IAFOR Journal of Education: Technology in Education

Volume 11 – Issue 2 – 2023

Teaching Avatars on Controversial Issues: Lessons Learned
Per-Olof Hansson
Linköping University, Sweden
Marcus Samuelsson
Linköping University, Sweden
Marie-Louise Höög
Linköping University, Sweden

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Abstract
This paper describes and evaluates student teachers’ virtual simulation training on teaching acontroversial issue. In the fourth year of their program to become social science teachers at
lower and upper secondary schools, 43 student teachers in Sweden conducted simulationteaching on conspiracy theories as an example of a controversial issue. Conspiracy theories
appeal to young people and they often encounter these theories online, but they can be met withincreased knowledge about how conspiracy theories work, and how they can be identified andcountered. Thus, students at primary and secondary school need to develop their critical source
skills. The Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2022) found that these issues were not properly
taught because they were not connected to schools’ values-based work or to the developmentof students’ democratic competence. To analyze the simulation teaching, data was collected
through observations, video-recorded simulation teaching, interviews with student teachers,
and reflective documents. The results show that simulation teaching offers student teachers theopportunity to integrate content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and subject
knowledge, by being trained to become flexible and responsive to avatars’ individual
differences as well as their different attitudes and understanding of the subject.
Keywords: conspiracy theories, controversial issues, simulation teaching, student teachers,
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The Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2022) found that the teaching of social studies and biology
on controversial issues needs to be developed at 21 out of 30 inspected schools. The reasonsfor this were (a) the students do not have teacher-led conversations about issues that may becontroversial, (b) the classroom climate does not favor participation in interaction about
controversial issues, and (c) there are gender differences that inhibit girls. They also found thatthese issues were not connected to schools’ values-based work or the development of students’democratic competence. This paper directs attention to the aforementioned factors byinvestigating simulation training with future teachers of social science on conspiracy theories
as an example of content that can be controversial in the classroom (Douglas & Sutton, 2023).
In a complex information landscape with increased access to the Internet and increased
information flow, social media feeds conspiracy theories in both democratic and nondemocratic contexts. Social media mechanisms – such as followers, likes, shares, tweets, andinfluencers – designed with a focus on viral effects, whereby users can produce, publish, andshare falsified content (Avramov et al., 2020), create a risk of preventing good communicationand making reliable information difficult to distinguish from fake news and hoaxes (Bezael,2022). Önnerfors (2021) argues that conspiracy theories have increased during the pandemic.
Conspiracy theories appeal to young people and they often encounter these theories online.
However, they can be met with increased knowledge about how conspiracy theories work, andhow they can be identified and countered. Thus, students at lower and upper secondary schools
need to develop their critical source skills. This includes listening to other peoples’ opinions
and perspectives that differ from their own values, respecting them, and learning to make wellgrounded decisions.
Given the above, we as teacher educators need to reflect upon how future teachers can develop
their ability to teach source criticism, controversial issues, and conspiracy theories. Usually,
training for such skills and abilities is imparted during teaching practice at schools. However,researchers claim that the training that takes place at schools is insufficient, and as a result
student teachers are given too few opportunities to develop their skills and abilities to be able
to handle a complex classroom situation (McDonald et al., 2013; Westbury et al., 2005).
Campus-based teacher education has a strong focus on concepts, theory, and models that
support the development of analytical ability. Knowledge of relevant theories, such asconspiracy theories, in university courses is described as being difficult to connect to theprofession and school practice (Lindqvist, et al., 2019). Grossman, Hammerness, andMcDonald (2009) emphasize that teacher education needs to help students make thisconnection. Their argument is that the practical training is insufficient, and that there is also aneed to make practical training possible to a greater extent on campus. In this way, theanalytical side of the profession and its action-oriented side can be combined (Grossman, etal., 2009; Jank & Meyer, 2004; Ade-Ojo, et al., 2021). A successful method that has been usedin an attempt to link the two sides of the teaching profession and bridge the perceived gap
between theory on campus and school practice or internship, is simulation training organized
as a virtual practice (Samuelsson, et al., 2021).

