The Effect of COVID-19 on a Short-Term Teacher-Education Program: The Israeli Case

Abstract

Given the unemployment wave caused by COVID-19, the Israeli Ministry of Education and other organizations initiated a unique alternative short-term retraining program to offer unemployed college and university graduates the opportunity to earn teaching certificates. This study aimed to examine the alternative short-term program from the coordinators’ perspectives. We assess the personal and organizational impact of the program and its contribution to teacher-education initiatives. The present study had two main goals: to learn about the structure of the program and its implementation from the professional and personal points of view of the program’s coordinators as they experienced it and to examine the contribution of the new short-term program to the participants—the teacher trainees—and the Israeli education system in general. Analyzing semi-structured interviews with program coordinators revealed insights regarding the program’s various phases in five categories: recruitment of the coordinator; establishing the program; clinical experience; the students of the program; and future initiatives for teacher education. Although the effectiveness of the online format for practical clinical training was questioned, the conclusion suggests that this alternative short-term teacher-education program may have broader relevance in routine times.

1. Introduction

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, many governments worldwide closed schools in the first half of 2020. One and a half billion learners and workers were forced to be absent from the education system. Due to the threat of COVID-19, the entire education system, from kindergartens to higher education institutions, faced difficult decisions on whether to continue teaching and learning while possibly exposing the teaching faculty and students to a public health risk. As a result, society has moved from traditional education to various versions of online education at a frantic pace. Due to the critical circumstances that led to this transition, this worldwide phenomenon in the educational field was called ERT (Emergency Remote Teaching). However, the temporary shift turned into a prolonged situation.

Education systems worldwide hoped that the change in the learning–teaching processes would lead to a different approach regarding distance learning. The hope was that distance learning would become more significant and that its effects would be long-lasting beyond the current crisis. The need to compare the quality and results of online learning in that complex reality with those of traditional face-to-face teaching led to the publication of many articles [1,2].

However, beyond ERT, and even before COVID-19, it was clear to many involved in teaching, in general, and in teacher-education programs, in particular, that an alternative to traditional teaching had to be found. This alternative is referred to in the literature as Future-Oriented Pedagogy or Future-Based Learning. These trends have created alternative pedagogical principles that vary from the traditional doctrines and future teacher training [3,4].

In the State of Israel, as happened almost worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many losing their jobs, and an unprecedented wave of unemployment erupted. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reports, 18% of the 193 thousand unemployed people in June 2019 had an academic background (such as a degree in law, business administration, technology, science, or engineering). Given this state of affairs, as well as the outbreak of the pandemic, an initiative arose for engaging the cooperation of the Ministry of Education (Division for Teacher Training and Internship), the employment services, the Israeli Lottery Fund (Mifa’al Hapais), and the MOFET Institute (the National Institute for Research and Development in Education). This cooperation aimed to enable higher education graduates who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic to obtain a teaching certificate by participating in a short-term training teaching program. The program, named ‘Kivun H’adash’ (in Hebrew: a new online approach), mainly consisted of online training via Zoom. The search for suitable candidates for the short-term training program was guided by the discipline fields in the education system in Israel, in which more teachers were (and still are) needed. The lack of teachers is especially noticeable in the science disciplines (mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science), in the humanities (e.g., language arts and foreign language teaching), in early childhood education (based on the knowledge that there was a significant shortage of preschool teachers), and elementary-school education. The main goal of the program was, on the one hand, to respond to the needs of the Ministry of Education, which, as mentioned, faces a shortage of teachers in several disciplines, and on the other hand, following the mass layoffs during the COVID-19 period, to increase the retraining options available to a high-quality population of professionals that can be suitable to teach in the education system.

1.1. Teacher-Training Programs

In the last three decades, along with traditional teachers’ training programs, other programs known as “alternative”, “unique”, “independent”, and even “innovative” have been developed [5,6]. Most of these programs are short-term programs designed to provide aspiring teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to enter the teaching profession quickly. These programs often cater to individuals with a bachelor’s degree in a different field who want to transition into teaching.

