ABSTRACT
Calls are increasingly prominent for making practice the central focus of pre-service teachers’ professional preparation as a means to improve student learning (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Grossman et al., 2009). A priority is to help pre-service teachers develop skills in implementing “high-leverage” practices such as leading classroom discussions because they cut across subject matter areas and can be taught systematically (Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009). Interactive discussions result in increased student achievement (Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991) and improved communication skills (Gambrell, 1996). In addition to developing their practice, pre-service teachers need to develop the capacity for continual and systematic analysis of teaching in order to learn from teaching and revise their practice based on evidence (Hiebert, Morris, Berk, & Jansen, 2007).
