Teaching the Practice of Leading Sense-Making Discussions in Science: Science Teacher Educators Using Rehearsals

ABSTRACTRehearsal is an increasingly important teacher education pedagogy. We explore how 3 science teacher educators thought about and used pauses within rehearsals to support secondary science teacher candidates in learning to facilitate sense-making discussions. Video data indicated that the most common purposes for pausing a rehearsal were to provide feedback about the candidate’s practice and to problem solve with the candidates. Substantively, the most common foci were attending to student thinking and attending to the use of language. Interview data indicated that teacher educators responded to candidates’ needs when making decisions about pauses. These findings suggest that rehearsals can provide rich learning opportunities for teacher candidates in ways that are interactive and responsive to students’ ideas.