Topics:
Practice infrastructure, developing judgment, situational awareness, situational judgement, workplace resilience, teacher resilience, school leader resilience, simulated reflection, shared learning, group learning, shared experience, teacher improvement, school leader improvement, simulation feedback, critical thinking, teacher coaching, school leader coaching, peer dialogue
By Ken Spero
When educators face difficult situations, we often focus on what they need to bring to the moment: knowledge, confidence, persistence, resilience.
But what does the situation itself bring?
In a recent Harvard Business Review interview with Alison Beard, Angela Duckworth discusses the thinking behind her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best. Building on her work around grit, she emphasizes how environments, relationships, and cultures influence people’s ability to succeed.
That raises an important question for educator preparation and professional learning: Are we helping people develop their capabilities while also helping them understand the conditions in which those capabilities must be used?
This is where I see a meaningful connection to simulation and Practice Infrastructure.
Every simulation begins somewhere. Participants need to understand where they are, when they are, and with whom they are interacting.
Those details establish the conditions for judgment.
A conversation with a parent takes on different meaning depending on whether it is the first contact or follows several unanswered messages. A teacher’s response to a student may depend on what happened earlier that day, who else is present, and what the teacher understands about the student’s experience. A principal’s decision about a policy is influenced by relationships, timing, authority, and community expectations.
The action cannot be considered separately from the situation.
For me, situated judgment means interpreting those conditions and deciding what makes sense within them. As the story unfolds, participants must update that understanding. A response that seemed reasonable earlier may need reconsideration after new information or a stakeholder reaction.
Simulation gives us a way to practice that ongoing awareness.
Duckworth’s work also invites a deeper question: How is the situation influencing what I notice, feel, and believe I can do? Her account of Situated emphasizes the role of personal space, peers, mentors, and culture in shaping our behavior. [1]
I have often connected grit with the resilience we seek to develop through simulations. There is substantial overlap, but the distinction is useful.
Duckworth defines grit around passion and perseverance toward long-term goals. She also distinguishes commitment to an enduring goal from stubborn attachment to a particular strategy. Changing an approach can serve the larger purpose. [2]
That distinction matters in teaching and leadership.
A teacher can remain committed to helping a student succeed while reconsidering an approach that is not working. A principal can remain committed to improving instruction while changing the pace or structure of an initiative.
In a simulation, a participant may make a defensible decision and still encounter resistance or an unintended consequence. The next decision creates an opportunity to reconsider: What happened? What did I misunderstand? What should I preserve, and what should I change?
This is one way simulations can provide practice in resilience. Participants experience difficulty, examine their response, and continue with a better understanding of the situation.
Entering teaching or leadership can bring an expansive sense of uncertainty. Classroom management, parent conflict, staff resistance, or community pressure may feel intimidating before someone has encountered them.
Simulation can give those concerns a recognizable form. The challenge now has people, pressures, decisions, and consequences associated with it. Participants have an experience they can reflect on and discuss.
Duckworth’s emphasis on situations adds another layer to that reflection.
Instead of asking only, “Why did I struggle?” participants can ask, “What about this situation made responding difficult?”
Perhaps the conversation happened in a public setting. Perhaps expectations were unclear, trust had already been damaged, or the participant lacked information that another stakeholder possessed.
That does not remove personal responsibility. It broadens the examination.
It also creates an opportunity to consider agency: What can I change? Would a different setting, another person’s involvement, clearer expectations, or an earlier conversation improve the conditions for responding?
This is also where peer discussion becomes valuable.
Participants may experience the same simulation and interpret it differently. One notices a threat to trust. Another sees a question of fairness. Someone else recognizes a workload problem or draws on experience with a similar situation.
We have described this as deliberative friction: the productive tension that arises when another person’s reasoning challenges our own.
These differences can help participants see how their experiences, assumptions, and relationships influenced what they noticed. Naming the challenge gives the group a shared starting point; their different stories expand the understanding around it.
The learning environment matters here, too. Participants need room to explain uncertainty, question an interpretation, and reconsider a decision without feeling that every admission will be judged as incompetence.
Practice Infrastructure therefore needs to attend to both the simulated situation and the conditions surrounding the learning.
Duckworth’s earlier research offers another useful connection. In a study of National Spelling Bee competitors, deliberate practice predicted performance more strongly than other preparation activities. The study concerned spelling, but it reinforces the importance of examining how practice is structured. [3]
Character Lab’s expert-practice guidance identifies a specific area for improvement, focused effort, and feedback, followed by repetition. [4]
For simulation design, this suggests that experience alone is insufficient. Participants need opportunities to identify what they are working on, examine consequences, receive feedback, and return to practice.
Reflection itself can become a focus for that practice. Participants repeatedly examine what they noticed, what they assumed, and how the situation influenced their response. The aim is to make that process increasingly available when real events unfold.
The simulation creates a concrete experience from which a coaching conversation can begin.
The SchoolSims AI Coach can use participants’ decisions and recorded reflections to encourage further examination:
What led you to interpret the situation that way? What evidence supported your assumption? What might another stakeholder have noticed? Which conditions could you influence?
These are opportunities for critical thinking, particularly when the conversation asks participants to test their reasoning and consider alternatives.
This is what I mean by Coachable Moments by Design. We deliberately create an experience that gives reflection and coaching something substantive to work with.
The AI Coach can make that conversation more accessible and help participants prepare for deeper work with faculty, mentors, or human coaches. Its value depends on keeping the inquiry grounded in the experience and encouraging participants to think for themselves.
Duckworth’s work leaves us with a useful challenge. We should help educators respond thoughtfully to difficult conditions – and help leaders recognize when those conditions need to change.
Practice Infrastructure can support both. It connects experience, reflection, peer dialogue, coaching, and continued practice so that people learn to examine their own decisions alongside the situations that shaped them.
That is a broader purpose for simulation: helping people understand where they are, what is influencing them, and what they might do next.
Beard, Alison. “What Actually Sets High Achievers Apart?” Harvard Business Review, September 30, 2026. Interview with Angela Duckworth. Uploaded article.
[1] Duckworth, Angela. Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best. Simon & Schuster, 2026. Author’s book page: https://www.angeladuckworth.com/situated
[2] Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Author’s book page and FAQs: https://www.angeladuckworth.com/grit
[3] Duckworth, A. L., Kirby, T. A., Tsukayama, E., Berstein, H., & Ericsson, K. A. (2011). Deliberate practice spells success: Why grittier competitors triumph at the National Spelling Bee. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(2), 174–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550610385872
[4] Character Lab. Expert Practice for Classrooms. https://characterlab.org/activities/expert-practice-for-classrooms/
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SchoolSims provides dynamic, simulation-based professional development for educators and school leaders in public, private, and independent schools, as well as for future educators in colleges and universities. Our simulations present real-world leadership challenges through interactive, decision-based scenarios, leveraging AI-driven insights and live-action elements. By engaging in these experiences, learners refine their decision-making skills, bridge the gap between theory and practice, and enhance their ability to lead in complex educational environments.