What is Approximations

There has been a renewed interest in practice-based teacher education, in which teaching candidates don't just learn about teaching but actually acquire instructional experiences during their time in the educator preparation program. Teacher educators and scholars have called for the creation and acceptance of a coherent curriculum centering around a research-based set of core or high leverage practices. Grossman's pedagogy of enactment framework has provided one method of studying how teacher educators prepare future teachers for enacting successful instructional practices. In this pedagogy of enactment framework, teaching candidates learn about effective instructional practices through artifacts and other representations, decompositions of these practices, and then approximate the practices through rehearsals in simulated environments. This chapter specifically details three cases studies of authentic practice that one university program uses to prepare teacher candidates within this framework of practice-based teacher education and high leverage practices.