A Story of Inquiry over Time

Since 1999, Outward Bound Australia has been delivering a nationally recognised training program developed under the umbrella of a restructured Vocational Education and Training Sector in Australia. As both a trainer and employer, Outward Bound Australia provides a well-integrated package of on and off-the-job experience that supports the achievement of graduates from a 12 month internship program. This paper reflects upon the motivations for change in the industry and the experience of integrating vocational education in the workplace. Introduction Vocational education and training in Australia has undergone a substantial restructure over the last 15 years. This period of change has paralleled the move by the outdoor recreation and education industry to establish a national system of training and qualifications. The outdoor industry was able to benefit from the impetus and the money from the national restructure to establish a comprehensive range of nationally recognised competencies and qualifications that are being delivered by both public and private providers. Outward Bound Australia (OBA) is one organisation that has been able to integrate this new training model into their existing training system to offer an internship with significant amounts of on-the-job training and experience. At the completion of the internship and all assessment requirements, OBA interns are able to earn a nationally recognised qualification. Vocational Education and Training in Australia Prior to the 1990s Australian vocational education and training depended greatly upon the traditional colleges such as TAFE (Technical and Further Education). This model worked well for vocations in areas such as manufacturing and construction (typically focusing on the needs of young men working fulltime in a narrow range of occupations, normally trades (Australian National Training Authority, 2005b)). With the continued growth of the services industry in the 1980s, the increase of the number of women returning to work, as well as the establishment of a range of private training providers, there needed to be a new co-ordinated direction for vocational and educational training (VET). In 1992, the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) was established as a co-operative venture between federal, state and territory governments. Through a process of significant review and consultation, the vocational education system was restructured to provide flexibility, cross recognition (between states and across industry sectors), articulation into degrees, career paths and the increase in the number of private training providers who were able to deliver nationally recognised training and qualifications. The vehicle chosen to implement these changes was a competency-based system. Outdoor recreation and education Outdoor recreation and education--similar or different? Outdoor education in Australia has existed since the 1930s with movements such as the Scouts, YWCA and YMCA as well as school based outdoor education/ recreation programs at outdoor centres. From the 1980s there has been a substantial increase in the number of participants and the number of providers of outdoor education programs. In each state and territory of Australia outdoor education varies, which may be due to differences in the position of outdoor education in the school curriculum. For example outdoor education and environmental studies is part of the formal Victorian senior school curriculum (Victorian Certificate of Education) while in New South Wales (NSW) outdoor education programs are generally extra-curricula activities. However, outdoor recreation is part of the NSW Personal Development Health and Physical Education program for the Higher School Certificate. These state-by-state differences reflect the different curricula offered by each state and territory Department of Education (e.g. Lugg & Martin, 2001; Pickett & Polley, 2001). …

