Rationale for the Special Report – Teacher Education and K-12 Online Learning

The genesis for this report began in late 2016. In fact, the data for this report was originally collected from February 2017 to April 2017. The data was analyzed from September 2017 to December 2017, and much of the report was originally written from January 2018 to June 2018. However, as many research projects go, the drive to see this report to completion waned. The K-12 school year ended, the post-secondary academic year had concluded, summer was upon us once again. Essentially, the project got pushed to the side.

The Fall came and the demands of beginning a new K-12 school year and a new academic post-secondary year were upon everyone. The new school year introduced all stakeholders in the field to the Government of Ontario’s e-learning announcements of 15 March 2019, and later 21 November 2019, which would propose a new regulatory regime in that province. For us in the field, most of 2019 – and even the beginning of 2020 – were focused on understanding the various aspects of these proposals, examining the research to support those proposals, and combating massive misinformation and misunderstanding within the media and general public – and the draft of this report continued to languish.

The year 2020 also brought with it a new challenge to those in the field of distance, online, and blended learning. As early as January 2020 (maybe even the end of the previous year for those paying closer attention), rumblings of the beginning of a new health threat began to emerge. By February it was assumed that this would, or at least had the potential to become a global pandemic. It was at this time that we revived our work on this report. While the data was already dated by three years, as educators would be forced with having to manage emergency home-based or remote teaching, we felt it important to provide an assessment of how well those individuals were formally prepared by their teacher training programs to meet this challenge.

The report can be accessed at:

https://k12sotn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/k12ol-teacher-ed.pdf