These programs began to develop due to the global crisis that the teaching profession is facing, namely, a decline in the attractiveness of the profession in general [7], resulting in a shortage of teachers in general, with an emphasis on unique areas of knowledge [8], as well as a greater dropout rate among quality personnel in the field [9,10]. Thus, despite reports of a yearly increase in the number of teachers completing their training in teacher-training institutions, there is still a shortage of teachers in Israel. At the same time, the Central Bureau of Statistics yearly report indicates that more than 50% of English teachers and about one-third of the math teachers in high schools and middle schools in Israel were not trained to teach these subjects [11].

Compared to the traditional outline, unique alternative programs are characterized by a shortened teacher-training period. One of the standard features of these programs is that they are usually delivered online or combine online and face-to-face learning. Most of them are flexible and adaptable and, at the same time, collaborative and interactive. The cost–benefit analysis of these programs may vary depending on each program’s context, objectives, resources, and outcomes.

The trainees in the unique alternative teacher-education programs, which target a population that has already earned an academic degree, do not have the benefit of early integration into the educational field, which has been shown to create a strong connection between the theoretical and the practical aspects of teaching. Thus, the briefer training period of the alternative programs might be at the expense of the clinical training through which participants in the traditional programs gain experience. (In traditional programs, clinical training precedes the internship, wherein trainees are placed in a teaching position in schools.) The research literature does not provide precise details regarding the alternative programs’ impact on the quality of teaching. If establishing the effectiveness of traditional programs is challenging, the difficulty is even more incredible when examining the many and varied alternative programs. The various alternative training programs do not encompass a uniform body of knowledge or use a consistent method, which makes it impossible to compare their effectiveness [12]. The programs vary significantly in terms of minimal threshold conditions, with some accepting only outstanding candidates, while others offer accelerated paths or extend over longer periods. Some programs strictly follow the curricula of academic training institutions, whereas others operate independently without any supervision over their training processes.

The programs differ on many factors, ranging from minimal threshold conditions to acceptance of only outstanding candidates and from accelerated programs to those that take place over a relatively long period, and from programs that adhere closely to the curricula of academic training institutions to programs that prefer to operate without any supervision over their training process [4].

In Israel, 25 teacher-education programs have been recognized by the Ministry of Education and defined as unique alternative programs. Some are offered by teacher-education colleges, some by universities, and some by colleges and universities. Between a quarter and a third of the graduates of teacher-training programs in Israel are graduates of unique programs, which is higher than the norm in the rest of the world [13]. Any unique alternative program must meet the conditions of the outline approved by the Israeli Council for Higher Education and the Ministry of Education to receive formal recognition and accreditation.

1.2. Gaining Teaching Experience as Part of the Teacher-Training Process

Teacher training in most of the Western world includes two main components: theoretical academic studies and practical teaching experience. One of the main goals of the teacher-training process is to create a meaningful mix of theoretical academic studies and the experience or practice of teaching. Furthermore, the training is designed to impart systematic knowledge of teaching methods, construct the learners’ professional perceptions, and form their professional identity while guiding them to simultaneously engage in a critical examination of the educational reality [14].

In Israel, as is customary in other countries, the experiential aspect consists of two main parts. The first is clinical experience gained during the training phase. All trainees must participate in a practicum to accrue experience in the educational system relevant to the age of the target group and the professional discipline they have chosen to teach. The second part of the experiential aspect of training is the entry stage—specializing in teaching. After gaining experience in the training phase, all training program graduates who have completed at least 80% of their studies and completed the practicum must—in most cases—complete a year of internship. This year, the interns are assigned to schools where they teach the discipline they have studied and receive a salary. All interns are assigned a mentor who oversees their work and accompanies them throughout the year. The mentor is a school teacher who has undergone training for the mentor role and teaches at the school where the internship occurs [15].