This doctoral thesis is a qualitative case study of the work of six university-based infant and toddler teacher educators in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. Research literature is presented to locate the study within early childhood teacher education as a cultural phenomenon in its institutionalised form. This thesis explores issues related to status, professionalisation, and the education of teachers, who work with infants and toddlers, and reflects the growing awareness of the importance of infant and toddler curriculum in teacher education programs. Conceptually the study is positioned within Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). This conceptual framework was chosen in order to explore the motive object of activity of the collective subject of teacher educators within early childhood teacher education. It is also acknowledged, and addressed within the thesis, that issues that are specific to the early childhood field of status and professionalisation are situated within a broader context of how relations operate between workers and employers under capital. However, in this thesis, I have used CHAT primarily as an analytic device. Each of the six participants was interviewed individually; focus conversations were also held in the two countries. Extracts from individual interviews in the other country were used as provocations in each of the focus conversations. Qualitative data analysis followed a process of iterative analysis of codes and categories. Deductive coding using CHAT concepts followed inductive analysis of further categories. Through exploring the story of the work of infant and toddler teacher educators in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand it became apparent that this thesis is a continuing story of struggle, resistance and advocacy in their work (Rockel, 2013). Findings showed that the participants in the study were involved in a series of enduring contradictions that continually frustrated the expansion of their object of activity as a collective subject, and in turn, their outcome in their activity system. Their object of activity in this activity system was to increase prominence, credibility, and acknowledgment of the needs of infant and toddler curriculum and pedagogy in early childhood teacher education, the aim being to gain their outcome, of high-quality care for infants and toddlers in extra-familial care and education in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. The findings demonstrated that the long-standing sociohistorical contradictions that the participants experienced through the early childhood field impacted on their work. There are enduring and sedimented contradictions in the early childhood field related to an ambivalence of the presence of infants and toddlers in non-parental care and education. At the same time, as academics, they were also negotiating struggles against deprofessionalisation in teacher education. These issues eventuated post-merger of teacher education institutions from colleges of education into universities. Expectations for teacher educators changed; research outputs were required to increase without provision of any additional support. The findings established that the participants struggled to give greater prominence to infant and toddler curriculum and pedagogy in early childhood teacher education in their work in universities in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. This struggle took various forms and is evidenced by the continual silencing experienced by the participants when they engaged in advocating for greater credibility of infant and toddler curriculum and pedagogy in early childhood teacher education. A contribution of this thesis is that it clarifies the conditions of infant and toddler curriculum and pedagogy content in early childhood teacher education in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. It argues that infant and toddler curriculum and pedagogy knowledge is crucial specialist knowledge essential to early childhood teacher education programs inclusive of children from birth to five years of age, offered in universities. A second contribution is the evidence presented to support the argument that advocacy is the way in which the participants in the study held their work together. Advocacy was a key concept within the nature of their work as infant and toddler specialists in early childhood teacher education. It is recognised that historically advocacy has been fundamental to the struggle of working against the ambivalence towards infants and toddlers in the early childhood field. Therefore, what this thesis identifies is that little has changed; advocacy continues to be the primary focus of the work of infant and toddler teacher educators as they resist the ongoing ambivalence towards infants and toddlers in the early childhood field.

The article examines and analyses legislative support of higher education in Australia and compares it with the educational legislation of Ukraine. It is defined that Australia is a federal country and its education legislation is provided by the National and State Governments. The national government develops the national education policy and substantiates its guiding principles. The federal government is responsible for funding higher education and provides additional funding to the states. State and territory governments control all aspects of education except universities. The laws in this country are effective. In education, they are focused on improving the quality of professional training, forming such competences of higher education students that employers expect and that are appropriate for workplaces. Higher education in Australia is provided by universities and colleges, as well as institutions of the state-controlled TAFE (Technical and Further Education) system. Universities in Australia provide theoretical training for higher education applicants. Vocational education, focused on the development of specific skills for activities in a specific workplace, is provided by TAFE institutions. Their programmes are developed in partnership with business and industry communities. In addition to the public TAFE system, there are also private vocational colleges. The legislative framework of higher education in Australia includes: Australian Education Act, Higher Education Act, Higher Education Support Act, Australian Qualifications Framework, Training Packages. The latter outline the standards of professional skills that can be used to train and assess the competences of education seekers. Training Packages were developed in the process of national consultations with industry. Their goals are to determine the match between the demand for qualifications and the supply; encourage the development of a flexible and relevant workforce and training; ensure national recognition of professional and technical training results; support people in the choice of education and career.

Australian Government participation targets recommended in the Review of Australian Higher Education (Bradley In Review of Australian higher education: Final report, Commonwealth of Australia 2008) presented a complex public communication challenge to higher education participation. This research discusses the content of communication messages about Australian universities propagated in the period following the implementation of new national student participation goals. It argues that despite the stated policy objectives and increasing public rhetoric about broadening access to university such messages continued to position universities as elite and exclusive, while vocational training colleges continued to be promoted as having less rigorous academic standards suited to those who aspire to develop trade employment skills. Australian universities are part of a wider communication system that includes other tertiary education organisations including the vocational education sector, State and Federal Governments and the news and information media. The communication of messages about the value of higher education and differences between institutions in this system contributes to the formation of public beliefs and attitudes. The paper argues that the persistence of communication practices and messages that promote the superiority of university and the low success rates of students from disadvantaged backgrounds contributes to the persistence of entrenched views about post-secondary education. The limited discursive framing of university education in Australia in those messages is likely to prevent universities from increasing the participation rates of students from non-traditional higher education backgrounds and thus undermine national educational and associated economic goals, while contributing to an increasing social divide where educational achievement is the fault line.