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The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze student teachers’ simulation teaching oncontroversial issues. To achieve this aim, the research question is ‘in what ways can teachingin a virtual space develop student teachers’ general knowledge, pedagogical content
knowledge, and content knowledge about conspiracy theories and promote avatars’ criticalthinking?’
BackgroundResearch on conspiracy theories is mainly found in the fields of social psychology, politicalscience, history, religious studies, and anthropology (Butter & Knight, 2020; Önnerfors, 2021).
This means that only a few research projects have been conducted in education, pedagogy, andsocial studies. This research shows the value of developing students’ understanding of theirown and others’ values in a multicultural society, but also how the teacher chooses to avoid orembrace controversial issues in teaching (Flensner, 2020). Teachers may find a controversial
issue difficult and may hesitate to engage in in-depth discussions for fear of upsetting students
and their parents (Kaka, et al., 2021).
In social science subjects, teaching often engages feelings and emotionally challenging
discussions. Many discussions involve controversial issues such as politics, migration policy,
terrorism, climate change, and so on. Controversial issues are defined by the Council of Europe(2016, p. 8) as “issues which arouse strong feelings and divide opinion in communities andsociety”. These issues raise pedagogical questions for teachers, such as how to create a safe
learning environment to prevent friction in the classroom, how to protect the sensitivities ofpupils from different backgrounds and cultures, how to encourage active participation, and therole of teacher’s own beliefs and values. Sandahl (2020, p. 21) argues: “if we want to contributeto students’ citizenship education and give them tools to tackle one-sided viewpoints about thegood society, we need to challenge their views.”
Leadership in the classroom, often referred to as classroom management, is difficult because
the teacher needs to create an open and permissive atmosphere, and encourage constructive
student dialogue, including the use of effective questioning strategies (cf. Granström, 2007;
Lewis, 2008; Wubbels, 2011). Therefore, it is important to increase student teachers’
confidence by teaching them strategies that promote open and respectful dialogue in theclassroom and not only obtaining knowledge through course literature and lectures (cf. Kounin,
1970; Alexander, 2008; Hamre, et al., 2013). Hence, in this study the student teachers weretrained to perceive, interpret, and make decisions about controversies, such as conspiracy
theories, during teaching in a virtual space.
Virtual practice – teacher-led simulation teaching with virtual characters – was an attempt tobuild student teachers’ ability to teach as part of a campus course (Samuelsson, et al., 2022).
The training was carried out around difficult but necessary content for teaching, with elements
such as fraction calculation or conspiracy theories, in a safe and permissive environment underguidance of knowledgeable teacher educators. Virtual practice reduces complexity andreinforces other aspects of teaching in well-defined exercises of commonly occurring situations

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(Arvola, et al., 2018; Mason, et al., 2011). In this way, virtual practice creates a safe
environment for learning, which provides the opportunity to try (Dawson & Lignugaris/Kraft,
2017; Ledger & Fischetti, 2019) ways of leading and managing the classroom (Bradley &Kendall, 2014; Piro & O’Callaghan, 2018) without the risk of negatively affecting real
students. Virtual practice can augment regular teaching, lectures, and seminars, and can address
their lack of precision in terms of action orientation (Dieker, et al. 2014; Bondie, et al., 2021)
and strengthen confidence in teaching abilities (Ledger & Fischetti, 2019; Samuelsson, et al.,2021). Research on simulations, virtual practice, and virtual characters as a means to train anddevelop teaching skills has partly focused on student teachers’ self-confidence linked toteaching subject content (cf. Chini, et al., 2016; Ledger, et al., 2019), leadership in theclassroom (cf. Hudson, et al., 2019; Smith & Klumper, 2018), or both these aspects(Samuelsson, et al., 2021; Samuelsson, et al., 2022). Usually, student teachers practice theability to teach as a way of learning how to do teaching. In other cases, simulation training is
combined with modeling where the students have previously seen an experienced teacher teacha certain subject matter (Bautista & Boone, 2015). The authors found that modeling has greatsignificance for students’ development of teaching, handling challenging students, and being
able to answer the avatars’ questions in a constructive way. Similarly, various forms of oral
and written feedback have positively affected students’ confidence in their ability to teach(Gundel, et al., 2019; Samuelsson, et al., 2022). The content and quality of feedback can be
described as a key reason why a limited amount of training in virtual practice shows such goodresults for student development.
Theoretical Framework
To analyze the student teacher’s simulation training about conspiracy theories, we used Lee
Shulman’s (1986; 1987) framework of aspects of a knowledge base for teaching. Shulman
divides the knowledge base into (a) content knowledge; (b) general pedagogical knowledge –a broad repertoire of principles and strategies for organization and executing classroom
management; (c) curriculum knowledge – a focus on tools such as materials, representations,and programs; (d) pedagogical content knowledge – teachers’ converted professional
understanding of the content; (e) knowledge of students and their characteristics; (f)educational context knowledge – experience from communities and cultures based on working
with groups, in classroom at schools; (g) knowledge of educational ends – a focus on the
purpose and values of teaching, as well as their historical and philosophical roots (Shulman,
1987). The categories - educational context knowledge and knowledge of educational ends,
knowledge of students and their characteristics, and educational context knowledge were notin line with the course where the simulation training was used and neither the purpose. Thosecategories were therefore disregarded in the analysis. We focused on three categories – content
knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge – both
separately and as overlapping issues (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1
Aspects of the Knowledge Base for Teaching (Shulman, 1987)

