP) [11,16]. Approximations are understood as the level of closeness and/or distance from the actual reality of practice. Foregrounding core practices in teacher preparation programmes in this way can enable pre-service teachers (PSTs) to enact but also potentially adapt these practices for specific classroom contexts [13], as it situates a practice within the frame of a theoretical approach and supports the exploration of AoPs from the perspective of distance from the ‘reality’ of the professional setting.

This paper describes the experiences of one teacher preparation programme in the Republic of Ireland as the authors grappled with these concepts to design and facilitate a micro-teaching programme that aimed to prepare and support PSTs as they began their journey within a professional setting, this being the second-level school. In doing so, this paper illustrates a specific practice-based teacher preparation approach that aims to support PSTs in learning to enact complex teaching practices that can be applied to the field. The paper begins by exploring practice-based education, focusing on core practices and AoPs. Next, micro-teaching as a pedagogical approach is briefly introduced before describing the design and implementation of a specific micro-teaching programme using core practices and AoPs. Opportunities and challenges of designing and implementing the micro-teaching programme are discussed and problematised. Finally, some practice considerations are offered to the broader higher education audience regarding the use of AoPs in higher education in the preparation of beginning professionals.

2. Background

2.1. Practice-Based Teacher Preparation

A number of authors have advocated for practice-based teacher preparation that provides novices learning opportunities, including the enactment of teaching [10,14,17], therefore supporting PSTS in learning how to use knowledge in action [7,8,18]. Sleep [19] describes this trend of focused teacher preparation on practice as opposed to merely talking about teaching as a means to concentrate on what teachers do rather than what they know. In recent decades, research has emerged that has explored ways of focusing teachers’ professional education on “core” practices of teaching [7,10,13,14,20,21]. Grossman [22] defines core practices as “components of teaching that teachers enact to support learning. These components include instructional strategies and the subcomponents of strategies and moves. Core practices can include both general and content-specific practices” (p. 184). In terms of selecting core practices, they are typically used frequently in teaching and learning, research-informed and evidence based, implemented broadly across the curriculum, linked to student outcomes and transferable to novices [8,10,14]. Previous research has reported the inclusion of the following core practices in teacher preparation: eliciting and responding to student thinking [8,23,24]; the use of video as a prompt for deconstructing practice [13,25]; facilitating a whole-class discussion [24,26,27,28]; redirect off-task behaviour [22]; anticipating student errors and misconceptions during planning [29]; and modelling [10,30]. The inclusion of core practices in teacher preparation, it has been argued, may go some way to militating issues of complexity, enactment and the lack of a shared language for talking about teaching and learning [11,13,16,31,32,33,34]. Hauser and Kavanagh [35] suggest that identifying a set of core practices enables a disentanglement of the complex work of the teacher and the theoretical concepts that underpin this work. This research reflects an increasing effort to develop what has been termed “practice-based” teacher preparation, which “attempts to focus novices’ learning more directly on the work of teaching rather than on traditional academic or theoretical topics that may have only marginal relevance to the realities of the classroom” [14] (p. 357).

