| Abstrakt: |
In 2020, the Covid 19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. Travel had ceased, social distancing became a norm, teaching and learning had to be reimagined and places of work had changed. Students and teachers were thrust into an environment of emergency online teaching and learning. Within days higher education shifted to a new mode of delivery from in person face-to-face to an online platform in an attempt at connecting students, teachers and content via learning management systems. A vital component of teacher education comprises school-based practicum experience in partnership with schools. With the lockdown of schools, preservice teachers faced were confronted with the possibility of not completing their programmes of study. Through an autoethnographic study, this presentation offers insight into what the sudden shift meant for us as mathematics teacher educators and how our respective institutions in New Zealand, South Africa, and Ghana, responded to this situation in supporting our preservice teachers. Data is drawn from our individual documented narrative reflections. As mathematics teacher educators, not only were we grappling with the idea of how to teach in a changed platform, but we were also figuring out a changed mode of partnership with our practicum schools to support our preservice teachers. Through our reflections, we share our individual thoughts on the practicum opportunities that our preservice teachers engaged in to meet the practicum requirements. Having created these opportunities in a relatively short period of time, presented challenges such as reshaping our role as mathematics teacher educators and evaluation of the preservice teachers, working in new contexts, managing relationships, and its associated tensions. We use the three models of effective school-university partnerships developed by Bernay et al. (2020) to analyse the practicum programmes provided for the preservice teachers. A few years on since the pandemic has allowed us to embrace the potential of online teacher education, not for the purpose of replication of mathematics teaching, but reimagining authentic partnerships between the schools and the universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
