Seeding ePortfolio into Initial Teacher Education Curriculum in Australia: To Kill Multiple Birds with One Stone

Abstract

The paper is stemmed from the Australian policy reforms between 2014 and 2015 in a concerted attempt to uplift Initial Teacher Education program quality and accreditation, enhance pre-service teacher’s class-readiness and equip them with essential competencies required of the teaching profession. It is coupled with the novel, emerging challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, international border closure and the global shift from face-to-face learning to virtual and/or blended learning mode since March 2020. Drawing on a descriptive case study (Chetty, 2013; Yin, 1994) on the Education Double Degree in an Australian institution, the paper unpacks the ways in which the unit leader of the Education Double Degree in an Australian institution innovated four Education units in response to these above-mentioned challenges. Central to this curriculum innovation is seeding ePortfolio via Mahara and Google Site tools into program and curriculum redesign. The paper showcases the road used to remap the program and curriculum; it deploys an integrative learning approach as a conceptual framework to personalise the virtual learning space where student engagement with the course knowledge, skills and values is promoted and where students’ metacognition and deep learning are genuinely incubated. Insights from this paper are relevant and, therefore, applicable to curriculum, innovation, technology in education and an emerging ePortfolio pedagogy. It additionally puts forward significant implications for Initial Teacher Education reforms beyond Australia.