Given the significant role of questioning in teaching and learning, it is essential for student teachers to develop strong questioning skills. However, research reveals that many pre-service (and in-service) teachers struggle to implement questioning meaningfully in their teaching. In response, a small-scale pilot intervention was introduced at a South African university's Department of Childhood Education to explore how mixed reality simulations could support student teachers in developing questioning as a core teaching practice. Mixed reality simulations (MRS) allow student teachers to practice teaching in a controlled, safe environment with realistic learner avatars controlled by a digital puppeteer. Fifteen student teachers participated in this intervention, completing eight MRS lessons focused on deliberately practising specific questioning techniques. After each student taught their MRS lesson, a teacher educator facilitated reflection and coaching sessions to hone the students’ questioning skills, including questioning strategies to elicit prior knowledge, focus learners’ thinking, stimulate creativity and metacognition, and check for understanding through well-developed, open-ended questions. Following the MRS lessons, student teachers went to schools for practicum (six weeks), during which they video-recorded themselves teaching a lesson. These videos were analysed using an observation protocol and inductive coding in Atlas.ti to analyse the transfer of questioning skills from the MRS lessons into real classroom teaching.

The research questions that guided the research were:
(1) How do student teachers integrate questioning skills learned through a mixed reality simulation intervention into their teaching practice? and
(2) To what extent do student teachers transfer the questioning skills learned through the MRS intervention into their classroom practices?

The analysis identified four key themes:
(1) The student teachers’ capacity to integrate open-ended and high-order questions requires further strengthening;
(2) Student teachers predominantly utilise the questioning skills of checking for understanding and eliciting prior knowledge;
(3) Closed and low order questions are adequately interspersed throughout lessons to serve various purposes; and
(4) The least integrated questioning skills are those that stimulate creativity and metacognition.

The findings suggest that there is some evidence of the transfer of questioning skills learned through the MRS intervention into student teachers’ classroom practice. This suggests that mixed reality simulations hold promise for enhancing questioning skills, with future studies recommended to assess the efficacy of the intervention with larger student groups and fewer simulation lessons.

Keywords: Mixed reality simulation, teacher education, technology, questioning, transfer.