In unique alternative training programs, two concepts guide the training process. The first concept is “on-the-job training,” whereby most practical training occurs after the intern has been placed in a school [16]. The second concept is “programs anchored in the field” (not unlike a residency program), which emphasizes not only the early entry into the workplace but also the adaptation of teaching and lessons to the needs of the learners’ environment and circumstances [17]

1.3. Kivun H’adash—The Short-Term Program Examined in This Study

The program examined in this study is a unique alternative short-term teacher-training program with an apparent affinity for accelerated and intensive studies. Designed by the Israeli Ministry of Education, the program was intended to train about 400 people at various institutes of higher education. All candidates would be screened according to three criteria: applicants were required to have an academic degree related to the proposed teaching discipline (such as mathematics), explain their motivation to work and persist in the field of education, and be available to undertake intensive studies for a short period.

The program consists of three intensive months of theoretical studies during the summer of 2020 and practical experience gained afterward during the 2020/21 school year. The internship phase started in September 2020, and trainees would be required to attend one study day at the academic institution during the week. After completing all the academic and professional requirements, the aspiring teachers would receive a teaching certificate and a license to practice teaching at the end of the internship year.

The division for the training of teaching in the Israeli Ministry of Education sent out a “call for proposals” to academic institutions that feature a teacher-training program, asking them to submit proposals for a short-term program that would include the regular curricula according to the procedures of the Council for Higher Education and according to the guidelines of the Ministry of Education. Twelve academic institutions responded to the “call for proposal,” which was approved by a professional team that examined each program according to professional criteria. The program opened only in nine institutions after three had dropped out, mainly due to the small number of enrolled participants. In each institution, a program coordinator was selected by the Ministry of Education.

The curriculum for the three intensive months of theoretical studies included 24 weekly academic hours for trainees seeking to teach secondary school subjects (equivalent to a traditional teacher-training program) and 30 weekly hours (equivalent to a traditional teacher-training program) for candidates intending to teach primary and early childhood education. In some cases, supplementary studies were required if the candidates’ academic backgrounds did not precisely match the teaching discipline. In sum, the aspiring teachers studied for about eight to ten hours each day, five days a week, for three months (May to August 2020). The studies took place using online, synchronous, and asynchronous technological tools, emphasizing the use of the Zoom platform. After these three months, and with the opening of the 2020/21 academic year (September 2020), they began teaching in the schools while at the same time continuing to study one day a week at the academic training institutions to complete the quota of hours necessary for a teaching certificate.

The structure of the practical internship experience was complicated because most schools in Israel were not operating routinely. The solutions for completing the requirements of the experiential component were varied and extended the program by three months and even later into the 2021 work year.

Simultaneously with the formulation of the program and the transition to the stages of its implementation, it was decided to establish an organizational directorate at the Institute of Education. The directorate’s role was to find solutions related to the program’s organization, meet the aspiring teachers’ needs, provide regular information updates, and create a coordinators’ forum for biweekly meetings.

At the end of the screening process, approximately 380 applicants were accepted into the program at different academic institutions. All participants received financial support, and each student was entitled to a conditional loan of NIS 10,000. In addition, each participant was awarded a grant of NIS 5800 in exchange for a commitment to volunteer in the education system for 80 h.

1.4. Study Goals, Questions, and Hypotheses

The present study had two main goals:

• To learn about the structure of the program and its implementation from the professional and personal points of view of the program’s coordinators and the participants, as they experienced it.
• To examine the contribution of the new short-term program to the participants—the teacher trainees—and the Israeli education system in general.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. The Context of the Research

The study employed a qualitative research method, which provides a holistic perspective and has the potential to generate new concepts [18]. The research was grounded in field theory and utilized an inductive approach to interpret the voices and perspectives of the participants [19,20]. The focus of the research was on the perceptions of the academic coordinators of the Kivun H’adash program, with the aim of uncovering a macro-level perspective of the program.

2.2. Participants

Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine academic coordinators of the program (six of them women) operating within teacher-training institutions. The research aims were presented to the participants, anonymity was guaranteed, and personal consent to participate in the study was obtained before the interview. The interviews examined each coordinator’s perspective on the Kivun H’adash program. The interview started with an open question: “Tell me about the unique program that you conducted in your college”. The interviews were held online via the Zoom application, and each lasted about one hour.