AoPs are a critical component of practice-based pedagogies that provide opportunities for PSTs to enact selected core practices in settings that are designed to facilitate additional support and feedback [11,13,36]. AoPs refer to opportunities for students “to engage in practices that are more or less proximal to the practices of a profession” [11] (p. 2058) and therefore provide opportunities for deliberate practice [37]. They are designed to focus students’ attention “on key aspects of the practice that may be difficult for novices but almost second nature to more experienced practitioners” [11] (p. 2078). Similar to other disciplines, for example, psychotherapy, psychology and medicine, AoPs are increasingly used as a pedagogy of enactment in teacher preparation programmes [8], thus providing PSTs with opportunities for enactment, experimentation and feedback [38,39]. AoPs provide PSTs with an invitation to simulate certain aspects of practice within the campus-based classroom, thus allowing students “to try piloting the waters under easier conditions” [11] (p. 2076). It is important to note that the inclusion of core practices in teacher preparation does not come without critique. Some authors argue that adoption of this approach may reduce the focus on students, student outcomes of interest and the nuances of various contexts and rather privileges a formulaic and technocratic approach to teaching over adaptive and context-sensitive teaching [13,16,40,41,42]. Scholars have also noted that reproducing practices across contexts risks undermining equity and justice, calling for equity-oriented and contextually sensitive responses to dilemmas of practice [41,43]. Others have rebutted, arguing that the inclusion of core practices in teacher preparation can prepare and support PSTs to adapt their teaching to changing contexts [12,23,44]. For instance, Baldinger and Munson [32] reported that approximating core practices in coursework can support developing adaptive expertise. McDonald et al. [10] suggested that in order to truly develop an understanding of the practice of teaching, teacher preparation programmes must not only reimagine the curriculum but also the pedagogy of teacher preparation and consider adding pedagogies of enactment to an existing repertoire of pedagogies of reflection and investigation [8]. Grossman et al. [11] recommended three concepts to promote understanding of the pedagogies of practice in professional education: representations, decompositions and approximations of practice. The inclusion of pedagogical approaches that focus on representations of practice provides students with opportunities to experience the variety of ways that practice is presented in professional education and what such representations make visible and explicit. These approaches emphasise that the nature of representation reflects particular decision-making and resultant consequences. Engaging in the decomposition or deconstruction of these representations provides students with opportunities to analyse and deconstruct practice into its constituting parts to support teaching and learning; for example, instructional or dialogic moves can be identified. It is important therefore that teacher preparation programmes pay close attention to the pedagogies selected to enable the exploration of core practices for the beginning professional. Dependent on this is the necessity to create infrastructure to implement and support these practices in teacher preparation programmes.

2.2. Micro-Teaching

Micro-teaching, a ‘scaled down’ version of an actual classroom, is a technique currently practiced worldwide to provide PSTs with opportunities to develop their teaching by practicing various teaching skills in a safe and supportive learning environment [45,46,47]. While micro-teaching has become a stalwart in teacher preparation since the early 1960s, the conceptual framework underpinning the initiative has been replicated across various disciplines, including nursing and medical education [48,49,50]. The model of micro-teaching developed at Stanford University [45,51,52] as part of their teacher preparation programme required students to engage in a three-part process. Firstly, students observe a model teaching scenario in which a specific skill is demonstrated. Then, students try out the new technique and receive feedback on their performance. Feedback is facilitated by recording the students, and then this recording is reviewed by a supervisor. Micro-teaching enables students to try and improve certain teaching skills in a controlled way in a ‘laboratory’ environment. The class environment is profoundly complex under normal conditions, is simplified in terms of the number of students and duration of teaching and is organised in such a way as to focus on certain behavioural situations that the participant may encounter in their professional practice. Although there are different ways of applying the principles, the micro-teaching cycle can be listed as follows: prepare a short lesson plan on a certain topic; video-recording of the lesson; review the video-recorded lesson; evaluation of the lesson by the student, peers and tutor; prepare the lesson again and re-present and finally re-evaluate. Using micro-teaching as a pedagogical approach simulates a teaching experience, which is scaled down in terms of time and student numbers. Typically, this translates into a four to twenty-minute lesson which is taught to three to ten pupils where “the student teacher [is immersed in] an active teaching role” [51] (p. 78), which can be highly controlled. A number of variables can be adjusted to change the experience for the student, including teaching pupils or peers, the length of the lesson, the number of pupils, the number of re-teaches, the amount and type of feedback provided to students and the use of the video-recording.

