Expanding Professional Practice for Pre-Service Teachers Through Online International Engagement

This study investigated the professional learning of pre-service teachers (PSTs) involved in an international online project, known as the International Literacy Project, that evolved during the Covid-19 pandemic. The project promotes international engagement across diverse sites, with sessions in classes centred around storytelling and story-making across a range of countries. Using vignettes, the study explored how involvement in the project presented additional opportunities for personal and professional learning for the PSTs through interacting with the diverse international settings. We considered the learning opportunities from such international online engagement, the usefulness of expanded opportunities for professional practice and how Zoom enabled exposure to classrooms across multiple international sites. Such online international engagement provides valuable opportunities for wider professional learning alongside the mandated placements including how to work more effectively in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms and questioning assumptions about what constitutes a good education.