Using avatar rehearsals to practice eliciting student thinking with preservice teachers

A critical but understudied skill within teacher education is how to create productive book discussions with robust interactions between students and teachers. In the present study, avatar rehearsals were used as a practice-based technique to teach the skills of leading book discussions that elicit student thinking. The use of avatars is fairly new to the field of teacher education and understudied when paired with high-leverage practices like productive discussions. Findings showed that the avatar rehearsal enabled PSTs to demonstrate emerging, but unstable, progress in eliciting. Implications suggest that more rehearsals are needed, within both pre- and in-service teacher education.