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Through the present study, the authors investigate whether online practicum in teaching, with fellow teacher-candidates acting as students, can be effective and whether the teacher-candidates actually developed skills useful for their future teachings, through this form of practicum, which is necessary when, out of necessity, like in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no other option for universities.

The method selected was qualitative research through in-depth interviews, since the present research question and the research topic in general have not been examined in the past. The authors gathered 45 teacher-candidates' journals on this experience, and, then, they interviewed them through semi-structured interviews.

The findings indicated that the teacher-candidates got acquainted with new technologies in education to a great extent. Moreover, they developed skills that will be proven useful for their future teachings, like adaptability, flexibility and handling of students' interaction in online settings.

The present case study consists of a paradigm of international value, since it fills in a gap in literature on an online alternative of practicum in teaching in cases of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Valuable insights are gained for researchers, practitioners and policymakers and best-practices for online teaching practicum have derived for future use.

This chapter traces one student teacher's (Joan) experiences of learning to teach English as a second language in a cross-cultural context during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. The school-based practicum is a core component of many initial teacher education programmes. During this induction period, usually an 8-week block, student teachers are placed in local schools to learn how to integrate theories into practice in real teaching situations. Specifically, I uncover how Joan grappled with the tensions and complexities of teaching young learners from a different cultural and linguistic background, in a small elementary school situated in the borderland between Hong Kong (an autonomous region of China) and Shenzhen (a province of Mainland China).

Critical incidents from Joan's practicum experiences were analysed to uncover how she dealt with the tensions and dilemmas in confronting difference and marginalising practices while learning to teach English as a second language (ESL) in the practicum school. Implications on how to develop initial teacher education programmes so that student teachers learning to teach across cultural contexts can be encouraged to explore, confront and ‘deal with the emotional terrain of understanding difference’ will be discussed (Boler & Zembylas, 2003, p. 123; Zembylas, 2010).

To explore annotated video-based portfolios and the communicative practices embedded in this technological mediation as a means for teacher candidates to construct pedagogical knowledge and develop self-examination skills leading to a deeper reflection on practice, greater perceived value of the reflection process, and the ability to identify specific behaviors for improvement.

In this chapter, we present the development of an online graduate practicum course in a Masters in Reading program, and the supportive measures put into place so students could reflect on their own and others’ practice within a video-based portfolio construction.

Observations indicate course members’ discussion regarding teaching follows a clear progression: the importance of teachers’ management of materials, space and time; developing their ability to discern patterns in student behavior; and a growing recognition of the impact teacher talk and habits have on their students. To support practicum students’ progress, we have developed a set of assumptions to guide talk about practice during annotation and discussion of video, as well as ways of using talk effectively during a video lesson.

We share this glimpse into the design of our practicum course as a means to make transparent the support systems developed so students could capture and discuss quality practice within the context of their own work with a student. We hope sharing our journey will provide others engaged in this work with a common language and lens for discussion about quality, resulting in positive outcomes for students.

Social constructivism in teacher education highlights the importance of social interaction between preservice teachers (PTs) and their cooperating teachers (mentors) for effective mentoring. Mentoring relationship between PTs and mentors had to take a different path due to the pandemic when face-to-face education shifted to online education. The purpose of the present study was to explore online mentoring experience from the perspectives of PTs.

The methodology was qualitative. 35 randomly selected PTs were interviewed after the completion of an eight-week online school experience course. Data obtained from focus group interviews were analyzed using pattern coding.

Overall, the PTs mostly had a positive online mentoring experience. They reported receiving sufficient contextual and technological support when needed with limited professional support. However, they expected their mentors to allocate more time and their university supervisors (USs) to control practicum schools and to provide more online teaching samples and guidelines. They indicated that when they did not receive supports this was entirely due to the pandemic.

This research could inform USs and mentors who coordinate mentoring programs at schools and universities so that they might take an urgent step to restructure mentorship training, putting emphasis on the online aspect. Given the number of the participants, this research is limited in scope.

This research contributes to a body of research that investigates how online mentoring may be more effective. To create positive online mentoring relationships, following suggestions are provided to mentors: providing ongoing online support to PTs to overcome online mentoring challenges, spending an extra hour with PTs for reflection and making use of multiple contexts for PTs' professional ownership.

Green building education, an important aspect of sustainability in higher education, has rapidly expanded across the world. Yet, a bespoke pedagogical model integrating the essential elements of green building knowledge into a university course is lacking. To plug this deficiency, this study aims to develop an innovative pedagogical model that incorporates four types of teaching activities, namely, lecture, virtual reality (VR)-aided site visit, physical site visit and practicum-based project.

Based on an extensive review of the relevant literature and course materials, a pedagogical model was constructed for application to the teaching and learning activities of a university’s hospitality and real-estate programme. Using a case study approach involving in-depth interviews with green building professionals and a workshop coupled with an online survey on building professionals, the model’s transformative effectiveness was evaluated.

The study finds that the pedagogical model was able to effectively equip students with the essential green building knowledge pertinent to the different stages of a building life cycle. Concerns about wider applications of the model, including barriers to implementation in other academic programmes and resources for updating the VR platform, were identified.

The VR-aided and project-based pedagogy model is novel and effective in delivering green building education. Future work, particularly expanding the VR platform to cover more green building cases, thereby allowing multiple case studies to be conducted, is recommended for illustrating further contributions and implications of the model.

