‘I wonder if it mattered that they were Arab’: using teacher-parent simulations to develop teachers’ sociopolitical discourse

We studied how clinical simulations can support teachers’ discourse on sociopolitical issues, specifically in teacher–parent relationships. We examined a video-recorded peer discussion in which Israeli-Jewish teachers discussed a simulation of a conflict with an Israeli-Arab mother. Using a situative professional learning framework and linguistic-ethnographic microanalysis, we explored the teacher discourse and its evolution. Teachers were offered the opportunity to reconsider their perspectives through peer conversation, facilitated by a ‘bottom-up’ simulation approach rooted in their experiences. Although the teachers initially approached the scenario in a colormute manner, in the simulation debriefing, they revealed the significance of the mother’s Arab identity. This exposed biases and power dynamics, highlighted in the teachers’ negotiation of the mother’s marginalised identities. The study contributes to developing sociopolitical discourse in teacher education and to designing clinical simulation tools.