An official website of the United States government
Abstract Preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) to be able to notice, interpret, respond to and orchestrate student ideas—the core practices of responsive teaching—is a key goal for contemporary science and mathematics teacher education. This mixed‐methods study, employing a virtual reality (VR)‐supported simulation integrated with artificial intelligence (AI)‐powered virtual students, explored the frequent patterns of PSTs' talk moves as they attempted to orchestrate a responsive discussion, as well as the affordances and challenges of leveraging AI‐supported virtual simulation to enhance PSTs' responsive teaching skills. Sequential analysis of the talk moves of both PSTs (n = 24) and virtual students indicated that although PSTs did employ responsive talk moves, they encountered difficulties in transitioning from the authoritative, teacher‐centred teaching approach to a responsive way of teaching. The qualitative analysis with triangulated dialogue transcripts, observational field notes and semi‐structured interviews revealed participants' engagement in (1) orchestrating discussion by leveraging the design features of AI‐supported simulation, (2) iterative rehearsals through naturalistic and contextualized interactions and (3) exploring realism and boundaries in AI‐powered virtual students. The study findings provide insights into the potential of leveraging AI‐supported virtual simulation to improve PSTs' responsive teaching skills. The study also underscores the need for PSTs to engage in well‐designed pedagogical practices with adaptive and in situ support. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topicDeveloping the teaching capacity of responsive teaching is an important goal for preservice teacher (PST) education. PSTs need systematic opportunities to build fluency in this approach.Virtual simulations can provide PSTs with the opportunities to practice interactive teaching and have been shown to improve their teaching skills.Artificial intelligence (AI)‐powered virtual students can be integrated into virtual simulations to enable interactive and authentic practice of teaching.What this paper addsAI‐supported simulation has the potential to support PSTs' responsive teaching skills.While PSTs enact responsive teaching talk moves, they struggle to enact those talk moves in challenging teaching scenarios due to limited epistemic and pedagogical resources.AI‐supported simulation affords iterative and contextualized opportunities for PSTs to practice responsive teaching talk moves; it challenges teachers to analyse student discourse and respond in real time.Implications for practice and/or policyPSTs should build a teaching repertoire with both basic and advanced responsive talk moves.The learning module should adapt to PSTs' prior experience and provide PSTs with in situ learning support to navigate challenging teaching scenarios.Integrating interaction features and AI‐based virtual students into the simulation can facilitate PSTs' active participation.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on June 3, 2026
Development of novel multi-responsive 4D printed smart nanocomposites with polypyrrole coated iron oxides for remote and adaptive transformation
A novel multi-responsive nanocomposite integrates polypyrrole-coated magnetic nanoparticles into a thermo-responsive shape memory polymer, enabling precise, remotely dynamic control for 4D-printed biorobotic applications.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10630304
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Royal Society of Chemistry
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Materials Horizons
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2051-6347
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3907 to 3917
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Culturally responsive STEM and computing initiatives aim to engage and embolden a diverse range of learners, center their identity and experiences in curriculum, and connect learners to each other and their communities. With an abrupt pivot to online learning at the beginning of 2020, more educational experiences have taken place virtually. We ran a virtual synchronous culturally responsive computing camp and saw that establishing the right environment online to support a good sense of connectedness was challenging. To investigate this further, we interviewed eight K-12 instructors of culturally responsive STEM and computing programs. Three themes emerged on defining and cultivating connectedness in learning experiences, the role of equity in supporting community online, and affordances of being online specific to culturally responsive perspectives. We support our thematic findings with vignettes from the camp data. In this study, we address K-12 culturally responsive STEM and computing instructors' beliefs, experiences, and approaches regarding cultivating connectedness online. This work fills a gap in understanding instructor perspectives on building in-program and broader community connections online from a culturally responsive STEM and computing lens.more » « less
-
Abstract Stimuli‐responsive peptides, particularly pH‐responsive variants, hold significant promise in biomedical and technological applications by leveraging the broad pH spectrum inherent to biological environments. However, the limited number of natural pH‐responsive amino acids within biologically relevant pH ranges presents challenges for designing rational pH‐responsive peptide assemblies. In our study, we introduce a novel approach by incorporating a library of non‐natural amino acids featuring chemically diverse tertiary amine side chains. Hydrophobic and ionic properties of these non‐natural amino acids facilitate their incorporation into the assembly domain when uncharged, and electrostatic repulsion promotes disassembly under lower pH conditions. Furthermore, we observed a direct relationship between the number of substitutions and the hydrophobicity of these amino acids, influencing their pH‐responsive properties and enabling rational design based on desired transitional pH ranges. The structure‐activity relationship of these pH‐responsive peptides was evaluated by assessing their antimicrobial properties, as their antimicrobial activity is triggered by the disassembly of peptides to release active monomers. This approach not only enhances the specificity and controllability of pH responsiveness but also broadens the scope of peptide materials in biomedical and technological applications.more » « less
-
Abstract Thermo‐responsive polymers have been widely explored because of their diverse structures and functions in response to temperature stimuli. Great attention has been attracted to exploring and designing such polymers composites, which offer tremendous opportunities to build up a systematic understanding of their structure–function relationships and pave the ways for their extensive applications in electronics, soft robotics, and electrochemical energy storage devices. Here, we review the most recent research of thermal regulation in electrochemical energy storage devices (e.g., batteries, supercapacitors) via thermo‐responsive polymers. We summarize how battery components (i.e., electrolytes, separators, electrodes, or current collectors) can be coupled with thermo‐responsive polymers based on different operation mechanisms, such as volume expansion, polymerization, phase reversion, and de‐doping effects, to effectively prevent catastrophic thermal runaway. Different types of thermo‐responsive polymers are evaluated to compare their key features and/or limitations. This review is concluded with perspectives of future design strategies towards more effective thermo‐responsive polymers for battery thermal regulation.more » « less
-
Bridging the current gap between the precision and efficiency demonstrated by natural systems and synthetic materials requires interfacing and independently controlling multiple stimuli-responsive building blocks in a single platform. The mentioned orthogonal control over material properties (i.e., the ability to selectively activate one stimuli-responsive moiety without affecting another) could pave the way for a multitude of applications, including logic-gated optoelectronics, on-demand drug delivery platforms, and molecular shuttles, for example. In this Review, we highlight the recent successful strategies to achieve orthogonal control over material properties using a combination of stimuli-responsive building blocks and multiple independent stimuli. We begin by surveying the fundamental studies of multi-stimuli-responsive systems, which utilize a variety of stimuli to activate a single stimuli-responsive moiety (e.g., spiropyran, diarylethene, or dihydroazulene derivatives), because these studies lay the foundation for the design of systems containing more than one independently controlled fragment. As a next step, we overview the emerging field focusing on systems which are composed of more than one unique stimuli-responsive unit that can respond to independent stimuli, including distinct excitation wavelengths, or a combination of light, heat, pH, potential, or ionic strength. Recent advances clearly demonstrate how strategic coupling of orthogonally controlled stimuli-responsive units can allow for selective modulation of a range of material properties, such as conductivity, catalytic performance, and biological activity. Thus, the highlighted studies foreshadow the emerging role of materials with orthogonally controlled properties to impact the next generation of photopharmacology, nanotechnology, optoelectronics, and biomimetics.more » « less
