Abstract
This article explores how preservice teachers can develop mentoring capacities (i.e., perspective taking, connection with students, and self-reflective opportunities on their roles as teachers) by participating in a historically-based online simulation game with middle school students. The arena for this exploration, the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), is a web-mediated learning platform that utilizes character play to enhance historical and cultural understanding. Through the description of three preservice teachers/mentors in JCAT, we illustrate how the preservice teachers/mentors work to support the learning of the middle school students while developing their teaching skill set. Our research explores the ways in which participation in the dual roles of character and mentor shapes the university students' development as preservice teachers. Findings revealed two major tensions in the mentor experiences: tensions related to preservice teachers/mentors' desire to stay in character while supporting middle school students' learning and tensions related to preservice teachers/mentors' focus on attending to the learning of middle school students while also attending to themselves as learners. Through this complex process of shifting perspective taking, preservice teachers/mentors had to strike a balance between these roles in order to be active members of an ever-changing community. Their energetic membership, in turn, supported the action of the simulation and the development of the middle school students. As such, this study offers teacher education programs a new model for helping preservice teachers learn the essential capacity of understanding multiple perspectives. Keywords: mentoring, teaching, technology, historical simulations, role