Team-based Simulations among Teacher Trainees: Ethical Dilemmas and Psychological Empowerment in School Bullying Cases

Yifat Davidoff, Orly Shapira-Lishchinsky
2019 International Journal of Technology and Inclusive Education (IJTIE)  
This study explores the effect of group simulations on teacher-trainees in comparison to case study groups in dealing with ethical dilemmas in school bullying. Simulations (role-playing) are defined as models of reality that provide learners with the opportunity to play the roles of different figures involved in situations under discussion. When faced with similar events in real-life experiences, teacher-trainees can extract from memory information and strategies learned from these simulations
more » ... s if they really occurred. The population of the study comprised 90 teachertrainees in their third year of majoring in primary school education. Two experimental groups -a teambased simulation (TBS) and a case-study group had a meeting of 3.5 hours each month during 10-month period (10 meetings in total), in which they analyzed the same bullying scenarios that were based on the participants' real-life experiences. While both experimental groups discussed ethical dilemmas that arose in the scenarios, the TBS group engaged in roleplaying simulations and the case study group did not use role-playing simulations. An additional control group only completed the same psychological empowerment questionnaires filled out by both other experimental groups. The results, based on a mixed-methods approach, showed that the simulation group demonstrated significantly higher psychological empowerment in selfconfidence and decision-making when dealing with ethical dilemmas around bullying at school. This study offers an innovative approach for training educators to confront bullying-related ethical dilemmas in daily school life in an active and empowering way.
doi:10.20533/ijtie.2047.0533.2019.0173 fatcat:im23t6wqyrelvexw4vcku3wcbi