Practical Activities in Technology Education Teacher Training—The COVID-19 Dilemma

In technology education teacher training, practical activities serve as a bedrock for the development of hands-on skills for student teachers. However, COVID interrupted the normal pedagogies forcing Institutions of Higher Learning (HEIs) to adopt online teaching methods. In that context and considering the touted Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), HEIs adopted virtual learning to keep the academic activities going and Technology Education Teacher Training was no exception with pedagogies having to transform under lockdown restrictions to prepare future teachers. Since technology education practical can only be taught by considering Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory, this chapter, therefore, presents a snapshot of how HEIs responded by adopting virtual pedagogies during COVID for the alignment of practical skills and theoretical concepts. The chapter used a selected group of recently graduated Civil Technology students to understand how they experienced learning the module during the COVID-19 era and how the pedagogies have impacted the development of their hands-on technical skills. Training teachers in both theory and practical is critical in preparing competent graduates able to teach technology subjects theory and practice in schools. Literature provided numerous factors contributing to the challenges which HEIs lectures faced with the handling of the practical component of technology education modules. It was, therefore, important to look at HEIs COVID approaches and provide a synopsis of the impact such approaches could have had in both the development of students’ technical and the schools where student teachers are now employed from 2022 as qualified teachers. This study employed a mixed method approach to allow teachers to provide more in-depth information to understand the phenomena and also to identify gaps relating to how practical Civil Technology specializations were taught. Following this, the chapter demonstrates how interactive manipulation of objects, tools, and equipment cannot be substituted with the assistance of technological pedagogies. The chapter further demonstrates the dilemma that HEI pedagogies were exposed to with the handling of practical activities on virtual platforms with a long-lasting impact on learners’ technical skills development in schools.