Generalpedagogicalknowledge

Pedagogicalcontent
knowledge

Content
knowledge

Methodology
The Program
Twenty student teachers in the social science program for lower and upper secondary school
started a course worth 15 ECTS in August 2021, and an additional 23 student teachers started
in August 2022. This course is the last subject course, including teaching methods, of a fiveyear teacher training program. The ten-week course focused on controversial issues, criticalthinking, the role of the media, digitalization, and assessment. Examinations took the form oforal seminars, written exams, and conducting a project on controversial issues in small groups.
However, part of the course also included teaching avatars in the simulation on conspiracy
theories and critical thinking. The lecturers prepared the students with literature seminars andlectures on controversial issues, conspiracy theories, populism, and so on. The students planned
their forthcoming lesson with the avatars in pairs. The assignment was to plan the first lesson
for lower or upper secondary school students on conspiracy theories about the pandemic,
vaccinations, fake news, and source criticism. More specifically, the student teachers received
the following instructions: Remember that this is the first lesson of the unit, and it is importantto create curiosity, motivation, and engagement among your avatars. Divide the lesson between
you and your student colleague, and practice before the simulation teaching. You will lead thelesson you planned for 30 minutes, thus 15 minutes per student. After completing the teaching,
you will discuss the implementation with the tutors and prepare for the follow-up seminar bywriting down your reflections.
The feedback given after each session of virtual practice was arranged with inspiration fromthe After Action Review (AAR) technique. It was arranged around three questions that each
student teacher was asked to answer: (a) what went well, (b) what could have been done
differently, and (c) what did you learn from teaching about conspiracy theories to avatars?
Questions like these have previously been used successfully adjacent to simulation training

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(Scoresby & Shelton, 2014) and in teacher education (Dieker, et al., 2013; Samuelsson, et al.,2021; Samuelsson, et al., 2022).
Simulation Teaching
In order to train the student teachers to perceive, interpret, and make decisions about ideas andconceptions regarding controversial issues such as conspiracy theories, we designed a semivirtual simulation called TeachLivE where they could teach avatars (see Figure 2). The
simulation contains several environments including variety of classrooms and avatars, –children, young adults, and adults – with different personalities (Long, 1989; Hayes, et al.,2013). Based on earlier experiences with simulation training (Arvola, et al., 2018; Samuelsson
et al., 2022) we thought that TeachLivE and simulation training would serve well for the
training of our Swedish student teachers. Other forms of training such as teaching peers withthe use of roleplay was not considered, based on to earlier research (Samuelsson, et al., 2021).
Simulation with avatars that look and behave like students might provide a more embodied
experience than imagining your peers to be your students in role play. The simulation specialistthat operate the avatars “stays in character” despite what happens during training while peers
might “lose character” due to relational aspects and a sense of play rather than education.
Figure 2
Screenshot from a TeachLivE Session with Five Avatars

Each student teacher had to teach five avatars with different personalities and different ideas
about the content. That way they had some knowledge about the learners and theircharacteristics (Shulman, 1987). The student teachers were also given information about (a)what the avatars could do (interact verbally, carry out non-verbal behaviors, take notes, send,
and receive text-messages on their mobile phones, and talk to each other) and (b) what they
could not do (leave the classroom or change places).

