Learning to Teach During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Chile

• In Event: Learning to Teach in Times of COVID-19: Challenges, Trends, and Concerns

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has unquestionably caused significant changes worldwide. National lockdowns have forced most people to remain at home, which means working and studying remotely. In the Chilean context, the national government, as a means to contain the spread of the virus, decided to suspend all school-related activities nationwide in March 2020. Universities adhered to this implementation adapting all educational activities to virtual teaching, where Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes had to deliver all theoretical and practical modules online. Indeed, some ITE programmes adapted the traditional face-to-face teaching placements to an entirely virtual school model considering the ongoing online teaching adjustments that schools were undergoing. Based on the scarcity of practice and empirical research about online teaching placements, most of the amendments and adaptations were made along the way and without sufficient evidence of how to implement these changes to address student teachers’ professional learning. Considering the current widely adoption of online teaching placements, this talk presents findings from an exploratory study that examined the challenges and opportunities that English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher candidates experienced while undertaking an online placement. Data was collected at two stages of their last one-term school placement. At the beginning of their placement experience, fourteen Chilean student teachers participated in a semi-structured interview, while at the end, eight of these participants volunteered for a follow-up interview. All data was transcribed verbatim and analysed using Nvivo12 where codes were developed and arranged into themes. The results suggest that pre-service teachers acknowledged and valued the opportunity to learn about teaching and learning in this new online setting, which offered them a space to practice their teaching skills. However, the challenges outweighed the benefits. The lack of face-to-face interaction with school learners influenced their teaching engagement as they planned lessons and materials for school-students they knew nothing about. In addition, the lack of proper tools such as laptops and internet connection made this experience more challenging for both school students and student-teachers. In some cases, they had to invest in laptops, printers and more stable internet connection packages. Despite this challenge, however, student-teachers showed a positive attitude towards the use of technology at the end of the process, identifying it as a valuable asset for teaching and learning a foreign language. Through these findings, we encourage ITE providers to actively enquire into student teachers’ experiences as they face the ‘tension between practicum as a real practice or as an ideal(ised) practice’ (author and author, 2020 p.8) during this uncertain time. The design and planning of future online field experiences should consider these findings as a way of supporting teacher candidates in all the areas that need to be developed during a teaching placement. Offering online teaching placements for the sake of it without careful planning might have detrimental side-effects for teacher candidates and their motivation to stay in the profession.

Authors

• Paulina Sepulveda-Escobar, Universidad Autonoma de Chile

• Astrid Jean Morrison Parra, Universidad Autonoma de Chile