2026
APRIL 2026 | Annenberg Ed Exchange
Practice-Based, Online Modules for Expediting Teacher Skill Development
Imagine handing a future pilot a stack of articles about flying, asking them to reflect on what they read, and then sending them into the cockpit. It sounds absurd, and yet this is essentially how most teacher preparation programs have approached online learning modules for decades. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) read about classroom skills, respond to reflection prompts, and are expected to translate that knowledge into confident, effective teaching with real children.
FEBRUARY 10, 2026 | PODCAST: Deans For impact
Hand in Hand, Place to Place: A Podcast on Transforming Teacher Preparation Episode 4
New teachers need scaffolded, deliberate practice with feedback from expert educators, so they can keep building toward skilled instruction over time. “Doing it over and over again” in isolation is wholly insufficient and unhelpful. TeachSIM’s Julie Cohen joined the Deans For Impact podcast “Hand in Hand, Place to Place” for a conversation on how and why instructional quality must be central to teacher preparation.
New teachers need scaffolded, deliberate practice with feedback from expert educators, so they can keep building toward skilled instruction over time. “Doing it over and over again” in isolation is wholly insufficient and unhelpful. TeachSIM’s Julie Cohen joined the Deans For Impact podcast “Hand in Hand, Place to Place” for a conversation on how and why instructional quality must be central to teacher preparation.
JANUARY 10, 2026 | PODCAST: Silver Lining Through Learning
Episode 257: Rehearsing Reality through AI: How Simulations Build Better Teaching
How can teachers rehearse the toughest moments of teaching—without real students in the room?
This episode explores how authentic simulations, powered by new technologies and AI, are transforming teacher preparation and professional learning. Guests Lisa Dieker, Julie Cohen, and Rhonda Bondie discuss how simulation can personalize feedback, deepen reflection, and build more effective educators.
Silver Lining for Learning (SLL) is an award-winning webinar/podcast series on the future of learning with educators, education leaders, innovators, and learners from across the globe. Each week, SLL brings together diverse voices—from classroom teachers to researchers to students themselves—to challenge assumptions, bridge theory and practice, and inspire actionable solutions for creating more equitable, humanistic, and sustainable learning ecosystems.
2024
JUNE 27, 2024 | NATIONAL COUNCIL ON TEACHER QUALITY
Put me in, coach! How practice plus coaching helps aspiring teachers win
Article by the National Council on Teacher Quality about the TeachSim Coaching Study.
The National Council on Teacher Quality highlights University of Virginia research showing that simulated teaching practice paired with targeted coaching can help teacher candidates improve specific teaching skills.
2023
OCTOBER 23, 2023 | EDUCATION WEEK
These Researchers are Seeking Consensus in the Math and Reading Wars
Article about the consensus panels led by Julie Cohen and Nate Jones as part of the SimSE study.
The panels included special education and math education university educators and were held with the explicit goal of of identifying practices that both groups could agree would support students’ math understanding.
OCTOBER 12, 2023 | EDUCATION WEEK
To Move Past the Reading Wars, We Must Understand Where They Started
Article about the divide in opinion over how to teach reading that exists within schools, politics, and academia. The article references the work led by Julie Cohen and Nate Jones as part of the SimSE study to understand how math educators and math special educators think about what the purpose of math education should be and how teachers should build math knowledge.
OCTOBER 2023 | THE LEARNING PROFESSIONAL
How All Teachers Can Support Students with Disabilities
Article written by Lindsey McLean, Alexa Quinn, and Susan Aigotti about how general education teachers are underprepared to support students with disabilities, but a research project found ways professional learning can address that gap.
2022
MAY 2, 2022 | UVA TODAY
Simulator Allows Budding Educators to Practice Skillset
Report highlighting the various teaching skills that preservice teachers are able to practice in low-stakes simulation environments at the UVA School of Education and Human Development’s Simulation Lab. Julie Cohen, TeachSIM Principal Investigator, expands on the benefits provided by this type of practice.
FEBRUARY 17, 2022 | TEACHER MAGAZINE
Classroom simulators to support teacher training
2022 | CADREK
Leveraging Simulations in Preservice Preparation to Improve Mathematics Teaching for Students with Disabilities
Report summarizing the various arms of the project and future findings from a randomized control trial. The report also references two papers that expand on the preliminary findings from a landscape analysis of course syllabi and interviews with special education and mathematics education researchers, respectively.
2021
NOVEMBER 17, 2021 | BROOKINGS
Using classroom simulators to transform teacher preparation
Julie Cohen and Vivian Wong, TeachSIM Principal Investigators, discuss how simulations complement student-placement experiences in teacher preparation and how they can inform teacher education through providing a way to experimentally test different approaches for expediting teacher skill development.
NOVEMBER 3, 2021 | ARISE
Simulations as a Platform for Understanding and Improving Teachers’ Classroom Skills
Report of TeachSIM finds on the effects of coaching on preservice teachers’ classroom skills improvement and introductions to upcoming TeachSIM work (i.e., Systematic Replication Across Diverse Sample of Teachers; Supporting Students with Disabilities in Mathematics Classrooms).
SEPTEMBER 18, 2021 | THE ECONOMIST
Ed tech that helps teachers beats ed tech that replaces them: As children go back to in-person lessons in America some innovations will stay
Discussion of how TeachSIM and other education technology companies and researchers are working to help teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020
APRIL 20, 2020 | THE HECHINGER REPORT
Learning to teach from naughty avatars: Virginia study finds prospective teachers improve their handling of student misbehavior when training simulations are combined with human coaching
Julie Cohen, TeachSIM Principal Investigator, shares findings on the benefits of coaching in teacher performance and addresses the challenges and possibilities of integrating simulations into teacher preparation.
2019
OCTOBER 30, 2019 | VIRGINIA BUSINESS
Brilliant diversity: Preparing Gen Z for work requires new tech and new attitudes
Julie Cohen, TeachSIM Principal Investigator, describes the use of simulations in the teacher preparation program at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development and discusses the importance of integrating new technology into the classroom.