2.3. Data Analyzing

The qualitative data were analyzed using narrative categorical analysis [21]. In total, we had 100 pages that were used as the raw material for this research [22]. The analogizing act occurred in 4 stages:

• All interviews comprised a recording and transcription of the Zoom conversations.
• Each researcher read the interview and noted his interpretation of everyone’s experiences.
• The researchers identified the similarities and differences between their texts. This process includes the breakdown and reconstruction of the conversations, phenomena, and issues that enable us to study and understand the responses from a holistic perspective.
• The interviews were divided into meaningful units in line with the research questions [23]. This led to the identification of the themes, extracted into five categories: recruitment of the coordinator; establishing the program; clinical experience; the students of the program; and future initiatives for teacher education.

2.4. Ethical Considerations

This study received ethics authorization from the Ethics Committee of the Mofet Institute. We respect the participants, and they know that we are conducting research that might be published at the end of the study. All names used herein are pseudonyms to conduct ethical research [24]. Those findings were not included in this research.

3. Results

3.1. Recruitment of the Coordinator

The first stage in organizing the new program, ‘Kivun H’adash’, was to recruit and assign a professional coordinator. Most institutions set threshold conditions based on discipline specialization and project management experience. Four coordinators had previous experience coordinating teaching programs for trainees with an academic degree in science (teachers in academic retraining programs). The other five coordinators had no expertise or experience in coordinating academic programs. The coordinators described a speedy and rushed process that occurred “suddenly” without organized preparation. Such circumstances can sometimes lead to unpleasant situations. For example, all the coordinators indicated that their job conditions, including salary, had not been adequately settled. Yehuda (all names mentioned in the Section 3 are pseudonyms), one of the coordinators, described this situation as follows:

“We did not have enough budget for the project. I worked hard and was paid very little. However, I did not do it for the money. For me, it was a mission.”

Yehuda’s words in the interview also highlighted his motivation for accepting the coordinator position in the Kivun Hadash program. Like other coordinators, Yehuda mentioned that a sense of mission was his primary motivation for becoming involved in this project. He explained that the complex situation of the COVID-19 crisis in the Israeli educational environment encouraged him to think about his obligation as a citizen. Salary was the least important factor in this decision, as he said the following:

“We were called on for this project, and it felt like a calling! We are citizens, and we must see that we are ready to make all the efforts and invest time for the sake of the country and its children to assist people who were laid off due to the pandemic (Yehuda).”

The COVID-19 crisis was unexpected. The coordinators recurred with motivation of an educational mission, in a time of crisis. They emphasized that short-term alternative program options will not be able to exist for a long time and be established as an alternative educational program, without the organizational conditions such as a clear position, salary, and goals for academic development for the coordinator.

3.2. Establishing the Program

Even though the teacher-training institutions had sufficient experience training academics for teaching (academic conversion programs), Kivun H’adash posed new challenges for these institutions, specifically, preparing a teacher-training program during a fatal pandemic. The coordinators described the challenges while designing the program’s curriculum in the interviews. They explained that they had to cope with the entire planning process by writing the rationale, presenting the syllabuses, recruiting teaching teams, meeting the students, and quickly giving them information about the program. They rarely received clear or specific answers to their questions and often were confused, under pressure, and lacked control. Some of them even described their job as a “war zone.”

The coordinators all agreed that the most challenging task was recruiting students. They knew they had to recruit at least 20 students to open a fully funded program. However, it was not very easy. Even though many employees had lost their jobs during the pandemic, and many were interested in the program, the number of students who registered for the program was relatively low.

Table 1. The recruiting process.

Stage		Applications
1	Posted mailing was sent	14,800 unemployed academics had registered for unemployment
2	Survey questionnaires	2545 candidates showed interest
3	Phone consultation	1540 candidates participated in the phone consultation
4	College application	1443 candidates completed the application for the program
5	Registration	380 candidates registered for the program in various colleges

demonstrates the recruiting process.

The coordinators mentioned that some candidates heard about the program via friends, social networks, or other sources. They also indicated that collaboration with the employment services was not easy; it was intense, and sometimes, the administrators sent unqualified candidates who specialized in subjects other than those taught in the program. However, they described the situation as “under control,” and “it happened quickly,” and they were progressing according to the outline of the plan. Planning and designing the program reflected the confusing situation during the COVID-19 crisis. Rima said the following:

“I do not think I had a day or night of summer vacation: I had to contend with many factors as I was involved in conversations with candidates, meetings with lecturers, and answering emails, all within a few days.”

