As a result of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in 2020–21, most education providers in England relied on various online platforms and digital technologies to maintain their provision (Ofqual, 2021). A common theme resonating in research (Ofqual, 2021; UNESCO, 2020) suggests that the sudden and dramatic shift to remote teaching during the lockdown period represented a unique litmus test for the effectiveness of digital teaching technologies in practice.
The widely reported everyday problems many teachers encountered with students frequently hiding behind muted mics and switched off cameras during synchronous online sessions arguably represents a significant issue that is highly disruptive to effective learning within digital classrooms. This phenomenon brings some sobering insights to the debate about the possibilities and constraints of digital classrooms for revolutionising more ‘traditional’ in-class modes of teaching (Fluck & Dowden, 2011). This blog post joins the conversation by discussing our research into the student teachers’ experiences of online teaching and the challenges they identified.
To introduce our story, during the 2021 lockdown period our student teachers faced the challenge of completing most of their teaching placement remotely using various online platforms and digital teaching tools. They adapted their emerging professional knowledge and ‘in-person’ teaching practices to suit the nuances of digital learning environments. This represented a steep professional learning curve in terms of student teachers navigating uncharted digital landscapes, teaching to expected professional teaching standards (ETF, 2022), while at the same time managing their own professional learning.