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Before the student teachers entered the simulation, a simulation specialist made elaborate
preparations – in collaboration with the authors – in order to represent different commonlyoccurring ways in which students at lower and upper secondary schools understand, feel about,and reason about the content. The avatars represented and expressed commonly occurring ideas
among school students about conspiracy theories (Önnerfors, 2021). The conspiracy theories
content that the student teachers were assigned to work with had been constructed and tested
with the authors and five teachers teaching in high schools. Based on the results of the testing,the content was adjusted and developed to train the student teachers to teach about conspiracy
theories.
The avatars’ feelings and understandings were designed as different push-backs (see Table 1),
closely aligned to the course goal about what the student teacher was expected to learn andachieve during the teacher training course in social sciences.
Table 1
Push-Backs about Conspiracy Theories
Virtualstudent

Push-backs

Ava

Lack of critical thinking: Is Covid-19 really that dangerous? Brings up
Nicki Minaj as a vaccine skeptic influencer.

Dev

Testing the student’s knowledge by asking and answering questions basedon facts: There are conspiracy theories that turned out to be true. Can wetalk more about Trump and QAnon? How about conspiracy theories in the
Middle East?

Ethan

Provocative comments: You are all brain-washed, the media obscuresreality.

JasmineSilent observer: Asks Dev to explain and help her with answers.

SavannahSensitive reactions: Should vaccines be mandatory? My grandfather’sfriend died from Covid-19, it is real.

The simulation specialist acts as a puppeteer and manages each of the five avatars, bringing
them to life. This was done simultaneously as the specialist saw and heard the student teachers
on Zoom. Such a solution makes it possible for synchronous interaction between the simulation
specialist and participants (Dieker, et al., 2016; Ersozulu, et al., 2021). The compliance andresponse make it possible to adapt the training to student teachers’ different abilities, and create
a feeling of authenticity, which affects the quality of the simulation (Bondie, et al., 2021).

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Data Collection
Data was collected from two student cohorts (2021 and 2022). In total, 43 student teachers
majoring in social sciences participated in the study (see Table 2). The researchers observed
the simulation while it was ongoing (30 min each session), conducted pair interviews (30-45
min) with student teachers afterwards, and watched the videorecorded teaching sessions. The
student pair also compiled reflective notes after the session. In addition, all students met the
day after their simulation teaching to sum up their experiences. Notes from group discussions
were collected and form part of the analysis. The second cohort from 2022 were alsointerviewed after all parts of the simulation training.
Table 2
Data Collection 2021 and 2022
Social Science
courseObservation &video recording

Interview

Reflection notes Group discussion
notes

2021

20

-

20

5

2022

23*

11

23

5

* Students teach in pairs, but one group had three students. All students taught 15 min/each.

Data Analysis
The analysis is based on qualitative data with the aim of a holistic perspective. Rich data and asystematic search for categories are at the core of qualitative content analysis, and a reductionof data and systematization are important (Schreier, 2014). Five stages of analysis were used.
Firstly, individual notes were taken from the observations and the video recordings in thevirtual practice. Interviews were transcribed. Secondly, the text was labelled and systematicallycoded, individually by the first and second author. Thirdly, codes were reduced when they werecompared between the researchers, and then categorized. Fourthly, codes and categories wererelated to the research question and relevant studies. Finally, notes from group discussions wererelated to each other and included in the categorization. The analysis of the empirical data waspresented in three categories in line with Shulman’s aspects of knowledge.
Results
The findings are presented based on Shulman’s theory of knowledge base for teaching, as
described earlier. The empirical data are presented according to the categories: (a) generalknowledge, (b) pedagogical content knowledge, and (c) content knowledge. The datasometimes overlap and intersect as Figure 1 shows, but this is also discussed. We illustrateeach knowledge aspect with quotations from the interviews, reflective documents, and thenotes from follow-up group discussions.