This chapter describes pre-service teachers' teaching practices of didactic methods based on cognitive apprenticeship. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate potential of Second Life® as a space for teaching practices of pre-service teachers. The participants were 160 college students who were completing a practicum at Korea National University of Education. These students enrolled in four sections of teaching methods and educational technology, which was one of the requirements for their teaching certificate. The students were placed in groups of three to five students according to their majors. In Second Life, they practiced their teaching and participated in the evaluation of other groups' teaching. They discussed Second Life's potential, such as a space for expanding their teaching experiences and explored possibilities for using it as an environment for teaching practices. The authors believe that readers will find that Second Life can offer a valuable environment to promote pre-teachers' understanding of teaching techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a special multicultural project in e‐learning that was accompanied by a research. In this project, student teachers experience the planning, implementation and receiving of feedback on computerized teaching of children from diverse multicultural groups. The aim of the research was to examine what e‐learning is according to teachers, pupils and student teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

The research population in the sample included 130 respondents in three groups: teachers', student teachers' and pupils'.

The uniqueness of this research is the comparison of the three groups and the results that show that in most areas that were checked, significant differences were found between the perception of the teachers, pupils and student teachers.

Teachers and student teachers should know what their pupils think of e‐learning and should consider it in order to improve their performance in e‐learning. The study's findings have significant implications for education systems and teachers in the design and implementation of online projects.

The value of the research findings is that they illuminate similar and differing viewpoints concerning e‐learning in culturally as well as functionally diverse populations. Teachers and pupils perceive e‐learning differently, and this has a direct influence on teaching and learning.

University methods instructors emerging from disciplinary silos (art, English, mathematics, science, and foreign language) co-created a seminar to support candidates’ using video reflection. They explored how the Inquiry into My Practice protocol (IMP) could be used as a vehicle to surface Three Durable Practices critical for educators: intentional collaboration, instruction, and reflection.

Grounded in an interactional ethnographic perspective, this analysis draws on two telling cases to examine how the faculty team and teacher candidates co-constructed an intentional ethnographic learning community using physical and video-based practices (TeachingChannel.org).

Three Durable Practices came to life in the IMP, and through this shared and coherent conceptual approach, candidates made visible their process for bridging the disconnected worlds of theory and practice as they took up video analysis of their teaching.

Orienting across disciplinary boundaries to a shared conceptual language with associated protocols, faculty and candidates are afforded approaches to navigate their face-to-face and virtual worlds of practice.

Significant effort has been made to support pre-service and novice teacher learning in the K-12 context. Less attention has been paid to promoting pre-service and novice second language teacher learning via collaboration with peers and more expert educators at the university level. In order to facilitate this type of teacher collaboration, a mentoring project was incorporated into the existing practicum of a Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) program at a US University. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the mentoring experiences of four ESL mentor-pre-service teacher pairs in the US University context.

For this research project, eight teachers – four mentor-pre-service teacher pairs – participated as pairs in mentoring sessions focussed on activities such as co-planning, co-teaching, and co-reflecting on teaching. Informed by a sociocultural perspective on teacher learning (Vygotsky, 1978), this study presents case studies of all four pairs in order to demonstrate the complex nature of mentoring. The data analysis focussed on the content of the teachers’ interactions and their perceptions of the mentoring experience.

The study traced the developmental trajectories of the participating teachers over one 15-week academic semester. The study uncovered some critical contradictions that the participants encountered during the mentoring experience, thus pointing to its complexity. The study also uncovered the varied nature of mentoring: whereas in one pair the mentor acted as a more expert other (Vygotsky, 1978), in another pair, the mentoring relationship was more reciprocal.

This study showed that pre-service teachers can develop further through mentoring. Such mentoring can help teachers gain confidence and share teaching strategies. At the same time, the study revealed certain challenges associated with introducing a mentoring project in a pre-service teacher practicum. It is recommended that program faculty as a whole read the rich dialogues produced by participating teachers engaged in relationships focussed on collaborative learning, thereby discovering a foundation for revisions that go beyond individual teaching practices to the programmatic level.

This study’s principal contribution to the field is that it showcases the complex nature of mentoring experiences and the ways in which they differ from each other.

The aim of this research was to find out students' and mentors' attitudes toward the quality of mentoring support during teaching practicums. The research sought to determine whether there is any difference in (self) assessment between teacher mentors and early childhood education students.

Through the quantitative research methodology, the Crisp (2009) College Student Mentoring Scale (CSMS) instrument was used to assess the quality of mentoring support during teaching practicums. Assessments were made in relation to the following variables: support in the areas of psychological and emotional needs, support in professional development and the development of professional competencies and the role of mentors as models. Early childhood education students (n1 = 105) and mentors (n2 = 54) of teaching practicums at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb, participated in the research.

The results of the research show that there is a statistically significant difference between student assessments and mentor self-assessment with regard to all researched areas of support. Mentors rated their mentoring skills higher than students did.

An approach in which mentoring is assessed in the context of support to students in different areas (e.g. psychological, emotional, professional) is rarely used in early childhood teacher education. Results indicate the need for a systematic evaluation of mentoring and the design of programs to strengthen mentoring competences.