Pandemic pedagogies, practices and future possibilities: emerging professional adjustments to the working practices of university teacher educators

Abstract

The impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on universities has been seismic. The requirement to pivot suddenly to remote working has required the development of contingency curriculums, socially distanced campuses and an increased demand for online learning. This paper sets out to capture the emergent working practices and experiences of a group of Teacher Educators (TEs) from a university with a large Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provision. The findings suggest that TEs have proved agile, resilient and creative in the immediate short term. They modified their pedagogies and practices to manage the successful completion of existing programmes remotely, developing contingent online Communities of Inquiry (CoI). This continues in the current academic year as the TEs develop blended learning programmes to meet the university restrictions of limited face-to-face teaching. A longer-term view presents TEs with additional challenges, in terms of (re)designing curricula, assessments and accessibility. There are positive lessons for teacher education in terms of the benefits of new technological understanding and pedagogical adaptations. There is a need for further professional development of TEs and Universities will need to skill up and kit up TEs to enable them to meet the needs of an uncertain future and the “next normal”. Further research into the implications of any redesigns of ITE to a blended provision aimed at meeting the needs of an uncertain future will be needed.