Abstract
In the early months of 2020, the United States was hit with a pandemic of global proportions. Schools, including universities, were forced to close all on-campus activities. The campus where we teach was no exception. Therefore, our interns (student teachers) went from face-to-face classroom internships to virtual internships. Over the summer, we decided to examine how virtual instruction impacted our interns' year of student teaching, knowing that instruction at all schools for their internship year was going to start virtually, and, for the foreseeable future, be virtual. We focused on our mentor teachers' perceptions of what their interns were experiencing in these virtual placements as well as what our interns were experiencing. This began in Fall 2020 and went through the rest of their year-long internships, which ended in Spring 2021. We were curious about what the interns may be missing or gaining from their virtual experiences in relation to their preparation for full-time teaching in their own classrooms. This article presents a section of findings from a larger study of interns and mentor teachers' experiences of teaching virtually. The main research questions were: "How does virtual instruction affect the mentor experience?" and "How does virtual instruction affect the intern experience?"
Recommended Citation
Clayton, Courtney; Peck, Kristina; Irish, Christy; Wells, Melissa; and Davis, Janine
(2022)
"Expert Roles Reconsidered: What Was Learned about the Mentor/Intern 4 Experience During a Global Pandemic,"
Teacher Education Journal of South Carolina: Vol. 15:
No.
2, Article 2.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/tejsc/vol15/iss2/2