Pre-service Teachers’ Learning Experience of Using a Virtual Practicum Simulation with AI Learners = Pre-service Teachers’ Learning Experience of Using a Virtual Practicum Simulation with AI Learners

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Practicum is essential for pre-service teachers to bridge the gap between theories and practice and prepare for the real classroom. However, it is often limited due to various reasons, such as time, cost, and a lack of partnership schools, in many countries. As an alternative to an actual practicum, the current paper explored a virtual practicum simulation, simSchool, to mitigate a shortage in reality-based preparation and investigated its effectiveness for pre-service teacher education. The study applied a mixed-method to perform more robust research. The study used quantitative content analysis of two versions of 37 pre-service teachers’ lesson plans (original and revised), reflection papers, and interviews as a primary method. As a secondary method, pre- and post-surveys on teacher efficacy were used. The results showed that pre-service teachers valued their experience with the virtual practicum and increased their abilities in diverse areas of teaching, including instruction, activities, facilitation, and material use. Their simSchool experience also helped the pre-service teachers realize their weaknesses in teaching and enabled them to transfer their newly learned knowledge to practice. Based on the results, the study argues that a virtual practicum offers pre-service teachers a valuable extended learning opportunity to develop their teaching skills, although it cannot replace real classroom teaching experience.