Nevertheless, the coordinators emphasized that everyone who worked with the program, in the governmental offices or the colleges, felt they were part of a larger mission and tried to do their best. They had the impression that even though they experienced many difficulties, they successfully designed a good program.

Yona elaborated as follows:

“We had a good experience as a team, especially within the college, with the training team and department heads. Everyone was dedicated and eager for the program to succeed in attracting more and more candidates. They all did it wholeheartedly and earnestly despite the difficulties and working in such a positive atmosphere felt good.”

Most academic teaching colleges are organized into both administrative and academic departments, creating a division of responsibilities between organizational management and the academic aspects of teaching. Coordinators were tasked to develop all elements of the program. While this gives them valuable experience and control over the entire process, it also leads to feelings of burden and stress. A short-term alternative program cannot rely heavily on a single coordinator who is responsible for all teams, the program, and the students.

3.3. Clinical Experience

The coordinators explained that the Kivun H’adash program was clinically oriented like other teacher-training programs. Therefore, the clinical experience was a significant part of the program. However, during the pandemic, designing adequate opportunities for clinical experience was a challenge the coordinators faced. The coordinators shared their difficulties finding opportunities for trainees to experience teaching at schools. The biggest challenge was that during most of the training process, schools were closed due to a national lockdown, and most of the activity happened virtually via the Zoom application.

Moreover, the complicated restrictions prevented numerous students from attending when schools opened. Second, many of the coordinators did not have experience in organizing the clinical component of the educational training, some were not familiar with the processes needed to collaborate with the schools, and they did not have relevant connections at schools. In addition, the brief planning period left them with insufficient time to organize the trainees’ clinical experience. Yona described the complex situation she had to maneuver while managing the program:

“My trainees hardly met any students or peers. We could not create such opportunities. We tried internally, we tried with all kinds of schools... it just did not work. They learned the materials but did not interact with the classroom, which was lacking.”

The coordinators admitted they had to think creatively to find opportunities for trainees to practice teaching. During the interviews, they mentioned some solutions they initiated for the clinical phase of the program, for example, teaching among colleagues, using simulations, observing classes via Zoom, private instruction (one-on-one), and participating in Zoom classes by co-teaching with a veteran teacher. Another answer for this issue was to delay the clinical experience until their first year on the job.

One of the most significant components in teacher training in all the programs including alternative programs is the creation of a space for practical experience. The coordinators faced difficult challenges in this regard during the coronavirus period because most schools were closed, and when they opened, teaching and learning were through Zoom. Despite these difficulties, the coordinators attempted various creative solutions, such as peer teaching, simulations, and co-teaching via Zoom. Some even suggested delaying the clinical experience until the trainees’ first year on the job.

3.4. The Students of the Program

Two main criteria for student recruitment constituted the prerequisites for participating in this program. The first criterion was an academic degree. The second criterion was being unemployed. The purpose was to recruit candidates knowledgeable in their subject matter who had acquired some experience in the labor market. The coordinators admitted that many students who participated in the program were not unemployed, as was intended. Laura, one of the coordinators, said the following:

“We had different candidates come to us. Some were not even laid off but had been at home before, and the program created an opportunity for them... Some of them told me they wanted to do this their whole lives, and finally, there was a good opportunity.”

It is important to note that most students were between the ages of 30 and 60; they were married with children. The coordinators mentioned some challenging points concerning the students. For example, unemployment caused stress; some students said they “Suddenly found themselves hanging in midair.” Many students experienced emotional difficulties resulting from the pandemic environment, the lockdown, and the need to deal with their children at home all day in uncertain times. Moreover, some students chose a field of study in which they did not have the required qualifications; for example, Yona describes the following: “One student with a bachelor’s degree in education or literature wanted to be a preschool teacher; she had no idea about preschool children.”