Numerous studies carried out in the mid-1970s supported the use of micro-teaching for the acquisition of new teaching techniques, e.g., [51,53,54]. These findings have been replicated in later research studies [55,56]. Fernández [57] recommended the provision of collaborative opportunities for PSTs to explore pedagogical problems and engage in “reflection and critical analysis of their teaching practices” (p. 351), while Ledger and Fischetti [58] suggested that micro-teaching simulations offer teacher educators “a controlled learning environment for effective moderation and diagnosis of practice” (p. 37). The literature highlights how engagement with micro-teaching as a pedagogical approach has the potential to impact a number of skills required for the classroom, including the following:

• Reflective practice [59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66];
• Personal preparation for teaching [55,56,67];
• Enhanced professionalism [47,55,56,68];
• Enhanced classroom management [56,57,67,69];
• Increased self-confidence [49,70] and motivation [71];
• Enhanced lesson quality/planning [55,57,68].

Darling-Hammond [72] noted that micro-teaching provides a valuable opportunity to receive feedback via comments from tutors and peers in a simulated environment. These findings have been replicated by Higgins and Nicholl [48], Ismail [46] and Woolfolk Hoy and Burke Spero [73]. Engagement with this pedagogical approach has also been linked to reduced learning anxiety [70,71,74]; making classroom practices less teacher-centred [75] and providing valuable teaching experiences, which can facilitate PSTs’ awareness of the benefits and relationships between theory and practice [76]. It is clear from the literature presented here that higher education institutions and, indeed, schools of education have the autonomy to select and implement their own programme of micro-teaching, one that focuses on a particular skill or suite of skills for professional practice. It is important therefore to conceptualise and develop programmes that are informed by the evidence and equally contribute to the evidence, thus ensuring that PSTs can model the practices, knowledge, skills and attitudes required for professional practice. In the next section, the authors describe the design and implementation of a specific enactment of pedagogy, a micro-teaching programme with a dual focus on core practices and AoPs.

3. Description of the Micro-Teaching Model

PSTs (n = 330) are enrolled on an undergraduate four-year concurrent programme of teacher preparation comprising five strands: Physical Education with an elective; Science (Physical or Biological); Materials and Technology (Architectural or Engineering); Languages; and Mathematics and Computer Science. Twenty-five per cent of credits are allocated to ‘Education Studies’ with the foundation disciplines providing the spine of the programme together with a strong emphasis on hermeneutic approaches and reflective practice [77]. Students complete an eight-week school placement in their second year and a ten-week placement in their fourth year, as well as twenty modules in their subject discipline(s). The micro-teaching programme described in this paper is a lab-based practicum experience housed within a six European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) module in semester one year two of the programme. Within this module, students are required to examine a variety of planning and teaching skills and concepts that combine to make a teacher effective in the classroom in preparation for practicum experiences. The module is facilitated by a module lead, six micro-teaching tutors and two technical staff. The programme is facilitated across two cycles as part of the twelve-week module and is predicated on a cycle of plan–rehearse–review–evaluate, resulting in 150 h of recorded rehearsals, supported by three partner second-level schools (see

Table 1. Micro-teaching programme.

	Cycle 1: Peer Teach (MT1)	Cycle 2: Micro-Teach 2 (MT2)
Lesson Focus	AoP: Introducing a new topic (GCE)	AoP: Facilitating a Group Discussion
Structure of Experience	Plan; Implement; Review; Evaluate	Plan; Implement; Review; Evaluate
	Small groups (5/6 students)	Small groups (5/6 students)
	Lessons are recorded	Lessons are recorded
Implementation setting	Peer Teach	Pupils aged 12–14 years
	Reduced class size (6 students)	Reduced class size (6 students)
	Reduced Lesson length (8–10 min)	Reduced Lesson length (8–10 min)
Review/Evaluation Structure	Participant Review Independent Review	Participant Review Independent Review Tutor Review
Forms of Feedback	Participant Feedback Use of recorded lesson Tutor Feedback	Pupil Feedback Feedback from peers Use of recorded lesson: Medals and Missions Tutor Feedback
Reflective Process	Individual Written Reflection	Individual Written Reflection
Outputs	Partial Lesson Plan Participant Feedback Report Apply to full draft of individual lesson plan	Partial Lesson Plan Peer Feedback Report Self-Assessment Apply to full draft of individual lesson plan

).

