PST Online: Preparing pre-service teachers for teaching in virtual schools

Improvements in available technologies and an increased popularity of online learning spaces have seen a shift in the dominant ways students engage with formal and informal learning in their day-to-day lives. This is especially true for the distance education experience through the rise in virtual schools. As this shift occurs, it becomes increasingly important to reflect these new changes in curriculum design for pre-service teachers. Increasingly, these pre-service teachers will be engaging with students, not just in the traditional, physical classroom space, but also in online spaces and via distance. These new virtual learning environments require their own separate skillset to be properly navigated by both the learner and teacher to provide meaningful and rich learning experiences. In order to develop resources to facilitate the learning of these skills, current pre-service teachers have identified their own understandings of online learning and their readiness to teach within these new spaces.