TEACHING PRACTICE FOR RESILIENCE DURING COVID -19 AT A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION.

Moodley, Nageshwari Pam

This article focuses on student resilience at a university that trains pre-service teachers. The compulsory practical component is a fundamental that students need to complete for both the Bachelor of Education (B Ed) and Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses. Known as teaching practice or work integrated learning (WIL), pre-service teachers attend schools for a limited period in order to learn skills and competencies from a mentor teacher who is assigned to them. The article foregrounds student resilience and resistance to adversity at a time when it seemed impossible for students to complete their school-based teaching practicum. Schools throughout South Africa were closed and re-opened intermittently, due to the waves of infection in different areas. This made it impossible for pre-service teachers to complete their teaching practice within a continuous period at schools. Within this context, the writer set out to explore how pre-service students' resilience was achieved at one university by using the online teaching practice programme in 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic. This qualitative article is situated in the interpretivist paradigm and utilises document analysis as its research method. The content and procedures found in the students' online teaching-practice handbooks was analysed to show how its implementation contributed to the resilience of pre-service student teachers. The research question is, therefore: How was pre-service students' resilience achieved at one university through the use of an online teaching practice program, during the period of the pandemic in 2021. The key findings revealed that the online teaching practice program enabled pre-service teachers to complete their teaching practice component, even though it did not meet the Minimum Requirements for the Teacher Education Qualification (MRTEQ) in South Africa. The study concluded that there was a positive adaptation of teaching practice with the use of the online program, because all the students who registered for teaching experience completed the module. It also enabled final-year students to complete their practicum and qualify at the end of 2021. The success of the program suggests that the Council for Higher Education (CHE) reviews and updates the MRTEQ, making the teaching practice requirements applicable to 4IR, so that technology can be used legitimately when training teachers during future pandemics and other difficult circumstances.

COVID-19 pandemic; STUDENT teachers; ONLINE education; TEACHERS; TEACHER qualifications

Journal of Educational Studies, 2024, p281

1680-7456

Academic Journal

10.59915/jes.2024.si2.15