As evidenced in Table 1, working with a tutor and as part of a small team (n = 5/6), PSTs devise and execute a number of ‘mini’ lessons or rehearsals with both their peers and second-level students (aged 12–14 years). The micro-teaching programme is designed to include contact time with the tutor—17 h across ten weeks as well as independent work on behalf of the student. Over twelve weeks, students rehearse on two occasions, once as part of a peer-teach group and once as part of a small group facilitating second-level pupils. Lessons are video-recorded for later analysis individually and with the tutor. Building on the work of McDonald et al. [10] and Grossman et al. [8,11], the conceptualisation and implementation of this micro-teaching programme is presented as an exemplar of an enactment of teacher preparation pedagogy with a dual focus on core practices and AoPs (see Figure 1). Phases and pedagogical approaches included moving from less authentic AoPs (for example, analysing a written case or engaging in role-play) to more authentic AoPs where students rehearse the practice with support from a tutor [11].

Process

In terms of selecting core practices for inclusion in the micro-teaching programme, it is important that selection avoids a reductionist approach and rather that those selected would share certain criteria; the practices are used frequently in teaching and learning, research-informed and evidence-based, implemented broadly across the curriculum, linked to student outcomes and transferable to novices. Within this micro-teaching programme, two core practices are included for exploration and rehearsal, namely ‘Introducing a (new) topic, in this instance, Global Citizenship Education’ (GCE) and ‘facilitating a group discussion’.

Phase 1: Students are introduced to and learn about the selected core practice. This process is achieved by engaging in three pedagogical activities: modelling, deconstruction, and examining written cases. The tutor begins by modelling the core practice. PSTs are prompted to consider what they think the teacher did well, and if they were to facilitate this aspect of the lesson, what might they do differently? Next, PSTs are scaffolded to deconstruct the model as offered by the tutor using a number of prompts that support the identification of key tasks/activities, ‘moves’ and decisions reflected. In the case of introducing a (new) topic, students are asked to consider: What do we know about how young people learn (student motivation/interest, readiness, memory)? How do we account for this in our planning process (decisions we make with regard to inclusion of tasks/activities)? How do we orient students to new learning (consideration of prior knowledge and experiences)? How do we provide opportunities for practice/repetition? As students considered and deconstructed the tutor modelling of ‘facilitating a group discussion’, they considered some of the instructional routines that constitute the practice of leading/facilitating a discussion, including identifying generative questions, choosing rich problems to discuss and inclusion of student voice. The final activity included in this phase is ‘examining written cases’, and in this instance, this involved the review and analysis of the written documentation and an abridged lesson plan (please see Supplementary Materials, which provides an example of an abridged lesson plan). This phase aimed to support PSTs to develop a vision and understanding of the core practice of focus as well as exploration of relevant embedded tasks, activities and practices.

Phase 2: This phase focuses on planning and preparing for rehearsal in Phase 3 and is supported by engagement with two pedagogical activities: collaborative planning/preparation and feedback. Facilitated by their tutor, PSTs work in small collaborative groups (n = 5–6) to plan a short rehearsal of practice (8–10 min) with peers or second-level students. In this planning phase, PSTs are asked to consider the following aspects:

• Class routines/practices;
• Pupils’ prior knowledge/motivation with regards to the focus of the lesson (for example, Global Citizenship Education);
• Student engagement;
• Knowledge of the subject area: key themes/concepts;
• Selection of learning goals (including learning outcomes, learning intentions, and success criteria);
• Considerations for representation and expression and the resources required to facilitate the rehearsal.

PSTs engage in peer and tutor feedback activities regarding planning and preparation for the rehearsal and revise their plan accordingly.

