How do we explain to students the difference between “sequential,” or cause-and-effect processes for some concepts and emergent causal effects for other processes? Most people are familiar with simple sequential cause-and-effect concepts, such as a child kicking a ball and the ball hitting and breaking a window. Science processes based on a sequence of events are easily understood by most students. But many people are less familiar with processes that have emergent causal effects in which collective interactions create a detectable pattern.
With the 2018–19 school year, the Next Education Workforce initiative at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College created and deployed a residency model for teacher preparation in which teams of teacher candidates were paid by school districts to work with one mentor teacher across two classrooms of pre-K–12 students. Each team of educators worked to meet the needs of more than 60 students, introducing a mutually beneficial approach to residency-based instruction.