Embodied Experiences in Virtual Worlds Role-Play as a Conduit for Novice Teacher Identity Exploration: A Case Study

Abstract

This article presents a descriptive case study of teacher embodiment during a role-play parent-teacher conference in a collaborative virtual world. Using a single novice teacher as the primary unit of analysis, the article describes the nature of teacher embodiment by deconstructing the teacher's various Discourses using Gee's Building Tasks as an analytical tool and reconstructing them using embodiment literature as a synthesis tool. The findings indicate that well-designed experiences in collaborative virtual worlds coupled with meaningful reflection of those experiences have the potential to allow novice teachers to feel and act like a teacher, a phenomenon that is called embodiment in this article. The study provides theoretical and empirical basis for continued examination of the use of collaborative virtual worlds for clinical practice.