In universities across the globe, Teacher Initial Education (TIE) contains a multiplicity of approaches to offering student teachers access to School Placement (Darling-Hammond et al. 2019). The “new curricula” (Priestley, 2018) that have precipitated reform at all levels of education and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 have demanded a reimagining of new and innovative approaches to school placement for student teachers (United Nations, 2020).  The role of the teacher as curriculum maker rather than deliverer of curriculum has encouraged programmes to envision new knowledge and craft to develop an emerging identity as a teacher (Biesta, 2017, Pollard, 2015, NCCA, 2015).  At the same time, it is now evident that student teachers need to be prepared to support their pupils’ learning and wellbeing, by adapting to virtual teaching and blended learning environments.  Universities have had to navigate the prescriptions of Government guidelines (Mohan et al., 2020, Teaching Council, 2020) and at the same time adhere to the quality of the foundational dimension of the university programmes to which they belong whilst balancing new and complex expectations.

This paper “All changed, changed utterly: reimagining School Placement in the 21^st Century during a Covid-19 pandemic” maps an initiative to research the impact of the changes made through the creation of the Teaching Online Placement (TOP) in the Bachelor of Religious Education and English/History/Music (BRE/H/M) degree at Dublin City University during the Covid-19 pandemic.  This multifaceted initiative introduced student-teachers to both the theory and practice of synchronous and asynchronous online teaching via a tutor-supported and structured online peer-teaching experience. This decision offered many challenges on an ontological, pedagogical and technological level. Central to this process was the reimagining of the possibilities of how a collaborative approach to modules, assignments, tutor guidance and support, could encourage the development of a new identity for the student teacher incorporating professional judgement, agency, and creativity during the Covid-19 pandemic.  We argue that this space of TOP and the scaffolding offered to students in preparing for it, honed the educational theory they had engaged in during the course into their very identity as student teachers.  This was evidenced in their practice as they demonstrated rich content knowledge and understanding; the craft of engaging in pedagogical practice whilst teaching online and building their roles as teacher assessors and curriculum makers.  This emerging identity is fundamental for student teachers as they learn to meet the educational needs of all students in the twenty-first century.

The overall conceptual framework for this study is Pollard’s (2015) understanding of pedagogy as a science, craft and an art.  It will also draw on elements of change management (Lewin, 1951; Fullan and Stiegelbauer, 1991; Kotter, 1995; Bundy et al., 2016) and communities of practice (Wenger, 1998).

The methodological approach is a case study (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2014) which comprises of three phases. Phase one of the research incorporates documentary analyses. Phase 2 is a 30-minute on-line questionnaire for 2nd and 3rd Year BRE/H/M students and their tutors to complete, to discover the broad response to the TOP this year. In this questionnaire we will be asking for their views on their experience of preparation, planning and placement during Semester One 2020 and School Placement in January 2021. Phase 3 will be a series of 6 focus groups with 6 students and 4 focus groups with 5 tutors, which will unpack the data from the questionnaire in a more in-depth form. Each focus group will take 45 minutes. Inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) will be used to allow for the emergence of key themes and learning as a result of the process. Enabling and inhibiting factors will be illustrated diagrammatically using Lewin’s (1951) force field analysis model.

Initial findings demonstrate that the role of the ITE is to prepare a teacher who is dynamic, adaptive and able to respond to change. This aspect is perhaps one of the most difficult as it lies in the area of the art of teaching whereby a student teacher hones their responsive, creative and intuitive capacities. This art of teaching was evidenced as the student teacher moved away from the traditional school placement to moving online, synchronously and asynchronously, offering not only teaching and learning but having the capacity to build a strong teacher, social and cognitive presence. The findings around ‘presence’ are also considered with regard to the key issue of teacher identity and to student-teacher perceptions of ‘being a teacher’ in light of these sudden and unexpected circumstances that are widely expected to have long-term implications for teacher education. The TOP this year assisted in building the student teacher in their role as a curriculum maker. Curriculum making is a complex process with many layers of knowledge, understanding, skills and values to be developed over a period of time for the student teacher. The move to a more student-centred constructivist approach and away from previous teacher-centred practice was evidenced in the Student Engagement Activities that each student teacher peer reviewed throughout the process. The student teacher in their developing role as assessor was one of the interesting findings in this research. It highlighted the complexity of building teacher judgement and the craft of evaluation. Finally, this research presented the vital requirement of integrating reflective practice throughout all components of the student teacher development. This was not only reflection for the individual student teachers journey but this space assisted in offering them the experience of working and reflecting in a collaborative teaching community. All agreed that this was a highly positive encounter and exponentially furthered their role as teacher.

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