Phase 3: This phase focuses on rehearsing the core practice with peers or second-level pupils in the micro-teaching labs and is supported by engagement with two pedagogical activities: approximation of practice [11] and recorded rehearsals. This approach facilitates sheltered practice or rehearsal of the core practice. Building upon the collaborative planning phase, small groups of PSTs (n = 5–6) are facilitated across a number of independent lab spaces. Each PST rehearses for 8–10 min in this small group setting. An important aspect of the rehearsal phase is the capture of the enactment in concrete ways to support later analysis and reflection. This is accomplished by using the following approaches: PSTs are required to present written documentation of an abridged lesson plan to their tutor in advance of the recorded session; PSTs collect any available artefacts of student learning during the enactment. Once the rehearsal is complete where relevant, PSTs invite feedback from peers or second-level pupils regarding their experience of the lesson. All lessons are recorded and hosted on a secure site for later analysis by the tutor and PSTs.

Phase 4: This phase focuses on analysing the enactment and is supported by engagement with three pedagogical activities: video analysis; transcript analysis; and reflective writing. PSTs are supported by peers and the tutor to review and analyse the recording of their rehearsal and accompanying written lesson documentation. During the review and analysis phase, PSTs watch their recording and review their lesson plan as they consider the following reflective prompts: what you think went really well during the rehearsal; what evidence can you use to support this claim; how do you perceive students would experience this lesson and identify one thing that you would do better/differently. The reflective writing activity is then shared with peers and the tutor for discussion. Facilitated by their tutor, PSTs once again engage in collaborative discussion and written reflection to identify strengths and areas for improvement for future practice. PSTs compile a self-evaluation report identifying medals and missions and are scaffolded by the following reflective prompts: What suggestion(s) have you identified from the lecture content and the literature to facilitate the achievement of your missions? How would you incorporate the suggestion(s) in a future lesson plan? Grossman, Hammerness and McDonald [8] describe the focus of this phase as an investigation of practice as such efforts to review, analyse and evaluate the practice supports PSTs to develop their understanding of the practice. Reflective of McDonald et al.’s [10] approach, the inclusion of modelling, video analysis and case analysis are all representations of practice [8], which serve to scaffold PSTs to develop an image of the activity and embedded practices and a language or lexicon to articulate the practice identified for exploration. Equally, reflective rehearsals approximate the work of teaching [11,78] by providing a space for PSTs to discuss and analyse their thinking and decision-making with peers and tutors. Having described the particular approach used in this programme, it is now important to consider and reflect upon some practice considerations for teacher preparation and the broader higher education audience with regard to the use of core practices and AoPs.

4. Discussion and Implications for Practice

It is imperative that, as educators, we pay due diligence to the relationship between different sites of learning, particularly the relationship between theory and practice. It is therefore important that we consider the enactment of pedagogy in preparing professionals for practice. Such considerations support the development of “programmatic structures and pedagogy [that] acknowledge and build on the integrated nature of theory and practice as well as the potentially deep interplay between coursework and field placements” [8] (p. 276). For example, it may be reasonable to assume that observing, deconstructing, rehearsing, evaluating and reflecting upon two core practices during the campus-based element of the teacher preparation programme, as described in this paper, may provide PSTs with conceptual understanding when engaging these practices during fieldwork. This contention has been supported in other empirical work suggesting core practices that have been represented, decomposed and approximated in coursework are more frequently observed in novices’ classroom teaching [24,79,80,81,82]. The description of a pedagogical enactment of core practices and AoPs shared in this paper offers a step towards a broader goal of identifying and designing pedagogies for practice-based programmes that provide students with opportunities to observe, deconstruct, and approximate complex practices while simultaneously preparing them to adapt these practices to their future professional contexts [83]. Notwithstanding this, further research is required that accounts for a number of contextual factors, including PSTs’ levels of disciplinary knowledge [79,84] and access to appropriate mentor support [85,86]. Equally, the adoption of practice-based education across contexts could be charged with focusing on the development of de-contextualized skills and routines that may erode the autonomy and agency of the professional [16] while also undermining equity and justice when enactment of practice lacks contextual sensitivity [13,40,41,42,43]. The authors surmise that the pedagogical example described in this paper, a micro-teaching programme with a dual focus on core practices and AoPs, goes some way to demonstrating the use of a common language or framework that could guide both discussion and analysis of pedagogy for professional education across the academy. We are, however, cognisant of the ongoing challenges and potential opportunities such an approach presents, which require consideration to support students’ development of core practices. These shall now be discussed in two sections: selecting, implementing and evaluating core practices; and scaffolding engagement with the investigation of practice.

