Kathryn Dehle

Professional Experience placements provide invaluable opportunities for pre-service teachers to connect their expanding knowledge to teaching practice. When done well, these experiences are underpinned by purposeful and continuous guidance from experienced mentor teachers. Significantly, the participation and engagement of Australian mentor teachers in this process is voluntary in nature, meaning the system relies on teachers ‘opting-in’ to mentoring. This research examines mentor teacher participation within Secondary-level initial teacher education courses and highlights issues relating to overall mentor teacher (and host school) engagement. Analysis of placement data over a five-year period to 2021 illustrates a significant change in participation with a dwindling number of mentor teachers participating in placement activity. Other insights include a declining rate of school and mentor teacher participation and an over-reliance on a portion of the teaching workforce to sustain these preparatory experiences. These findings highlight structural and systematic gaps negatively impacting on the delivery and quality of initial teacher education, which in turn have broad implications for the current national workforce shortage in Secondary teaching.

Australian teacher education programs must include a summative, capstone assessment of students' achievement against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (a teaching performance assessment). This program accreditation requirement seeks to ensure graduate teachers are adequately prepared for the academic and practical demands of career entry. Research has examined a range of issues related to these assessments however examination of school-based teacher educators' contributions to this process is limited. School-based teacher educators work across school and university settings with pre-service teachers, drawing on their knowledge of both settings to enhance teacher preparation. This research explored the perceptions of these teacher educators as trained panellists involved in the assessment of one teaching performance assessment. Using constructs drawn from Carlile's work on boundary objects (2002), researchers analysed the meaning (knowledge), language (syntax) and pragmatics (practice) emerging from their movement between the intersecting worlds of university and school. Findings highlight the teaching performance assessment acted as an influential boundary object which reshaped par-ticipants' practice, on both sides of this boundary. Participants reported expanded knowledge of university and school practices for preparing pre-service teachers. The implications of this include enhanced practice, increased knowledge of conducive conditions for preparing pre-service teachers and improved assessment enactment. These findings illustrate the benefits of expanded engagement of these educators and their effective transfer of inherent knowledge back and forth across the threshold between their intersecting teaching contexts.

For some time in Australia, there have been concerns expressed from the political sector about the high rate of burn-out in early career teachers and the teacher shortage that currently exists in Australia. In response to political pressure regarding these concerns, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership sought to ensure that graduate teachers were effectively prepared to manage academic and practical demands of their early teaching career, by introducing a teaching performance assessment (TPA) into the course accreditation framework. Subsequently, it was mandated for Australian teacher education programs to include a TPA as a summative, capstone assessment of students' achievement in relation to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

To date, research relating to school-based teacher educators' experiences of the TPA process has been limited. Understanding this space is significant because school-university partnerships underpin the effective preparation of pre-service teachers to manage the complexities of teaching. However, there is not always a willingness for school-based educators to process and transfer knowledge about teacher preparation across school and university boundaries. Our qualitative research explored the perceptions of school-based educators through semi-structured interviews, enabling participants to share their experiences when engaging in the delivery of the TPA. Findings identified the TPA as an influential boundary object with potential to shape school-based teacher educators' practice on either side of this boundary.

Analysis was conducted by use of constructs drawn from Carlile's work on boundary objects (2002), to examine the meaning (semantics), language (syntax) and practice (pragmatics) in relation to the movement of school-based educators across boundaries between the university and school to engage with TPA. In engaging with the assessment, participants demonstrated a willingness to transfer knowledge and action between university and school and back again and were proactive within the TPA. Implications include enhanced awareness of the influential nature of school-based teacher educators in driving initiatives within initial teacher education and strengthening the outcomes.

Impactful initial teacher education can be characterised by significant industry engagement between stakeholders within schools and universities. School-university partnerships ensure the content of initial teacher education courses are responsive to the needs of the profession. Collaboration within these partnerships provide opportunities for knowledge generation, innovation and effective resolutions to the challenges faced by educators. As a result, these relationships enhance opportunities for pre-service teachers to learn about the profession in powerful ways. These partnerships, then, enhance the outcomes for both learning contexts. As part of our ongoing school-university partnerships,industry partners have been strategically involved in the assessment processes of the teaching performance assessment (QTPA). This paper presents the perspectives of school leaders and teachers who have participated in assessing QTPA written submissions and sitting on QTPA assessment panels. Analysis of data emphasises the voice of school-based colleagues and their important role in the preparation of graduate teachers. Drawing on interview data, participants reflect on their experiences in the QTPA process. From this, two key perspectives emerge. Firstly, school leaders’ perspectives highlight the value of school-university collaboration on the QTPA assessment for the value it has for preparing graduate teachers for future teaching contexts and roles. Secondly, leaders emphasise the value that exists for schools in adopting shared practices and language for strengthening teacher practice.

Academic writing has been difficult to prioritise over the past three years due to the increased disruption of COVID-19. Workload pressures of early career researchers and higher degree research students within the Education discipline have increased. Prioritising academic writing, along with the need to create new writing opportunities led to a small but focused group of committed participants to create a communities of practice approach to academic writing. In this presentation, we share early findings from our collaborative approach, including key success factors for higher research degree students and academic writers seeking to establish a collaborative writing practice. The importance of the community in supporting and nurturing members to become more productive has been a key result as each participant held different expectations and pursued personally significant outcomes.

Professional Experience is an essential component of Australian initial teacher education, where pre-service teachers develop in response to the support and guidance of their experienced mentor teachers. The participation and engagement of mentor teachers is often voluntary and relies heavily on their good will, yet this involvement is fundamental to a range of outcomes associated with teacher education. The voluntary nature of participation emphasises the need for integrated and coherent systems to operate between universities, schools and systems, often framed around partnerships. Various legislative and funding arrangements have created ambiguity and complexity in relation to partnerships and inhibit system-wide approaches to effectively and efficiently create aligned systems of practice and collaboration. Research also highlights that there is great variability in the experience, perspectives and training undertaken by mentor teachers. The system relies on high quality mentoring from highly accomplished and experienced teachers who draw on expertise and have engaged in targeted training for this work. The disruption and impact caused by COVID-19 is reshaping the teaching workforce and has implications for who is putting their hands up to mentor pre-service teachers. This study analyses system-generated data of participation of mentor teachers to identify patterns of regularity of mentor teacher engagement, clusters of repeated mentoring by school, district, sector and system. These data have implications for initial teacher education providers seeking to meet the professional learning needs of this workforce as they pursue high quality experiences for their students in a rapidly changing context.