In this paper, I analyse the history of teacher education in Australia from 1974 to the current policy moment in which questions are increasingly being asked about the quality of teaching and teacher education. Teacher education is, and has been, a highly scrutinised domain in Australia. Since the 1970s, we have seen more than 100 reviews of teacher education in Australia, with another one recently announced in 2014. I focus on three phases in the growth and development of teacher education in the past 40 years by considering the ways in which teacher education (and teaching) has been thought about at various points in time and analysing the related policies for funding governance and regulation. I finish by focusing on the current policy moment in Australia which is positioning teacher education as a ‘policy problem’ requiring a national solution and consider the role of research in, on and for, teacher education into the future.

The changing landscape of teacher education in Australia

This paper examines research into initial teacher education in light of current Australian policy initiatives concerned with both the quality of research conducted in higher education and the quality of teacher education programs. The purpose of the paper is to explore some ways in which the research is, and can be, positioned in the current policy context. The paper begins with a brief overview of some of the main characteristics of the research concerned with initial (pre‐service) teacher education in Australia over the last decade. In terms of scope, scale and methodology, the research can be characterised in the following way: typically small‐scale; many one‐off studies; localised in nature; and a growing application of qualitative research methods. An obvious strength of this type of research is that it is closely tied to practice and to the day‐to‐day workings of initial teacher education programs. An equally obvious weakness is that the research does not necessarily have so called ‘impact’ in relation to policy debates and/or other measures of success in the wider research community. The paper charts some possible new directions for teacher education research in ways that build on the strengths and address the weaknesses. The directions can be characterised as follows: a ‘big funding’ approach; an ‘institutional aggregation’ approach; and a ‘platforms and protocols’ approach.

There have been at least 100 governmental inquiries into teacher education in Australia since the 1970s, making thousands of recommendations, the majority of which have never been fully actioned or realised. Additionally, there is minimal evidence about the efficacy of this continuous review cycle. Here, we problematise these issues by conducting a comparative analysis of the Bassett report, Review of Teacher Education in Queensland, the first review of independent teacher education in Australia conducted in 1978, and the most recent review by the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers. Applying discourse analysis techniques associated with Foucauldian archaeology, findings reveal: a self-referential use of policy is accelerating; those involved are less likely to have knowledge of the discipline of education; similarities in the discourses despite the 40-year timeframe; and increased marginalisation of teacher educators. In the light of these findings, the authors highlight the need for teacher educators to be politically savvy about the mythologising and canonising of allowable problems in teacher education. Teacher educators need to challenge policy and enter the public sphere in doing so.

Policy for early childhood music education (birth to eight years of age) in Australia covers a complex and diverse range of curriculum guidelines and legislation relating to the contexts of day care, preschool, and the early years of school. Australian models and policies vary from state to state and according to setting. Furthermore, early childhood education is constantly changing and evolving, responding to new practices, altered government priorities and funding, and community needs. In this article, the author aims to provide a snapshot of the situation by reviewing and analyzing educational policies, teacher training, and providers of early childhood music programs as well as suggesting some future directions.

This chapter draws upon recent reforms in teacher education policy in Australia to exemplify the richness of Stephen Kemmis’ work on practice theory. Specifically, I elaborate how Kemmis’ notion of practice as constituting particular actions (‘doing’), discourses (‘Sayings’), and relationships (‘relatings’), and as influenced by and influencing the particular conditions—‘practice architectures’—for practice, provides a particularly useful conceptual apparatus for making sense of how initial teacher education policy is currently understood and promoted by the Australian federal government. The chapter draws upon part of the ‘Students First’ policy ensemble in Australia—the principal policy for schooling in Australia. The chapter argues that even as the action of promoting particular discourses around ‘quality’ teacher education practices within this initiative seems instinctively sensible, closer scrutiny of this policy ensemble reveals evidence of more reductive conceptions of what constitutes productive teacher learning. Focusing in particular upon the Australian Government commissioned Action Now: Classroom Ready Teacher policy artefact, and the federal government’s response, the chapter reveals that rather than cultivating a more site-based, praxis-oriented conception of teachers’ initial education, this policy, and its associated policy artefacts, and the broader policy and political milieu in which the policy was generated, privilege more generic, standardized conceptions of initial teachers’ learning. Through the example of this particular policy initiative, the chapter seeks to honour Kemmis’ work by revealing the power of his concepts for not only critiquing but also suggesting how schooling might be done differently. The chapter also seeks to position Kemmis’ recent work within the broader programme of research that has characterized his own lived experience.