4.1. Selecting, Implementing and Evaluating Core Practices

One of the biggest and consistent challenges is selecting and potentially agreeing on a number of core practices for inclusion in any professional programme [15]. Forzani [14], amongst others, suggests that, as of yet, work on the inclusion of core practices in teacher preparation remains precarious. Zeichner [87] synthesises that resistance is still commonplace in terms of selecting or detailing professional training practices. Ultimately, the inclusion of any core practice needs to be framed by the research evidence base while simultaneously linking exploration and investigation of the practice to the work of the professional. As work in this area continues, McDonald et al. [10] advocate that a stronger relationship needs to be established between research on teaching and the work of teacher preparation, where a common language for describing practice is explicit, common pedagogies and specified. This, they suggest may address “the perennial and persistent divides among university courses and between university course work and clinical experiences” (p. 379). Key to this approach is the need to identify, develop, and implement targeted teacher education pedagogies aimed at preparing teachers with those practices. While those in the field remain somewhat cautious of prescribing a set of core practices, McDonald et al. [10] argue that we should be wary of letting “a thousand flowers bloom, a familiar approach within teacher education” (p. 381). Rather, they suggest gaining some consensus on a set of criteria for identifying, naming, and selecting a number of core practices. Grossman et al. [11] stipulate that professional programmes need to scaffold students to apply their learning to a number of practices, thus enabling them to develop knowledge of the practice, attend to the complexities of interaction and respond in real time under conditions of uncertainty. While advocates for the inclusion of core practices in teacher preparation have described the approach as aligning technical skill with professional judgment and the capacity to improvise [14], further research is required with regard to PSTs’ capacity to adapt core practices in their specific teaching contexts [83]. Adoption of this approach does not negate a focus on developing responsive and adaptive teaching that recognises the intentional, situated and contextual aspects of teaching [40,41,42,88]. A number of authors have suggested, however, that the inclusion of AoPs and rehearsals in coursework can support the development of routines, responsive teaching and adaptive expertise [12,23,32,36,44,89,90].

Equally, there remains a paucity of evidence describing the pedagogical enactment and evaluation of core practices in teacher preparation programmes. It is important that we meaningfully investigate the pedagogical approaches that teacher educators use to facilitate PSTs’ enactment of core practices. We need to identify student outcomes of interest, for example, understanding of the core practice and evolving perspective of the teacher as a practitioner. It would be remiss to assume a common narrative and understanding prevails. These investigations could be supported by facilitating teacher educators with time and space to engage in professional dialogue to explore a rationale for the inclusion of such pedagogical approaches and core practices. As well as examining the implementation of a set of core practices and the supporting pedagogies used, we also need to explore the learning environments, lexicon and meanings that are imbued across various representations, modelling, decompositions and enactments. McDonald et al. [10] suggest that both researchers and practitioners engage in dialogue that problematise curriculum choices and the ways in which these choices influence teacher professional learning. They also suggest that variation in core practices within and across content areas may offer a rich opportunity for educators to develop ways of parsing practice that support learning. Therefore, engagement with critical reflection, peer observation, professional dialogue and gathering systematic evidence as to the effectiveness of including core practices need to become commonplace for the exploration and evaluation of teacher preparation programmes that adopt this approach.

