Abstract
Internationally, education systems make considerable investments in ICT resources and infrastructure to support digital learning in schools. Since 1997 Northern Ireland has undertaken an ambitious, regional partnership initiative, providing ICTs to support schools in both pedagogy and school management. Over the first decade of this roll-out, an estimated £500 million was spent in a country with a school population of around 330,000. In partnership, Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers across Northern Ireland are impacted as they prepare pre-service teachers for teaching in relatively ICT-rich schools and recommendations have been made that the online education skills of teachers should be developed. While this sounds promising for digital skills’ preparedness in the teaching workforce, the strategy was not systematically enacted. COVID-19 precipitated a move to emergency home schooling across Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, and this highlighted systemic weaknesses, including in partnerships between schools and ITE and their capability to support online learning fully. This chapter will examine the partnership between ITE in universities and the schools they work alongside highlighting some challenges to that partnership, particularly exposed during the pandemic. This particularly highlighted the need for a reset to a vision of digital readiness within education.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | International Perspectives on School-University Partnerships. |
Number of pages | 221 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-981-99-0807-3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published online - 18 May 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023, corrected publication 2023.
Keywords
- Educational Technologies
- Initial Teacher Education
- Partnership
- Northern Ireland and communities
- Global Educational Policy
- International Education
- Policy in Education
- Global Education
- Partnerships
- Educational Policy
- International School University Partnerships
- School-university Partnerships
- Global School University Partnerships
- Theory and Practice in Education
- University Partnerships
- School Partnerships