Abstract:

The pandemic around the world changed the way people have been living, including educational settings. The surprising impetus of change on teaching and learning in schools, as well as in the academia was new. It entailed an uncertain and unstable reality for students and teachers, based significantly on social distancing. Moreover, students, teachers, and educators, with no time to adjust and without proper planning, adapted themselves to a variety of digital tools for the purpose of maintaining as much as possible the routine in virtual spaces.

The global researchers’ community of teacher educators was mainly interested in learning and conducting research. One could not find theoretical and empirical knowledge, supplementary material, and information. Nor was it possible to find evidence about teaching, learning and, obviously, teacher education in this reality of world crisis and social distancing.

We, at the Faculty of Education, at Levinsky College, a well-known and established teacher education college in Israel, felt the need for documenting this transformation focusing mainly on challenges and obstacles in pre-service teacher training during the crisis. We assumed that it may effectively contribute to the newest corpus of knowledge and evidence about teacher education in a time of pandemic. In this respect, we invited lecturers and pedagogical instructors to share their experiences, thoughts, challenges and successes for a book called "Teacher Education in a Reality of a World Crisis – The Narrative of a Faculty of Education in a Teacher Education College". Learning through sharing was one of this books' significant priorities.

The book assimilates an organizational auto-ethnographic methodology (Boyle & Parry, 2007). This method allows us to understand the options, as well as the unresolved challenges that the pandemic has brought into the faculty as a whole organization. The empirical and reflective chapters illustrate the effects the lockdowns and the shift to online teaching and learning had on students, teachers, principals, pre-service teachers, and teacher educators. Thus, classic as well as new terms, are presented in an authentic way. For example: hybrid learning spaces, blended learning, synchronous and asynchronous courses, social-emotional learning models, parent-teacher relationships and issues of social justice and social status of school subjects.

In this respect, the book demonstrates that shifting to online training have been implemented very quickly. Nevertheless, it has been very challenging for all the partners and stakeholders. on the one hand, the Faculty of Education staff responded in a reactive manner. On the other hand, they presented bottom-up aspirations, proactive solutions, and creative initiatives for coping with the challenges that they faced. The stressful and hectic phase of the crisis has swiftly turned into a survival mode and, from there, to a consolidated creative educational and pedagogical settings. Major themes from the narrative will be demonstrated in the conference.

References:
[1] Biberman-Shalev, L., Broza, O., & Patkin, D. (Eds.). (will be pressed in 2022). Teacher Education in a Reality of a World Crisis – The Narrative of a Faculty of Education in a Teacher Education College. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte., Ltd.
[3] Boyle, M., & Parry, K. (2007). Telling the whole story: The case for organizational autoethnography. Culture and Organization, 13(3), 185-190.

Keywords:

Faculty of Education, Pre-service teachers, Narrative.