Early Childhood Preservice Teachers' Transactional Experience During Emergency Online Clinical Practice

Abstract

School closings and transition to online remote education in pre-k to 12-grade schools that the teacher education programs partner with created a necessity to be innovative in supervising clinical practice students. This study aimed to understand the experiences of early childhood preservice teachers during emergency online clinical practice and remote supervision. Moore's transactional distance theory for online learning was adopted as a theoretical framework. The results demonstrated that the student teachers gradually gained autonomy with the support of their mentor teachers and supervisors. The structure of the online environment limited the dialogue between the student teacher and the supervisor, the student teacher, and the learners in the clinical practice classrooms.