The past decade has seen increasing federal intervention in teacher education in Australia, and like many other countries, more attention on teacher education as a policy problem. The current policy context calls for graduates from initial teacher education programs to be classroom ready and for teacher education programs to provide evidence of their effectiveness and their impact on student learning. It is suggested that teacher educators currently lack sufficient evidence and response to criticisms of effectiveness and impact. However, examination of the relevant literature and analysis of the discourses informing current policy demonstrate that it is the issue of how effectiveness is understood and framed, and what constitutes evidence of effectiveness, that needs closer examination by both teacher educators and policymakers before evidence of impact can be usefully claimed—or not.

Britzman’s notion of dialogic restructuring and the ‘clashing’ and ‘conjoining’ of ideas provides a framework for examining the development of a reform initiative in teacher education in Australia—a program concerned specifically with preparing teachers for the middle years of schooling. The middle years of schooling have been the focus of education reform efforts in Australia over the last decade, with a growing interest at grassroots and systemic levels in policy and practice related to the education of young adolescents. In the Australian context, middle schooling developments have not been accompanied in any systematic or on-going way by specialised teacher preparation programs. This chapter discusses one programmatic response to middle schooling initiatives by a teacher education institution—the development of a new Middle Years of Schooling Teacher Education (MYSTE) program at The University of Queensland (UQ). Considering the emergent state of middle schooling in Australia, alongside the rapidly changing social, economic and technological context underpinning the current and future educational needs of young people, this new teacher education program represented a conceptual and practical opportunity and challenge for the UQ team, including the authors of this chapter. Working collaboratively, the team sought to design a pre-service teacher education program that was both responsive to school reform initiatives and generative of new theories and practices associated with teacher education.

Pre-service teacher education can and should integrate learning about teaching through continuous school-based experience. It is in the dynamic environments of schools and classrooms that prospective teachers learn through observation, experience and reflection to make critical judgements, in real and changing circumstances, about what it means to teach. Moreover, it is through continuous school-based teachIng experience, in a variety of school contexts, that prospective teachers construct their own critical consciousness of the social purposes of schooling and not just the technical skills of teaching. An upheaval in teacher education in Australia is currently foreshadowed by the Australian Education Council (AEC) draft report "Education in Australia.' The report proposes a three year initial degree followed by a two year part-time appointment in a school as an "associate" teacher, concurrent with two years part-time study leadIng to a Bachelor. of Education. As a means of modifying their programmes and / or considering alternatives proposed by outside bodies, all tertiary institutions offering teacher education programmes should confront the challenge of justifying the ideology on which their programmes are based. This paper describes the development of a teacher education programme and the model of integrated teacher educatIon on which it is based. The aim of the paper is to highlight the underlying principles of Interaction and learning that have emerged, as well as the distinctive features of the programme which illustrate these prInciples In practIce. The paper concludes by identifying further research questions relevant to the continuing development of the programme and to the teacher education model.

Australia's Tertiary Education Commission has just issued its recommendations for the next tertiary education triennium, 1982–1984. A major aspect of the recommendations for Victoria is that resources for pre‐service teacher education courses should be reduced still further, so that the total reduction in the number of places between 1978 and 1984 will be about 30 per cent. The Federal Government has accepted most of the Commission's recommendations except that it wants the rationalization of control in teacher education, as the first step in the reduction, to be completed by the end of 1981. This is before the triennium has started and only provides eight months for new amalgamations and councils to be formed. This article has been prompted by the recent events in teacher education in Australia.

Teacher Education in Australia seems to be in a dynamic and constant cycle of review and change. Policy governing teacher education has also been eminently changeable and dynamic. To some extent this stems from three year terms for governments where a short term and expedient political view is taken. There has also been ongoing centre-periphery tension between the Commonwealth government and the State governments regarding regulation and accreditation of teacher education programmes with there now being regulatory bodies at both national (Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership – AITSL) and state levels. Despite all of this, teacher education is still the butt of ongoing criticism and investigation and is now more highly regulated than ever. Since teacher education occurs within a university context, with the exception of that which is offered through some private providers or some Technical and Further Education (TAFE) providers, it is also at the whim of government funding policies impacting universities generally.