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General Pedagogical Knowledge
This aspect of knowledge emphasizes leadership and classroom management. In the simulationteaching, the student teachers created a good atmosphere and a good classroom climate. Thiswas done with a friendly tone and a willingness to listen to the pupils. Our feedback
conversations show that the student teachers felt that they learned about their own attitudes andapproaches. They said that this was thanks to the alignment of the exercise: first planning thelesson, second teaching in the simulation, third observing peers’ teaching, fourth the reflective
discussion with a teacher educator, and lastly reflections with the other student in the pair andother students in the class. The overall learning experience for the student is that a teacher must
be flexible and responsive: flexible enough to change the lesson plan if the pupils have thoughts
and attitudes that can make the teaching more interesting for them, but also responsive in
relation to the pupils’ sphere of life. This was not done to a high degree in the simulation.
Naturally, it can depend on the context and the teaching avatars, but there were opportunities
to use the pupils’ own thoughts and ideas. Two students mentioned: “There is a balancing act
between following your plan and letting the students’ thoughts (which may not always follow
the plan) take place in the classroom.” (Students A and B).
The content was new for the students to teach, but our analysis suggests that they managed theclassroom well. The student teachers followed their planning, which established a structure forthe lesson, and provided something for the student to hold on to when the pupils tried tomaneuver in other directions than planned. However, it is unclear what the pupils understoodduring teaching. The students did not follow up the objective of the lesson properly, and thus
there was no summarizing or conclusion of the learning objective.
One challenge in the simulation teaching involves dealing with pupils’ differences inunderstanding, feeling about, and reasoning about the content. Even though there were only
five avatars, it was a clear challenge for the student teachers to manage them. Thus, theyexperienced difficulties involving all the pupils. The student teachers had obvious problems
and a lack of strategies to involve the shy pupil (called Jasmine, see Table 1). They also had
problems handling the two boys called Ethan and Dev (see Table 1), who were more interactive
than the girls. Once again, this can depend on the simulation itself, whereby teachers cannot
approach individual students by sitting next to them, for example. This limited the strategies
they could use, but instead of waiting for the shy pupil to answer the question, the teachers
went on to another pupil.
Further, the student teachers had unclear actions towards troublesome behaviors, for example,
speaking before raising a hand, negative attitudes, disagreement between the pupils, use ofmobile phones, or pupils falling asleep during the lesson. One student expressed the following:“I learned about the challenge of distributing the speaking space in a good way between both
quiet and more talkative students. There was a particular challenge of getting a quiet student towant to talk.” (Student F). Another student wrote: “I learned (got the opportunity to practice)
to handle difficult student situations, i.e., when the students got sidetracked or when thestudents made personal attacks against each other.” (Student G).

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Hence, one learning experience from the simulation involved encountering both disruptive andquiet pupils.
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
This knowledge form relates to having teaching methods that are appropriate in relation to theage group and its content. In the simulation, the student teachers tried to involve the pupils in
the lesson by asking questions. However, there were only questions and answers on an
individual level, making it difficult to engage all pupils in the same discussion. The student
teachers lacked proper follow-up questions that could give further explanations about what had
just been said. The teachers listened to the answers, but rarely used the answers to find out
about other pupils’ opinions on the same topic. In addition, it was difficult for the student
teachers to decide about the relevance of pupils’ questions and their answers. As mentioned,
there was a willingness to include the pupils, but also a lack of action in terms of deciding when
to interrupt a conversation or statement which was irrelevant to the lesson. The reasons for this
could be that the student teachers had unclear purposes with the lessons and not enoughknowledge of the subject. The subject was not clearly described in the beginning of the lesson
and not summarized at the end. In the reflective notes, student C stated: “It is important to know
where to go in the lesson in order to stay on topic and limit what is important for this lesson.”Group 3 noted that: “we felt the importance of subject didactics.” With that said, the student
teachers need to expand their toolbox of methods, giving them a broader repertoire to selectfrom and the possibility to use a variety of methods if the current method does not work well.
In the simulation, the methods were questions from the teachers with the pupils answering them
individually, and assignments where the pupils followed the pedagogical method “listen – think– pair – share.”Moreover, the pace during the simulation lessons was slow and the content taught in the lessons
was on a basic level. The feedback and reflections suggest that the students agreed with thisand realized that a lesson must have a different pace and engage with deeper content
knowledge.
Content Knowledge
In this knowledge form, the subject’s width and depth are important. The student teachers usedappropriate language according to the age of the pupils. They used appropriate concepts, butsometimes too academically, and when the pupils did not respond as the teachers wanted themto, they tried to bring the pupils back to the topic (conspiracy theories and source criticism) todevelop their learning. However, when the topic itself was too difficult for the student teachers
to handle or build a continuation of the lesson on, they more often postponed the difficulties
by saying “that’s an interesting thought you have, but let us go back to what I have planned
today” or “let us discuss that next lesson so I can gather more information, because I am notfully aware of what you are talking about now”. The reasons for this avoidance were mentioned

