**Author details**

*Teacher Education in the 21st Century - Emerging Skills for a Changing World*

adversity that is long-lasting and is experienced in waves [51].

poised to create long needed changes in learning access and equity.

system forward into new diverse times.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

**Conflict of interest**

Adopting a pedagogy of care [6], trauma sensitive instruction, as well as creating safe classroom environments can increase educational outcomes for students both during adverse times and in traditional educational delivery. There are many positive opportunities that will arise from the forced transitions of pandemic education that should be implemented into the "new normal." Educational systems can emerge stronger and educator training programs can utilize this opportunity to incorporate all methods of teaching thus ensuring that all future educators have the capacity to teach in multiple modalities [50]. Educational systems must invest in the necessary resources and educator professional development to lead the educational

**5. Conclusions**

student progress can bridge the gap created by the lack of face-to-face observations [64]. Educators and school systems while understandably caught off guard by a global pandemic, now have the experience to ensure that there are contingency plans for all issues that may arise. Implementation of emergency plans for scenarios such as technological issues, internet outages, and times where learning platforms are inaccessible can provide students with steps to follow and decrease confusion or learning disruptions [50, 51]. Methods of student communication and information sharing that are consistent create ease of implementation of back up plans and ensure that students are not scrambling if something does not go according to plan. While the Spring of 2020 created an emergency response in educators, felt widely by students, preparedness can decrease the experience of emergency and provide reassurance and consistency. Continency planning also creates the flexibility to pivot and switch as necessary which is particularly useful in the face of a global

Although it is still unclear how the current pandemic will shape educational practices, it presents a significant opportunity to integrate engaging pedagogies, assessment strategies, and interactive technologies to build innovative classroom environments [36]. The quick pivot out of the classroom in the face of the current pandemic created a response of emergency remote teaching and with it many challenges and concerns related to teaching infrastructure, teacher preparedness including training and support, as well as the need to consider the uniqueness of an at home environment versus being in a classroom [8, 51]. Educators have not all been equally prepared for the fast shift to remote learning and there appears to be a lack of mentorship and support designed to increase teacher competency in using digital technologies in an efficient and effective manner [8, 66]. In the emergent transition to remote learning, decisions were often made without an understanding of how the pandemic and resulting experiences have impacted student's ability to learn and has raised concerns regarding the quality of the instruction that they have received [7, 9] exacerbating an already critical lens of online learning. As educational systems have transitioned out of the emergency learning contexts of the Spring of 2020 and into a continued mix of in person, hybrid, and remote learning, it is important that educators and educational systems are able to develop quality instruction and learning environments. If we are planful, educational systems can emerge from this from this global crisis stronger and

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Christian Scannell Assumption University, Worcester, MA, United States of America

\*Address all correspondence to: ce.scannell@assumption.edu

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