In contrast, the coordinators stated that the students were more mature and serious. They had good intentions and were committed to pursuing the program. The added value is demonstrated by their ambition to return to the classroom, study a new profession, and achieve it from a mature point of view. Shuzanz said the following:

“The students were more mature; they brought some added value–not just the studies and degree. They have experience with people; they have experience with children of all ages... So, these people are already in midlife; they had a good situation, family, and livelihood, and suddenly they found themselves ungrounded.”

The coordinators were responsible for all aspects of recruiting the students and integrating them into the unique alternative program. They adapted students to the program conditions including conducting interviews with them. In addition, during the study period, they accompanied the students in dealing with challenges beyond studies, such as childcare, health problems, and more. This component of the program emphasizes the importance of personal accompaniment in alternative programs, as a key component in ensuring the successful integration of the students into the educational work later.

3.5. Future Initiatives for Teacher Education

The coordinators interpreted the program for the professional retraining of the participants in two ways: as an unavoidable necessity that stemmed from a given reality and as an opportunity for candidates to change their profession, refresh and renew, and even fulfill past wishes. Following the commentary on the various motives of the program participants, thoughts also arose about their potential success in the professional field and their potential to persevere in the different divisions of the education system.

Some reactions showed worry and care based on the coordinators’ thorough knowledge of the profession, the field, and the challenges; Rima tells us the following: “[In the past] they were in positions where they had a car, a cell phone, and coffee whenever they wanted [from their workplace]. This is not the case; here, they must pay for their coffee.”

Rima related to working conditions, whereas Suzanna hesitated about authority.

One of the candidates said that in his former profession, people would agree or disagree, but they listened to others and were listened to when they spoke. Now, he comes to class and suddenly discovers that some children do not want to listen to him; the following reaction provides an adequate summary of the coordinators’ view of the situation with the words of Simcha:

“There are some people I am not sure will make it through the entire transition. I think everyone can be a teacher, but I am not sure everyone will succeed. Some will find it challenging to manage a classroom with children, and some will not face the gap between income and expectation, especially once opportunities open up again in the market.”

The success of an alternative program is contingent upon its implementation and contribution to the education system. Consequently, the coordinators have expressed both hopes and concerns regarding the professional future of the students enrolled in the program.

4. Discussion

Israel’s higher education institutions, including teacher-education colleges, remained operational during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas many other public entities faced disruptions [25]. By comparison, interruptions in teaching and learning were minimized or negligible. Although China reported school and university closures seven weeks before the outbreak of the pandemic reached Israel, the teacher-education colleges in Israel did not take proactive measures to prepare for a similar scenario. This lack of readiness is surprising, given Israel’s constant security concerns. Moreover, despite extensive efforts to integrate technology into the teaching and learning processes in Israeli teacher-education colleges over the past two decades, many teachers found themselves unprepared and lacking the necessary knowledge to adapt [26].

In response to the urgent need for ERT, teacher educators attended the numerous professional development opportunities offered by their institutions. Entire colleges transformed into communities of practice [27] (Wenger, 1998). Many teacher educators who worked independently participated in valuable discussions and activities concerning the nature and direction of their teaching programs for prospective teachers.

The findings from this research can lead us to a broader perspective that is not directly related only to the program under examination and not just as a solution to the crisis that arose during the COVID-19 period. We should ask ourselves if such a model would be relevant even in routine times.

4.1. Unique Alternative Teacher-Education Programs—Contribution

The current study had two main objectives. The first was to learn about the structure of this unique alternative program and its implementation from the professional and personal perspectives of the program coordinators and the selected students who chose to study in it—as reflected through their experiences. The second objective was to evaluate the contribution of the ‘Kivun H’adash’ program to the new teachers who studied in the program and were trained through the program, as well as its overall contribution to the education system.

Regarding the second goal of the research, understanding the program’s contribution to the education system regarding the shortage of teachers in general [7] and to the new teachers trained in ‘Kivun H’adash,’ it is difficult to draw clear-cut conclusions. One reason for this difficulty is that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic introduced a reality previously unexperienced in the Western world or Israel over the past century, which also affected how research could be conducted. Hence, this study represents a deviation from the norm.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the Israeli Ministry of Education boldly and proactively decided to launch new, unique alternative teacher-education programs despite facing substantial public criticism. This decision reflected the Ministry’s trust in the teacher-education colleges, given their ability to continue functioning at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic [28]. The colleges’ ability to withstand public scrutiny and their confidence in taking on this mission was likewise grounded in their earlier handling of teaching and learning with the outbreak of the pandemic.