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as: “When you don’t have sufficient knowledge about a subject, it is easier to dismiss a
student’s thought instead of following it up.” (Students D and E).
Clearly, conspiracy theories have not been taught enough in the education program and its
theory courses. However, the student teachers could have been better prepared by studying thecontent for the simulation lesson more properly. Additionally, the student teachers haddifficulties dealing with pupils’ misunderstandings. The student teachers were not firm enoughin correcting pupils when the answer was wrong or when they expressed opinions that could
be described as “fake news.” Once again, this goes back to a lack of deep knowledge about the
subject itself which emerged in the interviews and in the group notes.
Discussion
The simulation teaching about conspiracy theories created an authentic training situation in asafe environment, where the students felt that they could try and learn to act as competentteachers without harming pupils in a school. In this case, our results from two cohorts of student
teachers in a Swedish teacher education program are in line with earlier findings (cf. Bradley& Kendall, 2014; Piro & O’Callaghan, 2018). We are extending the previous research on
simulation training by incorporating the content of conspiracy theories which has never – asfar as we know – been dealt with before (cf. Gundel, et al., 2019; Samuelsson, et al., 2022).
The student teachers that were part of the simulation considered the activity in the virtualenvironment to be both a practical and theoretical exercise (Grossman, et al., 2009; Ade-Ojo,
et al., 2021), combining analytical and action-oriented aspects of teaching (Jank & Meyer,2004). Another useful feature was conversations with university teachers and reflections withpeers, which provided opportunities to practice teaching about a content that is mostly taught
during school practice in the teacher education programs. The additional practice wasappreciated by the student teachers, but in this setting, they were not evaluated, and were rather
supported by university teachers who acted as instructors. The student teachers had the chance
to receive feedback and feed-forward from the instructors and their student peers, in what felt
like a safe space. It was also useful to observe other students teaching the same content to thesame pupils. Another learning experience was seeing how others handled difficulties in theclassroom and used the AAR technique (Dieker, et al., 2013; Scoresby & Shelton, 2014). One
could perhaps have considered other forms of practice, for example, role play with student
peers, as another way to train the student teachers. However, simulation was chosen as researchcomparing role play and simulation training found significant effects in teacher self-efficacy(TEB) when using simulation training (Samuelsson, et al., 2021).
There were many overall learning experiences, pertinent beyond a Swedish educational
context. In particular, the student teachers highlighted handling conflicts in the classroom,
trying to be flexible as a teacher, allocating speaking space, involving the pupils in the teachingprocess, and becoming more comfortable and secure as a teacher, which could be understoodas general knowledge (Shulman, 1987) or classroom management (Lewis, 2008; Wubbels,
2011). Many student teachers were nervous but appreciated the fact that the content was
something they had planned themselves. Still, it was difficult for them to use the avatars’72

