Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical reflection on the response of key stakeholders in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Northern Ireland (NI) to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lessons learned in terms of providing a platform for future development and new ways of working.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges for all of society and it could be argued that one of the most significant areas of impact, outside healthcare, was education. Schools faced enormous challenges which in turn, brought significant disruption for teacher education providers, due to the heavy reliance on the partnership with schools to support placements. Teacher educators had to manage the provision of their own university-based programmes, remotely or via blended approaches, as well as ensure that placements appropriately supported students in the development of competence, within restrained contexts (GTCNI, 2007). While some issues, such as online teaching, had to be dealt with internally by each institution, others required a more strategic response. These included the management of truncated placements; the need to upskill students to teach online (Engeness, 2021); and the observation and assessment of student competence (Bolton, 2013; Dyke, Harding and Liddon, 2008).

To meet the crisis, new ways of working had to be found and a collective and coherent response to the challenges implemented. Whilst the four ITE providers had heretofore operated with relative autonomy within a common policy context, at a strategic level, the Institutions did meet regularly under the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, Northern Ireland (UCETNI) and in turn liaised with other agencies and government departments through meetings of the Higher Education Liaison Group (HELG). This paper considers the extent to which the pandemic brought a new purpose and breathed energy into these existing structures. The paper suggests that as a result, a Covid Response Working Group which was established by the Department of Education (DE) and included the four ITE providers, school principals, the Education Authority (EA) and the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI), provided a foundation for innovative thinking and deeper consideration of key aspects of practice related to: strengthened strategic collaboration; the development of online teaching and learning and the use of technology in ITE; a reconsideration of the nature of student competence; and the importance of effective and collaborative partnerships.

References:
[1] Bolton, M. (2013) Fly on the wall: Using teleconferencing to supervise student teacher performance. Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, 14 (1), pp.62-76.
[2] Dyke, M., Harding, A. and Liddon, S. (2008) ‘How can online observation support the assessment and feedback, on classroom performance, to trainee teachers at a distance and in real time?’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 32:1, pp.37-46, doi: 10.1080/03098770701781432
[3] Engeness, I. (2021) ‘Developing teachers’ digital identity: towards the pedagogic design principles of digital environments to enhance students’ learning in the 21st century’, European Journal of Teacher Education, 44(1), pp. 96-114.
[4] General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland [GTCNI] (2007), Teaching: The Reflective Profession, Belfast: GTCNI, [Online]. Available at:
https://gtcni.org.uk/cmsfiles/Resource365/Resources/Publications/The_Reflective_Profession.pdf (Accessed 14 November 2022).

Keywords:

Teacher Education, Pandemic response, Collaboration.