Bridge Over Troubled Water: A Teacher Education Program’s Emergent Methods for Constructing an Online Community of Practice During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

With the sudden shift to emergency remote instruction during the COVID-19 global pandemic in the spring of 2020, teacher education programs were confronted with the dual responsibility of teaching pre-service teachers how to teach and how to teach in synchronous P-12 classroom settings utilizing educational technologies. Building a community of practice (CoP) and attending to P-12 students’ socio-emotional health and learning were the backdrop to a Masters of Arts and Teaching (MAT) program as it prepared its teacher candidates for full-year teaching residencies. In this retrospective, researchers reflect on practices for building community in an online setting and strategies for supporting teacher candidates’ and P-12 students’ socio-emotional learning.