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In its broadest and historical sense, place-based education refers to education that occurs outside of the physical boundaries of a school building (Dewey 1910; Sobel 1996; Theobald 1997; Woodhouse and Knapp 2000). Place-based education, colloquially referred to as the ‘field trip’, is predominantly considered a pedagogic tool of the sciences. It involves a physical movement from the school-based location to a place of interest, for example, a geography field trip to an ecological landscape or science visit to a local museum. This paper considers the use of virtual world field trips (VWFTs) within the context of a pre-service Teacher Education programme. The paper presents data from one undergraduate module offered on a programme of initial teacher education. The paper identifies three significant elements of virtual world field trips: place, people and content. First, the virtual world can provide access to places not possible in the offline context as a result of geographic, economic or religious factors. Second, exposure to and dialogue with a variety of world views can challenge students’ assumptions, facilitate reflection and provide an opportunity for oneto-one teaching encounters. Third, from a teacher educator perspective, engagement in virtual world field trips can provide a space for teachers to model teaching methodologies and model creative learning techniques, thus providing student teachers with an insight into different approaches to teaching.

Distributed Leadership (DL) is a feature of education in many jurisdictions. Similarly, in Ireland the principles of DL have been adopted as part of a quality framework to underpin a system that provides high quality student care, learning and teaching. This model necessitates an alignment of senior leaders (SLs) and middle leaders (MLs) whose actions are informed by the needs and priorities of their particular school. The traditional notion of the ML position as a management position is changing. The evolution requires a reconceptualisation, a transformation of the role and how we support and develop it to ensure that MLs are an integral part of the leadership structure of the school. This pragmatic research explored the PD needs of MLs in Irish, Education and Training Board (ETB) post-primary schools. It involved a mixed-methods, exploratory sequential study. Stage one involved a set of five semi structured interviews with AP I post holders. These were used as an instrument to develop the online surveys. Stage two involved quantitative research. Online surveys were distributed to all ETB schools in the republic of Ireland. In stage three a summary of the findings of the survey were shared with ten AP Is who were subsequently interviewed to gain further insights. The study illustrated that the development of MLs requires the support of SLs, skills development, a supportive school culture and combined training for senior and middle leaders which should be facilitated by an independent person.

While School Placement is long established as a central component of Initial Teacher Education programmes, there is an increasing awareness that these placement experiences should go beyond the practical activities most directly associated with teaching. This paper considers how engagement in a school placement period with a focus on non-teaching activities contributes to the professional and personal development of student-teachers, and to their sense of 'belonging' while on placement. Drawing primarily on the analysis of data obtained from online logs maintained by student-teachers during this predominantly non-teaching placement, it establishes the activities that they engaged in, and their reflections and opinions about the value of these experiences and this practicum placement. Findings include an increased sense of belonging to the school community, greater confidence and a stronger sense of identity as teacher.