Rethinking Australian teacher education: a reflective tool for culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies

This article reports on a study that examined the effectiveness of introducing African music and culture to Australian non-specialist primary teacher education students at Deakin University in Melbourne (Australia). The study demonstrates that African music enhanced the generic musical experiences, learning, motivation, interest, confidence and competence of students in their fourth year of teacher education. The research also addressed the significance and contribution of African music and culture as a cross-cultural experience for these beginning teachers who in turn could provide similar experiences for their own students. This study highlighted the author's role and cultural identity as a South African music educator in transmitting the music and culture represented in 'the travelling drum' to a cohort of students with a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. By extension, this curriculum initiative broadened students' understanding and application of indigenous methods of teaching and learning as part of a global experience. Such a curriculum represents a pathway to many other forms of non-Western indigenous knowledge of music, culture and pedagogy that can be mapped out as a journey along a multicultural route towards 'internationalising the curriculum'.

This chapter reports the reflections of two Australian teacher educators, captured through their planning emails, as they accompanied a group of Australian pre-service teachers on a short-term international experience (STIE) in China in June 2014. The ten pre-service teachers would, among other things, encounter culturally embedded (many of them ‘linguistic’) differences as they ‘got to know’ and ‘made sense of’ China. The two teacher educators capture their own conceptualisation of pre-service teachers’ processes of learning-to-know for framing of such student mobility programs in the future.

Teacher Education within Australia is once again on the cusp of further reviews at both State and Federal levels. This is in spite of frequent and invasive reviews and inquiries over the last 150 years of formal teacher education. Since the 1980s many reviews have been conducted with the intent of improving the quality of teacher education – in order to improve the learning outcomes for the pupils in the nation’s schools. This paper examines some of the reviews and the emergent patterns as it follows the journey of teacher education from the 1850s to the present day. It highlights many of the recurring dilemmas and the frustrations of the educational community, which includes the following: Education versus Training; Theory versus Practice; Supply versus Demand and Profession versus skilled & competent practitioners. Perhaps it is now time to recognise the binaries that have continued to cause division and move beyond them into a new era based on mutual collaboration, acceptance of diversity, effective dialogue and resource sharing. The establishment of a common foundation of essential knowledge/learning and the development of core non-negotiable elements, including a blend theory and practice, within Australian teacher education, has the potential to lead to substantial benefits for the nations children.

There have been 101 government inquiries of one sort or another into Australian teacher education since 1979. Most have presumed or documented concerns about the performance of teacher education. There has, however, been surprisingly little impact from the reports of these many inquiries. They have not – so far – increased the relatively low level of consequential regulation on Australian teacher education; nor have they arrested the long run of declining government funding. This paper argues that in the absence of compelling evidence of differential effects of well‐ or poorly‐organised programmes, or well‐ or poorly‐funded programmes, there is no likely end to the stream of reports and no reasonable hope of restoration of adequate funding. Compelling evidence, the paper argues, would need to disaggregate the impact of student intake, teacher education programme and school context characteristics on subsequent teacher performance and student achievement.

Teacher educators have a significant responsibility in promoting anti-racist pedagogy and guiding preservice teachers to engage in critical self-examination regarding dominant narratives. However, many teacher education programmes fall short of adequately equipping aspiring teachers for diverse classrooms as they often perpetuate a predominantly white system and curricula. Informed by Critical Pedagogy and underpinned by a lens of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, this paper discusses the experiences of teacher educators facilitating anti-racist pedagogy within teacher education programmes at Australian universities. Semi-structured interviews were held with 23 experienced teacher educators employed at universities across Australia. Data reveal teacher educators’ efforts to promote anti-racist pedagogy are fraught with challenges when attempting to break the silence surrounding racism, with support for anti-racist pedagogy inconsistent amongst colleagues and within institutional structures. Teacher educators who actively embrace anti-racist pedagogy require resilience and a strong dedication to ongoing critical reflection. The findings have relevance for teacher education efforts not only in Australia, but also in countries where teacher education programmes continue to be predominantly centred on whiteness.

Turney and Wright (1990) argue that Australian teacher educators, because of their demographic characteristics (predominantly male, locally born of British background, urban orientation), have difficulty in (i) modelling appropriate teacher behaviour for their mainly female clientele; (ii) exemplifying principles of non-sexist and multicultural education; and (iii) adequately preparing teachers to work in rural schools. Teacher educators’ work does not merely consist in face-to-face teaching. Another important aspect of the work of teacher educators is research. Research is the means by which teacher educators produce useful knowledge and may be an important means of overcoming the determining effects of demographic characteristics. It is interesting therefore to examine the research endeavour of teacher educators through a content analysis of AARE Annual Conference (1991) abstracts to assess the extent to which teacher educators focus their research on issues relevant to (i), (ii) and (iii). As it turns out, research in these areas is sub-optimal.

