4: Participants’ Stories (II): The 2019–2020 Cohort

In this chapter, we present vignettes drawn from the interview transcripts of the nine women undertaking their initial teacher education (ITE) year in 2019–2020 (see Table 3). As pandemic restrictions were introduced in England towards the end of March 2020, the women in this cohort completed the first part of the ITE year under ‘normal’ circumstances, and the latter part in what came to be known as ‘lockdown’. Most worked at home during ‘lockdown’ time. Typically, the women were homeschooling their own children. At the same time, they were engaging in online tasks that would enable them to evidence that they met the teaching standards. Their accounts provide a view of how their experiences during the pandemic restrictions compared to their pre-pandemic experience. While their stories echo many of the themes evident in the testimonies of the 2018–2019 cohort, their experiences during COVID-19 restrictions offer interesting, and in some ways surprising, new insights.