Introducing Teaching as Managing Dilemmas to Preservice Teachers Im-proves their Instructional Reasoning and Lesson Planning

Because of the complex and dilemmatic nature of teaching, teachers should be able to engage in instructional reasoning to justify their instructional decisions. In an experimental study (N = 89), we tested two different but complementary instructional approaches to convey the metaphor of the teacher as a dilemma manager to history preservice teachers, aiming to foster instructional reasoning skills and improve lesson planning. Journal writing served as the medium for instruc-tional reasoning. Participants studied (a) a video-based tutorial that provided an epistemic expla-nation of the nature of teaching as dilemma managing, (b) a written worked example that mod-elled dilemma managing as the weighing of pros and cons regarding teaching goals and strategies, (c) both supports, or (d) none. The tutorial was especially effective in stimulating teacher stu-dents’ instructional reasoning and improving lesson planning. The results suggest ways to em-power preservice teachers as dilemma-managers by strengthening their instructional reasoning skills.