No abstract

Initial Teacher Education (ITE) can be viewed as a formative space in professional teacher identity development. Practice plays a key role in shaping teacher identity, providing a window into the reality of school life, as well as nurturing professional autonomy. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, school life shifted suddenly and unrecognisably in March 2020. This paper focuses on the experiences of preservice teachers on an ITE programme (post-primary) in one Irish University during the period of sudden school closures. The data show the transition to be problematic, underscored by a chaotic pivot to virtual communication and a destabilising of the structures that normally provide consistency. Yet it also presented opportunities and responsibilities. We explore Victor Turner's work to consider school placement as an 'in between' space for preservice teachers and to examine the extent to which sudden school closures heightened this sense of 'in betweenness'. We argue that the pandemic and its lifting out of pervasive and predictable social structures, gave rise to a period of 'anti-structure'. We view school closures as an example of anti-structure, which challenged preservice teachers' identity formation yet also gave rise to 'communitas' through experimentation with different modes of being and doing.

Abstract:Irish education has undergone major changes in the recent past. These changes came about as a result of a White Paper on policy, Charity Our Education Future, (1995), the subsequent establishment of the Education Act (2000) which formally gave legal status to key aspects of education and the Teaching Council Act which was charged with the maintenance and improvement of the quality of teaching and teacher education. The professionalization of teaching and teachers was identified as key to the proposed changes. Change processes in any profession are challenging and demand collaboration and agreement from a number of stakeholders. In teacher education such changes involve existing practitioners, the training providers, the government and the unions, which represent parents, teachers and teacher education providers. In order to bring about change, there should also be evidence that the proposed changes are properly cost, are capable of improving current practice and that change management teams are available to support and evaluate the impact of the changes. This paper addresses the challenges that exist in bringing about successful change in a difficult economic and social situation, where the quality, impact and success of Irish education processes are being closely scrutinized. The paper places a strong emphasis on the role of teacher educators.

No abstract

No abstract