“Double-Sided Learning”: A Qualitative Study of Teacher Candidate Experiences in a Virtual Reading Intervention Clinical Experience

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the ways that teacher educators could provide teacher candidates (TCs) with clinically-rich opportunities to build TCs’ skills and self-efficacy related to teaching reading. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the experiences of 19 TCs who participated in a semester-long virtual reading tutoring program during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews, then analyzed data through inductive and deductive coding. Four themes emerged, centering (a) the impact of the pandemic on typical clinical experiences, (b) the application of coursework within this virtual clinical experience, (c) TCs’ perceptions of program elements that supported their implementation, and (d) TCs’ perceived benefit of the program for their own development as a teacher and for the reading outcomes of the children with whom they worked. We discuss implications for future work related to enhanced clinical experiences related to TCs’ implementation of reading interventions for striving readers.