Initial Teacher Education (ITE) can be viewed as a formative space in professional teacher identity development. Practice plays a key role in shaping teacher identity, providing a window into the reality of school life, as well as nurturing professional autonomy. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, school life shifted suddenly and unrecognisably in March 2020. This paper focuses on the experiences of preservice teachers on an ITE programme (post-primary) in one Irish University during the period of sudden school closures. The data show the transition to be problematic, underscored by a chaotic pivot to virtual communication and a destabilising of the structures that normally provide consistency. Yet it also presented opportunities and responsibilities. We explore Victor Turner’s work to consider school placement as an ‘in between’ space for preservice teachers and to examine the extent to which sudden school closures heightened this sense of ‘in betweenness’. We argue that the pandemic and its lifting out of pervasive and predictable social structures, gave rise to a period of ‘anti-structure’. We view school closures as an example of anti-structure, which challenged preservice teachers’ identity formation yet also gave rise to ‘communitas’ through experimentation with different modes of being and doing.

初始教师教育 (ITE) 可以被视为专业教师身份发展的形成空间。实践在塑造教师身份、提供了解学校生活现实的窗口以及培养专业自主性方面发挥着关键作用。由于 Covid-19 大流行，学校生活在 2020 年 3 月突然发生了无法辨认的变化。本文重点介绍爱尔兰大学突然停课期间从事 ITE 课程（小学后）的职前教师的经历。数据显示这种转变存在问题，向虚拟通信的混乱支点和通常提供一致性的结构的不稳定强调了这一点。然而，它也带来了机遇和责任。我们探索维克多·特纳 (Victor Turner) 的工作，将学校安置视为职前教师的“中间”空间，并研究突然停课在多大程度上加剧了这种“中间”感。我们认为，大流行及其摆脱普遍和可预测的社会结构，导致了一段“反结构”时期。我们将学校停课视为反结构的一个例子，它挑战了职前教师的身份形成，但也通过对不同的存在和行为模式的实验产生了“社区”。