The higher education setting is often removed from the site of professional practice, thus accentuating the perceived theory-practice divide. There are a number of challenges in attempting to connect the sites of practice. Ledger and Fischetti [58] highlight issues of variability of student experience of practicum and the provision of knowledgeable mentors to support the development of core practices, guiding the connection between theory and practice. This is particularly relevant in the Irish context, given the lack of a formal policy infrastructure to guide the effective development of practicum experiences for PSTs [85,91]. While many higher education programmes include clinical experience in a field setting, practice is also often facilitated at the campus level. Many teacher preparation programmes are organised into foundation courses, methods courses and clinical practice. This fragmentation can lead to a number of challenges when considering the inclusion of a focus on core practices, including a disconnect between theoretical knowledge and teachers’ practical work in classrooms and relegation of issues pertaining to the practices of teaching to particular courses/modules rather than integrating them throughout teacher preparation. It potentially places, either implicitly or explicitly, the focus of learning to teach upon the theoretical foundations of teaching rather than practices new teachers may need to enact as they begin their professional roles. Finally, this curricular fragmentation can also hamper opportunities for teacher educators to collaborate across areas of specialism [8,10,40]. Given the significance of the practicum on teacher preparation programmes, Ostrosky et al. [92] stress the importance of a well-structured micro-teaching programme, one that introduces PSTs to the realities of teaching and the roles teachers assume.

Cognisant of these challenges, careful planning is required to identify and link exploration and investigation of core practices across multiple sites. The interesting thing about the model advocated by McDonald et al. [10] is its focus and ability to transverse multiple sites of engagement to include campus (foundations and methods courses) and clinical practice (schools). The exemplar presented in this paper currently exists only within the foundation aspect of the programme (controlled campus setting). Much more could be conducted in terms of linking to methods modules and the clinical experience. Bridging the gap between higher education institutions and practicum experiences via the use of micro-teaching may enhance PSTs’ understanding and effective utilisation of core practices in classroom environments. This ultimately has implications for how teacher educators successfully manage school–university partnerships and collaborate with teachers to ensure that the sites of practice work in tandem with the support of PSTs. If carried out successfully PSTs could be scaffolded to enact core practices with pupils during practicum experiences within an authentic setting [10,11], therefore focusing on particular aspects of their practice at different stages in a very structured way. PSTs can reflect on this enactment via the reflective process opportunities available during their practicum experience. However, the historical divides between foundations, methods and practicum components within teacher preparation need some attention as they can be problematic. These divides can lead to many assumptions of who is doing what and for what purpose. This reinforces the need for communication and collaboration between the sites of practice. Are the foundation disciplines truly foundational in terms of their focus and aim? Is there sufficient knowledge of learners and learning, knowledge of the purposes of schooling and classrooms? For example, Grossman et al. [11] suggest that foundational courses impart conceptual tools—the frameworks, principles or guidelines that teachers use to guide their decision-making about teaching and learning. While these conceptual tools may support teachers in framing and interpret practice, they may not include solutions for negotiating the dilemmas that arise in interactions with students [8]. Rather, methods courses historically tend to focus on supporting PSTs to develop strategies and instructional practices for teaching that can be enacted in the classroom [8]. One approach to addressing this challenge is to develop a common language in teacher preparation reflecting consideration of the enactment of pedagogy and that identifies a set of pedagogies that could be mapped onto different areas of content and sites of practice in teacher preparation programmes [10]. This would go some way towards supporting sustainable opportunities for learning to teach at campus [93], as these decompositions/deconstructions involve a specialised language for naming, defining, and examining the constituent parts and activities of targeted teaching practices [80] that can be supported by observation guides and/or protocols [81].

