Consultation evenings, also known as parent-teacher conferences, are important opportunities for teachers to strengthen their relationships with caregivers. Many teachers, however, are unprepared, having had few opportunities to build skills and participate in real consultations during teacher training. To provide student teachers with more…

Communicating effectively with parents and carers is an important skill for pre-service teachers to develop. However, they often graduate underprepared due to limited opportunities for parent interaction during their course. When engaging with parents, pre-service teachers must be able to confidently articulate their pedagogical choices, provide…

Two instructors collaborated across programs in a School of Education to bring mixed reality simulation to preservice early childhood educators in an effort to utilize content knowledge to practice challenging conversations. The scenario chosen was a parent-teacher conference focused on supporting a child with disabilities in an inclusive early…

A barrier to teacher retainment is the lack of professional preparedness. Limitations with live, hands-on teacher training can contribute to inadequate preparedness, particularly in home-school collaboration. This pilot feasibility study explored using virtual reality simulation (VRS) technology with ninety-seven pre-service teachers in Norway,…

Overall teacher effectiveness is connected to the teacher's sense of confidence in their personal ability to be effective. An important part of teacher effectiveness is communication and collaboration with parents, and family members of their students. Research has demonstrated the positive impact strong relationships between families and school…

The subject of teacher identity is problematized by a number of factors and is compounded by its relationship to various constructs, including liminality. To further explore the process of teacher identity development in preservice teachers, this interpretive case study addresses what the contribution of liminal experiences are to teacher identity…

This study investigated the effectiveness of clinical simulations (CS) as an instructional strategy to prepare student teachers to conduct parent-teacher conferences. A pre-test/post-test study was set up in order to study the impact of online (n = 181) and face-to-face CS (n = 95) on student teachers' parent-teacher communication competence…

Programs that provide underserved populations with access to high-quality mathematics through workshops, clubs, and classroom observations (Civil, Stoehr, & Salazar, 2019; Civil & Bernier, 2006; Diaz-Palomar, Menendez, & Civil, 2011; Jimenez-Castellanos, Ochoa, & Olivos, 2016; Muir, 2011, 2012; Quintos, Civil, & Bratton, 2019)…

Getting to the strong home-school partnership students and families deserve requires teachers who are prepared to engage with caregivers human-to-human, not just teacher-to-caregiver. In this study, we analyzed survey responses, coaching transcripts, and pre- and post-coaching transcripts from 19 preservice teachers' (PSTs) simulated…

Preparing future school administrators to engage in effective communication with parents and teachers is a necessary component of master's of educational leadership preparation programs. Mixed reality experiences (i.e., a life-like virtual rehearsal experience) provide students with opportunities to engage in realistic practice in a low risk…

Teacher education programs historically offer little opportunity to develop skills necessary for communicating effectively with parents. Mixed reality simulations, such as TLE-TeachLivE, can ameliorate this lack of instruction. This study examines the communication skills demonstrated by preservice educators during a mixed reality conference…

This article describes the collaborative journey of two elementary education instructors at a large metropolitan university in the Southeast Region of the United States as they transformed and developed an innovative, engaging, and meaningful assignment utilizing adult avatars in TeachLivE™ to simulate parent-teacher reading conferences. The…

Video based instructional approaches have become very popular in teacher education. In this context, fictional video cases (FVCs) are a promising format because they can make discrete situations (e.g., parent-teacher conversations) accessible for learners. We critically discuss the concept of authenticity of FVCs with respect to their use for…

This study aims to investigate the trust of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers in students and parents and their burnout levels. The correlations between the trust in students and parents, exhaustion, cynicism, efficacy and the differences between these variables based on gender and year-level were investigated. One-hundred and…

Scholars have advocated for practice-based experiences, including high-leverage practices and metacognition, to be incorporated within preservice teacher programs, as they have the most pervasive impact on students' learning. One way in which teacher preparation programs have incorporated practice-based experiences is through the use of…