Abstract:

This research paper is presented in the light of the Post-Pandemic Crisis which promoted a worldwide re-evaluation of educational initiatives. The authors, having conducted collaborative research, internationally, since they met in 2013 at the 6th International Conference for Education Research and Innovation (ICERI2013), both experienced researchers in the field of pedagogical leadership, recognise, all too crucially, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic so much so that it was considered pertinent to also show how the transition from pre-pandemic times compare with the post-pandemic times.

The research focuses on the importance of pre-service teacher training in a Brazilian pre-service teacher course in Natural Science, from Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), where Professor Aline Grunewald Nichele, co-author of this paper, collected data from two sample populations (one, pre-pandemic; other post-pandemic times). The following definition of pre-service teacher training is given as: “Recognised and organized, private and public educational programmes designed to train future teachers to formally enter the profession at a specified level of education. Graduates receive a government recognised teaching qualification. Pre-service training does not cover teachers who do not meet officially recognised training standards and are enrolled in a teacher training course to earn accreditation concurrent to their work as a teacher.” (UNESCO, 2022).

On 28 January 2020, Brazil's Ministry of Health announced that a suspected case of COVID-19 was being investigated in Belo Horizonte, involving a student who had recently returned from Wuhan, China (UNESCO, 4/03/2020). By the 20th March the Pandemic had impacted education world-wide. Educational environments around the globe, where vital learning spaces had been struck by the Covid-19 pandemic, not least in the pre-service teacher course in Natural Science, from Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS). It was important to develop ways of meeting pre-service teacher student needs, both before and after the pandemic. Immediate and complete lockdown of all educational institutions forced them to keep social distancing, which according to healthcare professionals (Ibrahim, 2020) aided the flattening of the infection curve to reduce total fatalities from the COVID-19 pandemic. The research methodology included an evaluation of the Pedagogical Variation Model (PVM, Rogers 2013) that was used to identify the pre-service teacher responses elicited by a questionnaire relating to the matching of student teaching preferences according to their preferred learning styles i.e. when face-to-face (pre-pandemic) in comparison to remote learning (post-pandemic). Interestingly, the outcomes of the research indicate how the PVM provides pre-service teachers with insights regarding to transactional pedagogical leadership (i.e. task-giving) in comparison to transactional pedagogical leadership (i.e. empowerment/ motivation). Dr Susy Rogers, originator of the PVM is mindful of the underlying strength in the application of the PVM in learning and teaching, both in face-to-face and virtual learning environments, especially in the latter where attrition rates may be reduced, thereby increasing, particularly, online retention rates

Keywords:

Online learning and teaching, face-to-face, Covid-19, pedagogical leadership, attrition, retention, pandemic, collaborative research, remote learning.