The field clinical experience is an essential component for the early professional development of pre-service teacher candidates. Teacher candidates need the opportunity to interact with teachers and students in multiple instructional settings and modalities. Research in teacher candidate pedagogic development indicates that clinical experiences in the field promote self-efficacy, especially when applying educational theory to actual classroom practice in the early years of teaching. The purpose of this chapter is to report the efficacy of transition between face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid clinical experiences and how these transitions inform best clinical practice conceptualized using a proprietary instructional model (IDEAL) as well as the TPACK framework.
Creating authentic and relevant field clinical experiences for teacher candidates is an essential foundational component of an effective educator preparation program (EPP). It is through these classroom interactions that teacher candidates gain meaningful insight into the day-to-day processes that accompany Once remote instruction began due to COVID, field clinical and internship placements were immediately suspended leaving faculty in EPPs having to turn to virtual alternatives to complete course hours and key assignment requirements. These changes included the introduction of virtual learning modalities and venues such as tutorials, webinars, and even faculty and alumni-generated online learning series to compensate for the lack of contact hours. This work explores how the virtual-focused clinical experiences were conceptualized in addition to a qualitative analysis of teacher candidate self-efficacy as well as academic performance evaluated using a specially designed metric-based rubric emphasizing the transition from face-to-face to the virtual venue of clinical practice.
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