High-quality professional experience in Initial Teacher Education in Australia: ‘supporting’, ‘centralising’ and ‘scaling up’

Penny Van Bergen, Mary Ryan, Ken Cliff, Rebecca Andrews, Susan Ledger, Michele Simons, Sue Gregory, Rachael Adlington, Lucie Zundans-Fraser, Cathy Little, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles , Edmund Sosu, Olivia Maurice

Research output: Other contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

Though almost everything about Initial Teacher Education is highly politicised, contentious, and deeply impacted by one’s vantage point on the ‘problem’ of underperformance in Australian schools, there is currently relative agreement
that high-quality Professional Experience placements are central to the preparation of ‘classroom ready’ graduate teachers (Le Cornu, 2015). There is also similar agreement, however, that Professional Experience is not as effective as it could be. Concerns ranging from the substantial resourcing burden Professional
Experience imposes on all stakeholders (Ledger, et al., 2020), through to the ongoing shortage of high-quality placements and mentors (Martinez, 2004) and recently, to the place of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students and Professional Experience placements in addressing workforce shortages (Australian Department of Education, 2022), are present throughout academic literature and policy documents. Against this backdrop, we sought to systematically map stakeholder input regarding Professional Experience in ITE, as it was provided
to the 2023 Teacher Education Expert Panel (TEEP). This study was part of a broader project which used two forms of content analysis to map TEEP submissions: systematic conceptual coding using Leximancer, and supplementary deductive-inductive coding within each stakeholder group. Analyses were conducted by one stakeholder group to provide a qualitative
overview of stakeholder perspectives regarding the TEEP Strong Beginnings Report, namely areas of focus, agreement and disagreement. While the analysis shows broad agreement on the need for greater resourcing, wider uptake of innovative models, and more coordinated approaches, the consensus on these general ideas belies the complexity that emerges as we look more closely at the suggestions. Differences in where resources need to be applied, which innovative approaches offer the promise of delivering the best outcomes (and for whom),
and questions of how ‘centralised’ a systematic agreement needs to be before it becomes constraining were all present in our analyses and suggest that 'agreement’ in Professional Experience might be easier in theory, than it is in
practice.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2024
EventAustralian Teacher Education Association - University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia
Duration: 10 Jul 202412 Jul 2024
https://atea.edu.au/conferences/2024-atea-conference/

Conference

ConferenceAustralian Teacher Education Association
Abbreviated title“Myth-Busting: Confronting Debates and Creative Design in and for Initial Teacher Education”
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityNewcastle
Period10/07/2412/07/24
Internet address

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