While most alternative teacher-education programs have typically arisen in response to dissatisfaction with traditional teacher-education programs, the current program implemented by the Israeli Ministry of Education represents an effort to capitalize on an opportunity to attract high-caliber candidates to the education system. Similar to other alternative programs, it also incorporates elements lacking in traditional programs [29]. These elements include transformative-oriented professional development, alterations in conventional time and space paradigms, on-the-job training, collaborative learning, and personalized learning. All of these components characterized the educational landscape during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic [30].

4.2. Circumstances and Conditions in the Future

Although the program was designed to partially address the unprecedented wave of unemployment and the shortage of teaching personnel in the education system while also adapting to the new reality created during periods of ERT, it raises the question of whether the program is suitable and applicable for regular circumstances. Can teachers be trained remotely in the future? While prestigious institutions worldwide have increased the number of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), it remains unclear whether online courses can replace the practical clinical training of educators. Can simulation rooms replace classrooms with students and schools with organizational cultures that require real-world experience [31]? Can technology platforms genuinely replace the human connection inherent in the teaching profession [32]? This research could not fully answer these questions, but it provided insights from both quantitative and qualitative data.

In most institutions where students were trained in the program, they underwent little to no practical training. This lack of hands-on experience led to significant dissatisfaction, not only among school students but also among instructors. However, it is essential to note that the finding of dissatisfaction is not unique to the Kivun Hadash program but has been shown to describe the reactions of many new educators trained in various other programs [33].

The main finding of this research is that hybrid teacher-training programs can teach disciplinary content online. Still, practical work, including clinical training and specialization, likely needs to occur in the traditional setting of teacher-training institutions.

In summary, the coronavirus pandemic prompted the Israeli teacher-education system, particularly its educators, to adapt to the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution in the 21st century [34]. The imminent challenge on the horizon is to strengthen and sustain these accomplishments. Teacher-education alternative programs are responsible for equipping future educators with the pedagogical knowledge, tools, traditional values, and resilience needed to effectively address forthcoming educational challenges like those encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic [4].

5. Conclusions

One conclusion from this research is that hybrid teacher-training programs, in which the disciplinary field can be learned online, still require, and perhaps even necessitate, practical work, including clinical experience and a specialization year, to be conducted in the familiar format within teacher-training institutions [34].

A few essential practical findings should be considered for future similar programs. The first one regards the recruitment of candidates. The recruiting entities, whether they are governmental or academic institutions, should take great care in the outreach, selection, and admission of students to ensure monitoring of the quality of those accepted.

The second practical finding concerns the program coordinators. The choice of program coordinators should be made with an emphasis on prior experience leading teacher-training programs. A clear role definition for coordinators is essential. This role definition should be binding for all accrediting institutions.

The third practical finding concerns the training process. It is recommended to emphasize the skills required for “future-oriented teaching.” It is also suggested not to conduct training entirely online. The training can be hybrid. Each stage of the program should examine the division of roles and the structure of the training process for experiential learning: pedagogical instructors, field guides, teacher trainers, internship supervisors, and mentors. It is mandatory to incorporate simulations into some of the teacher-training programs, especially within each pedagogical module taught in the program. Since we know that positive experiences enhance professional self-efficacy, the more simulated experiences are integrated, the higher the likelihood that the trainees’ level of professional competence will improve accordingly. However, it is essential to note that simulated experiences cannot substitute for ongoing clinical training.

In research on teacher education, various terms are used to describe field experiences, such as school placement, teaching practicum, or school internship. These terms all pertain to a component of teacher-education programs wherein aspiring educators spend a specific time working in a school environment. Consequently, the primary aim of numerous field experiences is to cultivate fundamental teaching abilities, among other objectives [33].