Ken Spero
I have been working with simulations for a long time, and I continue to be frustrated by the fact that scalable simulations remain something of a well-kept secret.
This is especially puzzling because the basic idea is not difficult to understand. We have long accepted that experience is one of our best teachers. We also know – from aviation, healthcare, the military, and other high-stakes fields – that simulations can approximate important aspects of experience. They give people opportunities to practice, make decisions, encounter consequences, and learn before the stakes are real.
Yet in education and leadership development, simulations are still often viewed as an interesting technology rather than an essential part of how people develop.
People who are new to simulations may be intrigued by the innovation. They may enjoy seeing the technology or playing through a scenario. But the simulation itself is only part of the opportunity.
Its greater value is in the developmental process it can initiate.
From a Simulation Experience to a Developmental Process
A simulation can provide considerable value as a standalone experience. Even one well-designed scenario can challenge assumptions, expose participants to a difficult situation, and prompt meaningful reflection.
Its broader potential, however, comes from what that experience makes possible.
A well-designed simulation places someone inside a situation rather than outside of it. The participant is not merely asked what a person should do. They must decide what they will do as events unfold, information remains incomplete, pressures accumulate, and competing priorities become more difficult to reconcile.
That experience can reveal things that conventional instruction may not.
Participants begin to see how they respond to uncertainty. They recognize the assumptions they bring to a situation. They discover which stakeholders they attend to, which risks they prioritize, and what they may overlook. They experience the tension among several reasonable choices rather than searching for a single correct answer.
The experience then provides a foundation for reflection, peer discussion, feedback, coaching, and application. Participants can examine not only what they decided, but why they decided it, how others approached the same situation, and what the experience might mean for their own work.
In this way, the simulation becomes more than a discrete learning activity. It can serve as the starting point – and even the hub – of an ongoing developmental process.
From Learning Infrastructure to Practice Infrastructure
Most organizations already have some form of learning infrastructure. They have courses, workshops, readings, videos, learning management systems, professional development sessions, and access to subject-matter experts.
These resources are important. They help people acquire knowledge and understand concepts.
What is often missing is a corresponding infrastructure for practice.
A Practice Infrastructure provides intentional and repeated opportunities for people to use what they know, make decisions, test their judgment, receive feedback, reflect, and try again. It helps bridge the space between learning about the work and being fully responsible for doing it.
That infrastructure might include clinical experiences, apprenticeships, residencies, rehearsals, role plays, case discussions, coaching, peer dialogue, reflection, and simulations. These approaches are not interchangeable, and no single one is sufficient for every need.
Scalable simulations can, however, serve as a hub connecting many of them.
A simulation creates a shared experience around which other forms of learning can be organized. Participants can prepare for it through readings or instruction. They can make individual decisions and explain their reasoning. They can compare their choices with those of colleagues, discuss the consequences, revisit their assumptions, and connect the situation to challenges in their own work.
Instead of discussing teaching, leadership, communication, or decision-making only in the abstract, participants can discuss what they actually did when confronted with a realistic situation.
Practice makes the learning concrete.
Why Practice Infrastructure Matters Now
This distinction matters because schools and educator-preparation programs are operating in an environment that requires them to develop people more effectively and, in many cases, more quickly.
Schools continue to face teacher shortages, while many districts also experience significant turnover and vacancies in building and district leadership. Filling those positions is only the first challenge. New teachers and leaders must then develop the judgment, confidence, and resilience to manage responsibilities that are complex from the beginning.
Too often, they must acquire that experience while already carrying the full responsibility of the role.
Districts need ways to accelerate development without reducing it to the faster delivery of information. They need to help people build skills while also supporting the well-being and positive professional climate that can contribute to retention.
Feeling unprepared, isolated, or continually surprised by difficult situations can contribute to stress and discouragement. Prior practice cannot remove the pressures of the job, but it can help people enter those moments with greater familiarity, stronger judgment, and a clearer sense that they are capable of responding.
Development and retention should not be treated as unrelated challenges. People are more likely to remain in difficult work when they feel supported, connected to colleagues, and increasingly capable of managing the situations they face.
Practice Infrastructure can help create those conditions.
Supporting Multiple Pathways Into Education
At the same time, pathways into education are becoming more varied.
Traditional university-based preparation remains important, but it now exists alongside alternative pathways, teacher apprenticeships, residency models, Grow Your Own programs, and opportunities for career and technical education professionals to move from industry into teaching.
These pathways can help bring more people into the profession, but they also create a common question: How do we provide meaningful and consistent opportunities to practice when participants enter with different experiences, follow different routes, and may already be working in schools?
As pathways into education become more varied, the need for a common infrastructure for practice becomes greater, not smaller.
Higher education can use Practice Infrastructure to strengthen traditional preparation while also supporting newer pathways. Districts can continue that development through induction, leadership pipelines, team learning, and job-embedded professional growth.
Simulations can provide shared experiences across these settings. Reflection, peer discussion, feedback, coaching, and workplace application can then help participants make those experiences their own.
This is not about accelerating people past development. It is about creating better and more accessible ways for development to occur.
A Broader Way to Think About Simulations
Perhaps one reason scalable simulations remain underused is that we continue to present them as another form of content or another instructional resource competing for space in an already crowded program.
Practice Infrastructure offers a broader way to understand their role.
The question is no longer simply, “Where can we add a simulation?”
The better questions are:
How do people practice before they are fully responsible for performing?
Where can they make difficult decisions without creating real-world harm?
How do they receive feedback on their judgment?
Where do they reflect on how they respond to uncertainty?
How do they compare their thinking with others?
How are insights from an experience translated into action?
Seen through this lens, simulations are not an isolated instructional innovation. They are part of a broader developmental architecture connecting knowledge, experience, reflection, dialogue, coaching, and application.
That is the promise of Practice Infrastructure.
It is not about replacing coursework, clinical experience, professional development, mentoring, or coaching. It is about connecting these elements more intentionally, making meaningful practice more widely available, and filling the space between knowing and doing. If experience is one of our best teachers, we should not leave meaningful experience entirely to chance.
We should build the infrastructure that allows people to practice before – and alongside – the moments that matter.
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