4.2. Scaffolding Engagement with Investigation of Practice

When discussing practice or representations of practice, one questions what aspects of practice are visible and invisible, explicit or implicit. The tutor modelling for PSTs may lack authenticity, as PSTs are not second-level students or the particular audience/client base of focus. While this may be the case, the key opportunity for reflection is posed in questioning how these representations provide opportunities to investigate practice. It is important to remember that when people learn about a specific practice, they are exposed to a defined set of activities that have been developed by others over time [11]. In terms of the decomposition or deconstruction phase, we must be mindful not to assume that students have mastered the constituent parts of practice and are ready to bring them together into a whole. Grossman et al. [11] suggest that the ability to decompose practice is contingent upon the knowledge of a language and structure for describing practice. It is therefore important that we plan for and focus on building knowledge and understanding of these constitute parts for both PSTs and teacher educators. Deconstruction of practice in an open forum can aid in making facets of the practice visible and explicit as students observe and participate in the feedback process with peers and tutors [11]. However, we cannot assume that all teacher educators have a well-developed, disciplinary understanding of the practice or constitute facets under investigation. Of course, this has implications for the professional development of those involved in the design and facilitation of programmes or modules.

The inclusion of core practices, AoPs and rehearsals facilitated in university classrooms or labs, as utilised in the micro-teaching example described in this paper, can provide learning opportunities that may be absent in fieldwork. This facilitates novices’ greater freedom to experiment, falter, regroup, and reflect [11], thus enabling students to learn from their errors when enacting complex practices within the safety of the campus environment. In fact, Grossman et al. [11] argue that this approach is even more necessary as it provides novices with the space to contend with their feelings in professionally appropriate ways. While AoPs are not truly authentic in terms of audience or execution, they can provide opportunities for students to experiment with new skills and ways of thinking with access to support and feedback that may not be readily available in the field [11]. Video recordings also offer opportunities to deconstruct classroom practice from different perspectives [94]; explore attempts to approximate and enact targeted core practices [80]; act as shared artefacts for representing targeted tasks and activities of enacted practices [36,95]; and support reflection with regards the self, peers and student learning [39,96,97]. Rehearsal of practice within such environments may enable the development of professional knowledge and identity concurrently [8].

Of course, it is important to also acknowledge the limitations of AoPs as they “distort the features of practice in various ways, either by allowing students to focus on one primary component or by encouraging students to experiment with its features, they risk representing too narrow a view of what the work entails” [11] (p. 2090). Therefore, the question for educators is how we can develop the integration of core practices and AoPs so that they are more reflective of the demands of actual practice. As suggested earlier, to mitigate this, it is incumbent upon educators to plan and map opportunities for practice across various courses (foundations, methods) and sites of professional learning (campus and clinical practice), as well as provide opportunities for students to analyse, review and reflect upon their rehearsal/practice which can support students to chart their professional development. Key to this is the provision and support for teacher educators to engage in professional dialogue and learning opportunities.

5. Conclusions

Via exploration, discussion and problematisation of this pedagogical approach, the authors have identified a number of recommendations for future practice. Firstly, if core practices and AoPs are to be included in any programme, there needs to be a focus on an agreed set of practices and pedagogies that can be implemented and supported across foundation and methods courses as well as in clinical practice sites. This requires collaborative planning and the ability to identify and specify common pedagogies that map onto different areas in teacher preparation to scaffold exploration and investigation of core practices. Second, there needs to exist a robust monitoring and evaluation strategy that captures systematic data regarding the implementation of a set of core practices, the supporting pedagogies used, and the learning environments, lexicon and meanings that are imbued across various representations, modelling, deconstruction and enactments. In terms of supporting the exploration and investigation of practice, we recommend bringing attention to the visible and invisible aspects of practice and student and educator knowledge and understanding of the constitute facets of any practice. Finally, it is incumbent upon educators to plan and map core practices and AoPs across various courses/modules and sites of professional learning.