Abstract
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted, interrupted, and changed the way we normally prepare our teacher candidates in teacher preparation programs. In this paper, we, two mathematics teacher educators (MTEs), reflect our own experiences in appropriating, transforming, reconstructing, and modifying our pedagogies of teacher education in making a transition from face-to-face to online environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a collaborative self-study, we discussed issues, challenges, changes, opportunities, and innovations of teaching an elementary mathematics methods course in the online environment. Using a constant comparison method, we explored the following three themes: (1) using virtual manipulatives; (2) creating collaborative, interactive, and shared learning experiences for preservice teachers; and (3) making preservice teachers engaged in student thinking. These findings indicated that online teaching requires transformative knowledge for teacher educators. Transferring face-to-face to online is not a simple matter of putting the existing content to online; it should focus on pedagogical improvement in teaching mathematics rather than technology’s sake or how it can be repurposed in a new online environment in a way that students’ learning is optimized. The findings of this study provide implications for unpacking MTEs’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), creating collaborative learning experiences for preservice teachers, and designing a collaborative self-study between MTEs engaged in the community of professional learning.
Figures & Tables
Figure 1. The TPACK framework (http://tpack.org)