Innovative Uses of Visual Technologies in Initial Teacher Education: Changing Policy to Support Practice during covid-19

What is it about?

In Australia, schools and faculties of education are need to abide by a policy requiring preservice teachers (PSTs), to complete from sixty to eighty days of supervised professional placement in schools. The placement experiences (PE) are often drawn upon to meet the assessment criteria in course units for completion of the degree. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ‘pause’ in PE has had unintended consequences for students, education institutions and society as a whole. We report on two strategies that supported individuals and education institutions to meet policy requirements. First, technology was used to overcome the challenge of providing a PE for hundreds of PSTs by supporting online learning experiences for students in lockdown. In the second, a variety of visual technologies were used to support PSTs to meet the needs of an assessment criterion, which was originally planned to be linked to their PE. Findings indicate that solutions to problems with PE and related assessments at the university can be mobilized in a short time frame using visual technologies. Further findings indicate that, in unprecedented times, policies developed for use in different contexts can be met with innovative collaborative efforts with a focused goal that can and do transcend challenges that seem insurmountable.

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