Lessons from an online teacher preparation Program: flexing work experience to meet student needs and regulators’ requirements in the United States

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the United States, educator preparation is regulated at the state level. Accordingly, each state education system, and even individual districts, responded uniquely to the COVID-19 pandemic. Western Governors University (WGU) compiled a list of each state regulators’ response to COVID, many of which included relaxation of student teaching requirements. While most of WGU’s teacher preparation programme is delivered online, students complete observations and student teaching (teaching practice) in traditional classrooms. WGU had 1,875 student teacher candidates in the field on 1 March 2020. Through diligent effort all the candidates were able to complete their student teaching. WGU responded by allowing parallelism between the student teachers and their mentor teacher so that the student teacher could engage in teaching in the same manner as their mentor teacher, which varied on a district-by-district and state-by-state basis. WGU was also careful to evaluate whether the host school’s virtualisation was still meeting the needs of the student teacher and if not, then to shift the student teacher to a different placement that was more virtual-friendly. Additionally, WGU plans to pilot intentionally virtual student teaching opportunities with online charter schools in autumn 2020.