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knowledge in the teaching. Many of the student teachers felt that confirming the avatars’
thoughts while also trying to move forward with the lesson was a challenge. We found that thegreatest challenge for the student teachers was to respond to the avatars, extending the findings
from previous research Samuelsson, et al., 2021; Samuelsson, et al., 2022). The avatars
challenged the student teachers with misconceptions, using mobile phones, coming into
conflict with other avatars, and not raising their hand when answering a question or when theywanted to talk. In the discussion with the student teachers, they considered this to be an extreme
situation; however, as university educators, we do not agree. These are situations that a teacher
must be prepared for. In any case, the student teachers realized the importance of seeing theirown weaknesses. The student teachers wanted to involve the pupils more in the teaching byrelating to the pupils’ own lives, but that did not happen. They seemed to lack the tools forcreating a high participation format (cf. Kounin, 1970; Alexander, 2008). The reasons given
were fear of losing control in the classroom, which stems from a lack of variation in teaching
methods, and a lack of deep knowledge in the subject (conspiracy theories). To be more precise,the student teachers seemed to lack content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge(Shulman, 1987). Another reason was that they found the content (controversial issues)difficult. The student teachers chose to have a friendlier classroom climate rather than risk
engaging the avatars in in-depth discussions that could be difficult to handle (cf. Kaka, et al.,2021). Experiencing how difficult it could be to teach about conspiracy theories was an “Aha!”
moment for them. They seemed a little surprised about the need to be as secure in content
knowledge as in pedagogical content knowledge. However, the most important thing was thatthey observed how other student teachers handled different situations in the simulation and had
the opportunity to reason about this afterwards. Although the student teachers were notcompletely successful during their limited time in the simulation at getting the avatars tounderstand different conspiracy theories, source criticism was discussed in-depth with themafter the simulation exercise, and the student teachers deepened their subject knowledge byobserving their peers and following up on conversations.
A typical lesson structure was that the student teachers described their plan, informed theavatars about classroom rules, gave a lecture, and then held question and answer sessions
and/or discussions with the whole class. This was not a sufficiently creative or challenging
learning environment for the avatars. The student teachers had good intentions but could not
create a classroom climate that allowed all the avatars to participate. In addition, even though
there were only five avatars in the simulation practice, not all of them were heard during thelesson. It was notable that although there were only two avatar boys, they were heard morethan the three avatar girls. The teachers turned more often to the boys in the classroom andasked for their opinions than to the girls. In that sense, the student teachers reproduced therecent findings from the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2022) as the student teachers
reproduced gender differences that inhibit the avatar girls and had problems to create aclassroom climate that supported interaction about controversial issues. This was something
the student teachers realized afterwards when the educators asked them about it. Moreover,there was a significant challenge dealing with the shy avatar, Jasmine. Instead of waiting foran answer from her, the student teachers turned quickly to more talkative pupils or those who
agreed with the teachers, which felt secure for the student teachers. However, in the simulation,73

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the students got ideas about solutions by observing peer students’ teaching and from thereflective discussions afterwards.
Although our results show promise, there are also limitations to our study. One limitation is theabsence of prior research with a similar focus as ours. A more extensive literature review onsimilar research about simulation training on controversial issues would have provided a solid
foundation for understanding the research problem and discussions about contextual
similarities and differences. Another limitation is the sample size. Even with twice as many
student teacher cohorts, the number of individuals and pairs would still have been small. A
larger sample size would have provided more results.
Conclusion
Simulation teaching has its place in terms of offering more teaching practice and creating
experiences of acting as a teacher in a realistic situation (cf. Samuelsson, et al., 2021;
Samuelsson, et al., 2022). The Swedish student teachers that participated in our study have a
total of 20 weeks of school practice spread over the five-year teaching program, and simulation
practice seems to be useful addition in between. Simulation teaching can integrate different
forms of knowledge: (a) general knowledge, (b) pedagogical content knowledge, and (c)content knowledge. In a safe space, student teachers can develop experiences of authentic
practice that combines theoretical and practical aspects of knowledge for the student’s
development to become a good teacher. In the simulation, the student teachers gained insights
into their approaches and an opportunity to test important teaching skills such as flexibility,
responsiveness, leadership, using a selection of methods, and demonstrating subject
knowledge. In this case, this subject knowledge related to conspiracy theories and developing
learning about critical thinking. However, this study reveals that more attention must be paid
to teacher education in order to develop student teachers’ confidence and their experience ofusing a variety of methods to motivate and include all pupils, especially when teaching difficult
to handle subject matter. To be a skilled teacher, the student teachers need experience andpractice offered by simulation teaching. This is a cost-effective and climate-friendly solution
for improving student teachers’ skills. As the spread of conspiracy theories is a growing
phenomenon world-wide, this experience conducting simulation training with TeachLivE toteach controversial issues can be applied to teacher training contexts elsewhere.

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Corresponding author: Per-Olof Hansson
E-mail: per-olof.hansson@liu.se78