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With the growing use of mixed reality teaching simulations in teacher education there is a need for researchers to examine how preservice teacher (PST) learning can be supported when using these simulations. To address this gap the current study explores how 47 PSTs used an online teaching simulation to facilitate a discussion focused on argumentation with five student avatars in the MursionTM mixed reality simulated classroom environment. We assessed PSTs' performance in the simulation using rubric-level scores assigned by trained raters and then compared the scores to PSTs' survey responses completed after their discussion asking them to self-report their goals for the discussion, how successful they thought they were across five dimensions of facilitating high-quality, argumentation-focused discussions, and their overall perceptions of the mixed reality teaching simulation. Findings suggest that PSTs' understanding of the discussion task's learning goals somewhat predicted their success in facilitating the discussion and that PSTs' self-assessment of their performance was not always consistent with raters' evaluation of the PSTs' performance. In particular, self-assessment was found to be most consistent with raters' evaluations for those PSTs with higher rater-assigned scores and least consistent for those with lower rater-assigned scores. The implications of these findings are as follows: (1) researchers should be cautious in relying on PST self-report of success when engaging in mixed reality teaching simulations, particularly because low performance may be obscured, (2) teacher educators should be aware that reliance on self-report from PSTs likely obscures the need for additional support for exactly those PSTs who need it most, and (3) the field, therefore, should expand efforts to measure PSTs' performance when using mixed reality teaching simulations. 

In this study, we explored how the use of an online digital teaching simulation impacts preservice teacher (PST) learning. We describe the overall implementation of an online practice suite of digital teaching simulations into five teacher education courses. Specifically, we detail the avatar-based simulation activity in which PSTs facilitate a discussion focused on argumentation with five student avatars controlled by a trained actor in the Mursion simulated classroom environment. The present study examines PSTs’ self-assessment of their performance facilitating a discussion in this simulated classroom compared to rubric-level scores assigned by trained raters. We share findings from our analysis of survey data regarding 47 PSTs’ perceptions about their experience with the simulated classroom, specifically how successful they thought they were across five dimensions of facilitating argumentation-focused discussions. Findings suggest that the PSTs’ self-assessment tended to align with the scores assigned from trained raters. However, when the PSTs’ self-assessment did not align with the raters’ scoring, PSTs tended to perceive their discussion facilitation more positively than the raters’ scores indicated, which suggests the need for additional support to help PSTs identify and attend to specific areas for improvement. Findings provide support for the use of both self-assessment and scoring from trained raters to optimize PST learning with digital teaching simulations.