Abstract:

These are still tough times. Tougher than we have ever realised before. The whole world is still in chaos. Each and every one has been affected, in one way or another by the disruptive nature of the global Coronavirus Pandemic that still sweeps across our Planet. We are beginning to rebuild lives by re-orientating ourselves to a ‘new normal’ emerging after months of ‘hibernation’, ‘The Great Pause’, Lockdown’. . name it what you will. In situations of adversity creative problem-solving minds re-imagine solutions. The co-researchers and authors of this paper recognise the significance of the necessity to come together for vital inter-continental communication systems to re-educate ourselves to prepare for the ‘new normal’ by embracing the rapidly evolving creative learning technologies, thereby, heralding a new era of ‘near future’ capacity for peoples from any place, any time-zone on our planet Earth. By so doing, education for well-being becomes critical at the heart of overcoming disastrously disruptive life-styles. McKinsey, (2020) states that “Executives everywhere wonder how to bring people back to the workplace and how they will do their jobs”. This paper highlights the need for multi-dimensional, holistic approaches to learning and teaching in the context of the plurality of languages, cultures, interdisciplinary professions, diversity in beliefs and values. This exigency is not only exclusive to schools, colleges, Institutions for Higher Education but also inclusive of continuing professional development (CPD) and lifelong learning in the ‘new workplace’. “Reimagining” the ways in which to train pre-service teachers, therefore, is a pressing task. Harasim (2017:53) reflects with critical mindfulness that ‘history teaches us that theories change more rapidly than practice’, while Somekh (2007) and Kali, McKenney, and Sagy (2015) continue exploring remote, at-a-distance and in-real-time learning afforded by technology, for creating a sense of belonging, common purpose, and shared identity, so important when teachers now work from their homes during Covid-19 crises. Expressions like ‘social-distancing’, ‘self-isolating’ and ‘social bubbles’, ‘ZOOM-ins’, become the everyday familiar, still in many place around the globe, that were previously ‘inconceivable’. Murray and Kidd (2016) conclude how new evolving learning technologies frame professional learning for students and educators, while Bergviken et al. (2018) and Gu and Lai (2019) re-capitulate the use of online tools for teaching and personal learning. This research paper is based on the evaluation of the Pedagogical Variation Model (PVM, Rogers 2013) by students on the pre-service teacher course in Natural Science, from Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), participating in the PVM evaluation questionnaire. These students study, also, the implementation of (ICT), for teaching and learning of the Natural Sciences, namely Chemistry and Biology at IFRS. The sample group was taught by the same lecturer, namely,Associate Professor Aline Grunewald Nichele. This collaborative research highlights significant outcomes regarding pre-service teacher students’ perceptions of matching online teaching strategies with e-learner preferences depending on their online collaborative and knowledge construction abilities, providing evidence of the opposing idea that one-size fits all; indeed, outcomes of the research reveal quite the opposite.

Keywords:

Online learning and teaching, e-learning, e-moderating, pedagogical leadership, attrition, retention, constructivist, instructivist, collaborative research.