Abstract:
This paper describes a specific kind of teacher narrative (the teacher created script) to support the design of a classroom simulation to be used in pre-service teacher education. We intend to share our experiences in exploring and developing the kind of narrative text which can be developed from a large reservoir of ethnographically generated data collected from the teachers and classrooms we have closely observed and documented over the last two decades. In particular, we explore the role which the se narratives play within the development of the kind of simulation we ultimately produced. Reflection has long been acknowledged as a useful process for teachers to engage with. Also, the notion of formalising such reflections through writing has been a cknowledged as a way to share, refine and articulate teaching practice. As stated by Barth (2001:66) "...with written words come the innermost secrets of schools". This prototype simulation allows the user to adopt the role of a Kindergarten teacher using a daily literacy teaching episode called "days of the week". The user is asked to make decisions about the organization and implementation of this recurring teaching episode. The range of options that occur in this episode stem from the teacher-created script we developed from our own research to shape this virtual classroom.