Learning to Diagnose Students’ Behavioral, Developmental, and Learning Disorders in a Simulation-Based Learning Environment for Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

Reasoning about students who might have behavioral, developmental, or learning disorders is a relevant aspect of teachers’ everyday practice (Reinke et al., Sch Psychol Q 26(1):1, 2011). Therefore, this content area should be part of teacher education. Accordingly, we developed a simulation-based learning environment in which pre-service teachers gather information about six individual students. Learners examine reports about students’ behavior, e.g., in the classroom or at home, and analyze the students’ performance and records of their work. The pre-service teachers’ task is to integrate the given information and draw a diagnostic conclusion for each student. Several design aspects were investigated using the simulation. The most challenging design aspect was to automatically generate adaptive feedback on epistemic diagnostic activities and diagnostic outcomes (Schulz et al., e-teaching. org Themenspecial, Was macht Lernen mit digitalen Medien erfolgreich, 2019). The studies we conduct are replicated in a parallel project in medical education.