Abstract
Legislative guidelines regulate professional experience within initial teacher education (ITE) but little is known about teacher educators’ perspectives on how these guidelines are operationalised. ITE providers, in collaboration with school partners, implement a range of programs designed to develop pre-service teachers’ ‘classroom readiness’. We examine how current legislation influences the delivery of professional experience, the provision of funding, and support for university-school partnerships and in-school supervision. This analysis highlights ambiguities in the interpretation of the legislative guidelines, creating a disconnection between policy and practice, an over-reliance on the ‘good will’ of key stakeholders, and competing demands between the ‘actual’ and ‘hidden’ costs of professional experience. Without reform of both policy and practice ITE providers will continue to be constrained when attempting to meet regulatory expectations. These findings demonstrate a need for government departments and ITE regulators to work more closely to improve integration of policy and practice for professional experience.
Highlights
Universities are being scrutinised for the effectiveness of their programs in preparing graduates for future employment in the 21st century (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group [TEMAG], 2014)
Analysis of data revealed participant views and perceptions of how professional experience is operationalised in Australian initial teacher education (ITE)
Findings showed that ITE providers believe that there is a lack of systemic cohesion between policy at a national, state, sector and school level about operational aspects of professional experience
Summary
Universities are being scrutinised for the effectiveness of their programs in preparing graduates for future employment in the 21st century (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group [TEMAG], 2014). It is feasible that a graduate might meet the Standards, but may not be „classroom ready‟, and may not have the „practical skills needed for the classroom‟ (TEMAG 2014; Le Cornu, 2015). This problem appears to arise when the school and university elements of ITE programs are not well integrated. High quality professional experience programs that provide pre-service teachers with a coherent university- and in-school- program of learning to teach are imperative in the preparation of classroom ready teachers at graduation (McLean, Dickson, Rickart, Dinham, Conroy, & Davis, 2015)
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