The COVID-19 pandemic caused the largest education system disruption in history, resulting in many districts abruptly, and often ineptly, implementing remote learning to maintain the continuity of instruction. The majority of educational leaders were unprepared for working and delivering instruction in virtual environments. Research indicates that few educational leadership programs provide preparation for leading in virtual learning environments but the COVID crisis made clear that it is imperative for all school leaders have an understanding of virtual leadership. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of the competencies required for virtual school leadership as they relate to the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders(P-SEL). Interviews were conducted with 28 virtual leaders using a semi-structured interview protocol. Results indicated that while the P-SEL Standards were categorically aligned to their work, there were distinctive differences in the ways in which virtual school leaders engaged their work across various leadership domains that required unique competencies. These findings are important to our understanding of how to better prepare educational leaders to maintain the effective continuity of instruction in future emergencies as well as to continue to implement and improve upon promising practices that developed during remote instruction.
While the number of K-12 students learning online continues to increase, the focus on online teaching is still absent in most teacher education programs. In this article, the authors examine the data from the fourth cycle of an action research project designed to examine K-12 online learning curricular materials at one Midwestern university. The learner-generated course data generated four themes: the benefits and challenges of K-12 online learning, success factors need for K-12 online learning, growing acceptance of K-12 online learning, and student self-efficacy for teaching online. Recommendations to improve the course based on the data and these themes included updating the Michigan-focused course readings, adding case studies related to overcoming student anxiety and issues often found in urban settings, and the creation/inclusion of some tool or instrument to measure learner readiness to teach online.
The COVID-19 pandemic complicated the field experience component of teacher preparation because of K-12 school closures. To address these challenges, South Mountain University adopted a virtual classroom simulation, simSchool, in which students take on the role of teachers and interact with virtual students. The purpose of this self-study was to explore both the teacher and student perspectives in the initial implementation of simSchool in a secondary education methods course. Data collected for the study include simSchool performance reports, professor and student journals, student reflections, and student focus groups. Findings indicated that students required a more comprehensive introduction to and rationale for the use of the virtual simulation, more chunking of the training materials, and additional debriefing time after each of the modules. Students needed perseverance and resilience to make the sim work meaningful and had to be open to receiving feedback. Technology was initially a barrier but became less so as students spent more time in the sim. Ultimately the students perceived the sim as beneficial to their growth and development as teachers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.