Research into teacher education is an Australian government high priority and teacher educators are increasingly called to use research to demonstrate the effectiveness and the impact of their teaching, their programs and ultimately, the impact on student learning. While teacher education researchers endeavour to share their research, their work is often critiqued as being self-serving, small-scale and generally not responsive to government policy directions. This chapter specifically examines these three areas: the research policy context; an examination of the current critique of teacher education research and a critical analysis and discussion of the research conducted by teacher educators within this volume. As evidenced within the chapters, many teacher educators have located their research studies within the current Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG, Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers, 2014) reform agenda. What the studies also reveal is how reform agendas are taken up by different institutions and the importance of providing the rich contextual discussion of their findings. While the majority of the studies are small-scale, viewed collectively however, they have much to offer the broader education research community. More opportunities for connected small-scale studies that highlight both macro and micro levels of teacher education are recommended.

In recent years, international policy scrutiny of national education systems has positioned teacher education and professional development as a global policy problem. In the search for solutions, global policymakers have proposed network models to govern and develop teacher education systems. This chapter considers what the layering of global networks onto national, state-level and local institutions means in the context of Australia. The chapter demonstrates how the idea of network-based workforce development relies on network forms of governance in which governments steer and set the conditions within which networks and partnerships for teacher education take place. Drawing on interview data with leaders in schools and universities, I demonstrate how the actors responsible for implementing teacher education negotiate the complexities of working in partnership (and ‘networking’) within contemporary network models of teacher education. I argue that current configurations of network governance in Australian teacher education not only increase flexibilities but also foster new practices in initial teacher education that limits the extent to which schools and universities can work together in partnership.

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.

Teacher quality has emerged as a powerful construct over the last 20 years at a global level. In Australia, it is a major discursive term in government-initiated inquiries, policy statements and enactment strategies. The quality discourse, driven by standardisation and large-scale testing, acts as a major force re-shaping teacher identity, narrowing teaching practices, and re-forming the teaching profession and professionalism. This technical framing of teaching under the mantra of quality has a significant effect on teacher education—what teachers are expected to learn, how they learn, and how they demonstrate achievement of learning. Governance of education through the mantra of quality restricts teacher education at the same time as teacher educators’ perspectives are marginalised. Critical analyses are needed to map workings of the term in the policy landscape. This chapter, framed within the research field of critical policy studies, identifies the distinctive contribution of teacher educators in the most recent Australian inquiry into the teaching profession and challenges the regimes of truth that constrain teacher education at both local and global levels.

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.

This paper reports on findings from research currently in progress that examines anti‐ homophobia education in teacher education courses across New South Wales, Australia. Focusing on one aspect of the broader study, the discussion explores why teacher educators generally considered the incorporation of anti‐homophobia perspectives as important to teacher education as well as the various discourses in which these issues were located. It also highlights the changing discursive locations that frame the incorporation of anti‐ homophobia education across the early childhood, primary and secondary sectors as well as demonstrating how broader sociocultural discourses influence teacher educators' perceptions of the relevance and importance of these issues to teacher training.

This paper reports the findings of a project—‘Lifelong learning and teacher education’—undertaken by the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University, under the auspices of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. The study was designed to investigate the operationalization of lifelong learning in Australian teacher education. The study revealed that there is a range of existing, innovative practices regarding partnerships between schools and higher and further education that are in keeping with emerging ideas about lifelong learning. Moreover, some of these take the form of collaborative action research projects focused on improving the learning occurring in the partnership schools. This paper describes some current approaches in Australia to collaborative action research by teacher educators' and their partnership schools and shows how they contribute to lifelong learning. The approaches are then analyzed to suggest ways of advancing lifelong learning within Australian Education Faculties thus helping to make lifelong learning more of a reality for all.

The structures of teacher education in Australian tertiary institutions should change to take advantage of changes in the context of teacher education. In particular, the teacher education institutions should become more involved in all aspects of school-based teacher education.

This study reflects that teacher education in Health and Physical Education (HPE) has long grappled with the challenge of how to disrupt pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) established attitudes about HPE that may limit their capacity to positively engage with a diverse student population. This paper describes the development, validation and interpretation of the Stereotypical Attitudes in Health and Physical Education scale (SAHPE) for use in teacher education institutions. The scale was developed as a means of exploring the extent to which PSTs perpetuate or reject discriminatory attitudes and stereotypes that have been identified as having some historical and cultural acceptance in Health and Physical Education. It was designed as a tool to generate data that can be used by teacher educators with PSTs to better understand and problematise stereotypical attitudes that ultimately impact diversity and inclusion in HPE classrooms. This paper details the design process and pilot research that enabled validation of the scale for use by Australian teacher educators. For the purposes of validation, the SAHPE scale was administered to 109 pre-service teachers at one Australian university. Rasch modelling and confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS version 20.0 was employed to determine the measurement properties of the instrument and the construct validity of factors. Results from the study showed that a 17-item factor structure of the SAHPE is a valid and reliable predictor of a construct related to stereotypical attitudes. The discussion addresses the future application of the SAHPE as an instrument for teacher educators to use in efforts to enhance inclusion in HPE.