This research grew out of a change in pre-service teacher (PST) placement practice on one undergraduate Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme in the Republic of Ireland because of changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic and as a response to Teaching Council policy and guidance documentation (2020a; 2020b, 2021) during that period. The Year 1 PST placement experience over the period from 2020-2022, moved from a video-recorded microteaching experience (Allen and Ryan, 1969; Arsal, 2014) teaching students from a local school in the University setting, followed by a primary school placement, to an online synchronous peer teaching placement experience (Teaching Online Programme 1 - TOP1).

Post-Covid, the programme academic team re-evaluated the placement experience. Team research had found that while the TOP “offered …[a chance to build] knowledge in a safe environment where risks could be taken … with technology that might not be attempted in the classroom” (Doyle et al., 2021, p.61), it was also the case that  “some student-teachers … missed the real encounter with pupils in the classroom” (Doyle et al, 2021, p.58).  Considering these findings and research published in response to online teaching during Covid-19 (Donlon et al., 2022; Giner-Gomis et al., 2023; White and McSharry, 2021), the team designed and implemented a re-imagined form of PST placement practice in Year 1 of the academic year 2022-2023.  The research question for this qualitative study asks: What is the process that led beginning pre-service teachers to the moment of embodiment in becoming a teacher?  It is concerned with the threshold moment in the becoming of a PST as experienced in this re-imagined placement experience and how this might inform PST placement practice internationally. We acknowledge that there are many different types of PST experiences across the globe, however, this research will transfer to the becoming of a teacher whatever the format (Newman, 2023).

The conceptual framework for this study comes from the concept of becoming as suggested in the work of Deleuze and Guattari (2003).  They define becoming as “a threshold, a middle, when things accelerate” (p.25).  We will argue that year one of ITE is such a threshold or middle. There is no beginning with becoming, only middles and muddles (St Pierre, 2013) as the PST already has images and ideas of who and what a teacher might be. However, becoming is a process in which any given multiplicity “changes nature as it expands its connections” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003).   Sellers  (2013) clarifies that becoming involves a dynamic process, through/with/in which an assemblage (PST) is constantly changing through connections it is making.  ITE offers a variety of spaces for the pre-service teacher to make and expand these connections both on site in the university, online and in the classroom.

The concept of becoming offers the concepts of multiplicity and difference which are significant in this framework.  They will help interrogate how the pre-service teacher becomes something new through the inter and intra-connections of these concepts. This understanding undercuts the importance of identity and being and disrupts the thinking of a human as stable and rational, who experiences change but remains the same person.  It also undercuts the search for an “identity” for the pre-service teacher and points rather to process, movement, expansion, and confluence.  Stagoll (2010) suggests “one’s self must be conceived as a constantly changing assemblage of forces, an epiphenomenon arising from chance confluences of languages, organisms, societies, expectations, laws and so on”  (p.27).  This study will map how teacher placement works for the first-year pre-service teacher and how it acts as a threshold for the initial embodiment of their becoming as teachers.

Following Institutional Ethical approval, data for this study were collected through the extraction of anonymous evaluations pertaining to one first year pre-service teacher professional placement module on a concurrent ITE programme in the Republic of Ireland. Pre-service teachers (N=123) submitted the evaluations after they completed a teaching online programme (TOP1) placement followed by an in-school micro-placement (MP1). The evaluation form included 29 open-ended questions that guided students to consider their overall experience of planning, preparation and practice throughout Year 1. After the removal of incomplete data, 92 evaluations remained for analysis. A reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) approach was deemed most appropriate for this study (Braun & Clarke, 2022). RTA is a valid and reliable “method for developing, analyzing and interpreting patterns across a qualitative dataset, which involves systematic processes of data coding to develop themes” (p.4). Preliminary coding involved reading all the data to get 'a sense of the whole' and then identifying initial codes (Tesch, 1990, p.96; Emerson et al., 1995). This allowed for the possibilities of patterns, themes and tentative analysis to emerge. Next, cluster coding allowed for the classification of considered patterns and inter dependency (Woods, 1986), which led to the identification of sub and core themes. In this study, a theme “captures something important about the data concerning the research question and represents some level of patterned response or meaning within that data set” (Braun & Clark, 2006, p.82). In line with the principles underpinning our thematic framework, the initial thematic map was shared with the research team. This peer-review process checked for bias, acknowledging the importance of reflexivity in the teacher-researcher role (Quinlan, 2011). Importantly, it allowed for the co-construction of final themes, which align with the authors' beliefs that analysis involves listening to many voices for collaborative meaning-making to occur (Stiggins, 1988; Van Maanen, 2011).

This paper proposes a new model of PST placement through a dual online and micro-placement experience for use on ITE programmes internationally. The model allows for the becoming of the PST in all their difference and singularity. The encounter with the secondary students and the context of the classroom in a school site, constructed a new awareness of who they are, a consciousness that didn’t emerge during the online experience. The process of online experience which developed their learning in planning, preparation and technology; the sharing of feedback by peers and tutors; and the adaptation and practice of lessons, provided the scaffolding for them to confront for the first time a classroom encounter with secondary students. The presence of the schoolteachers, teacher educators and tutors, to assist in their support and scaffolding, generated a safe space so that they could embody their new identity as teachers. The partnership of the university and school in building a safe environment allowed for this emergence to be visibly evident. Findings showed that this ITE programme interrupted PSTs' epistemological, ontological and axiological understanding of teacher identity. They experienced placement as a threshold, a space of new awakening in the becoming of their identity as a teacher. This becoming was encouraged through a multiplicity of experiences not only in the knowledge of planning and preparation for lessons but through their immersion into the teaching of students in classrooms in different contexts - teaching their peers online followed by teaching secondary students in two different school contexts. This threshold of TOP1 and MP1 offers the PST a moment of embodiment in their teacher becoming in which they recognized for the first time that teachers can be made. This teacher-making event generated a new respect for who and what they might become as teachers in the future.

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