Teacher Education for the Middle Years of Schooling: Making Connections between Fields of Knowledge, Educational Policy Reforms and Pedagogical Practice

Abstract

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.