Chapter 4: Preparing Preservice Stem Educators in Virtual Settings: Navigating a Pedagogical Approach Around Social-Distancing Barriers

The unannounced coming of COVID-19 into the world has had a tremendous impact on teaching and learning across the globe. Learning institutions have had to re-plan their instructional delivery mode, forcing many to temporarily close or to adopt online platforms (Dhawan, 2020; Mulenga & Marban, 2020; Murphy, 2020; Radha et al., 2020). As Dhawan (2020) has pointed out:

Perhaps the negative effects on learning opportunities must be more impactful on preservice STEM teacher education programs than on any other segment of the education sector. Signature pedagogies of STEM educators are characterized by experiential learning and student-centered methods that are best learned and taught in face-to-face settings. As a result of the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, teacher educators preparing STEM teachers have had to explore pedagogical approaches that promote student-centered methods in virtual settings. There has always been some amount of online learning in STEM teacher preparation. However, to a great extent, this complete switch from face-to-face to online pedagogical approaches has placed teacher educators on a route that has not been sufficiently navigated before. For this reason, there is a need to document and analyze their experiences, discoveries, challenges, and reflections with a view to informing the theory and practice of STEM teacher preparation.