Teacher Educators' Readiness, Preparation, and Perceptions of Preparing Preservice Teachers in a Fully Online Environment: An Exploratory Study

Framing Teacher Educator Engagement in an Online Environment

“…As we interpret Pittaway's model, we sense an opportunity to explore the overarching question as to whether teacher educators are convinced that the online classroom can be an effective forum for training pre-service teachers. Our own study (Downing & Dyment, 2013) revealed that there has to be a sense of 'belief' that pre-service teachers can be effectively prepared in an online environment if teacher educators are to be intellectually engaged in this mode of teaching. As our quotes above from the profiled teacher educators suggest, the issue is not without strong tensions and vastly differing points of view: some of our study respondents were fully supportive of the online development of pre-service teachers while others were firmly against it.…”

“…Each section concludes with recommendations for facilitating and encouraging staff engagement in an online teaching environment within a Faculty of Education. These recommendations were generated from a critical reflection of the findings from our previous paper (Downing & Dyment, 2013) and our reading of the academic literature that explores staff engagement in an online teaching environment.…”

“…We begin each element with a quote/vignette from our previous research study (Downing & Dyment, 2013) that we believe captures the essence of each particular element. We then present and discuss the literature that identifies challenges and opportunities for creating staff engagement in regards to each element.…”

“…In this paper, we wish to move the focus to staff engagement in an online teaching environment. To this end, we apply Pittaway's (2012) Framework to our earlier research project (Downing & Dyment, 2013), which explored teacher educators' perceptions about their readiness to prepare pre-service teachers in an online environment. In this study, we examined the perceptions of 27 teacher educators who were teaching in a fully online teacher education course at a mid-size Australian university.…”

“…In particular, there is scant literature on the experiences and beliefs of education faculty staff on their own readiness and preparation for online teaching, as well as their beliefs in relation to the appropriateness of preparing pre-service teachers through online modes of education (Georgina & Olson, 2008;Tao & Yeh, 2008;Wray, Lowenthal, Bates, & Stevens, 2008). This paper builds on an exploratory research study conducted one year after a major roll-out of fully online pre-service teaching degrees in a faculty of education in a mid-sized university in Australia (Downing & Dyment, 2013). A notable finding from the exploratory study was the significant tension that the technical and pedagogical change created, given the teacher educators' beliefs about the nature of their discipline and their understandings of good practice.…”