Chapter 12: Equitable Participation: Elementary Science Teacher Education During COVID-19

In June 2020, my wife, two daughters, and I relocated from the rural Midwest to a large city in the Southeast. I had accepted a position as a professor in a teacher education program at a state university, primarily working with elementary preservice teaching candidates and elementary/early childhood education graduate students.

In the weeks leading up to the 2020–2021 academic year, our faculty waited in anticipation to learn how students would attend classes given the risks of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Higher education institutions around the country were grappling with the same decision, uncertain if case counts would recede or explode and when improved therapeutics and projected vaccines would be widely available (Maxouris & Yan, 2020; Nadworny, 2020).