Sandi Fielder

The worldwide teacher shortage is widely discussed in the media, schools and with politicians. One strategy to help fill the void in Australia is to use pre-service teachers. The permission to teach is not a new phenomenon; however, how policy and conditions exist in each state in Australia vary considerably. How do pre-service teachers navigate the world of permission to teach? What are the conditions and concerns expressed by those in this setting?

This presentation examines the conditions that exist in two separate but contextually similar jurisdictions within Australia. Both jurisdictions discussed in this presentation have a history of granting permission to teach, particularly in rural and remote areas. Comparing policy, conditions and support materials from Teacher Regulatory Authorities provides insight into how pre-service teachers are informed about the conditions that exist. Join with me as we explore the gaps and overlaps of information and communication available to pre-service teachers as they navigate this complex space between university study and employment in a school.

What do they feel are reasons for beginning teaching before course completion? This presentation looks at why undergraduate pre-service teachers undertake teaching as an unqualified teacher and identifies four key drivers that are discussed by participants. The voices of participants provide a strong emphasis on how this engagement provides real-life experiences, improves classroom management skills, promotes confidence and fills the needs of employers in an environment of teacher shortages.

Across the globe, we have seen an increase in the number of unqualified teachers working in schools before receiving formal qualifications. Unqualified teaching is not new, it has been used to fill gaps in the teaching workforce for several decades, typically in hard to staff, rural and remote locations. This strategy has now been included in the Australian policy setting by being one of the recommendations within the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan. The conditions for unqualified teachers vary across Australian states and between employment processes. The progression in their course, work fractions and other conditions for employment vary greatly.

What is less known is why pre-service teachers choose to become an unqualified teacher before course completion. There is even less evidence around why undergraduate pre-service teachers choose this pathway, their course progression, the impact that the role has on them and their retention in the workforce. The qualitative research reported here is the first phase of a longitudinal study and investigates the perspectives of a group of undergraduate pre-service students who have or want to undertake unqualified teaching.  Key drivers of why they have chosen or intend to choose this path are highlighted through their voice using a case-study approach. A range of drivers are explored along with future directions for the research study.

Professional Experience (Work Integrated Learning) within Australian initial teacher education is a mandated and essential component of learning to teach. Resources developed and employed to promote, assess and report on pre-service teachers’ professional learning are critical to the practice of high-level knowledge workers (the mentor teachers and university-based teacher educators) who support it. At a time of significant reform in initial teacher education and in the ways school-based and university-based teacher educators work across institutional boundaries to support this work, this paper reports on a project where university-based teacher educators’ perspectives were sought on enhanced assessment and reporting resources designed to strengthen practice and outcomes. To support and promote pre-service teacher professional learning and development across course trajectory, new assessment and reporting documents were developed to provide supervising mentor teachers with explicit guidance on indicators of practice. This followed previous iterative cycles of resource development involving university- and school-based teacher educators. These indicators were developed through consultation with a range of stakeholders connected to Professional Experience delivery and provided a course-level scope and sequence of development up to the Graduate Teacher Standards (pre-graduate indicators). The focus of this qualitative inquiry was to understand the application and implications of the course-level assessment scope and sequence through the perspectives of university-based teacher educators through semi-structured interview. The context in which Professional Experience is currently enacted includes (a) increasing shortages of experienced supervising mentor teachers, (b) more frequent use of inexperienced colleagues to mentor pre-service teachers, (c) reported workload pressures making it difficult to secure sufficient placements for pre-service teachers, and (d) reported increase in complexities being managed within many schools. As a result, policy setting is currently focused on minimising administrative workload for supervising mentor teachers, which is logical within this stated complexity. To date, policy responses have included intentions to produce and disseminate assessment templates to be implemented across the nation. These standardised assessment templates have been developed within the express purpose of reducing teachers’ workload. An unintended risk of this type of approach, like system-level adoption of standardised assessment practices, may include the removal of mentor teachers from the critical work of driving pre-service teacher professional learning and development. University-based teacher educators’ perspectives on the implementation and impact of innovative assessment resources offer opportunities to understand the implications of enhanced assessment resources (and teaching practice) within the schools, how this knowledge is reported back to universities and how it is then communicated for various purposes around pre-service teacher development and capacity. This project is significant as it responds to the needs of multiple stakeholders and environmental pressures to ensure mentor teachers are able to provide quality support and feedback to PSTs to enhance the future teaching workforce. Furthermore, it provides pre-service teachers with a scaffolded trajectory towards graduate teacher level.

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.

Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers in rural and remote locations is an ongoing issue. Extended pre-service teacher internship is one approach used to expose pre-service teachers to rural and remote career opportunities. We examine the lived experiences of Daisy, a teaching internship participant who relocated to a large regional town to undertake an extended final-year teaching internship. The research reported here, examines early career outcomes and career trajectories of participants in a 12-month final-year, pre-service teaching internship. We frame our mixed methods research project by aligning responses from 127 survey results and 8 interviews to Communities of Practice and the Early Career Teachers Resilience Framework. Using key theoretical concepts of Communities of Practice to analyse the data, we capture insight of the internship through Daisy’s voice which exemplifies the challenges and rewards of working in regional contexts. The support and structure of the program scaffolded Daisy during her internship period, and as she transitioned into her early career phase. Daisy emphasised understanding of place and context and articulated significant events and relationships that develop within the internship program. Her recollection of the impact of the internship aligned strongly with the Early Career Teachers Resilience Framework. Key outcomes from the research on internships, including Daisy’s case are identified as (a) strengthening preparation for teaching, (b) connecting pre-service teachers with teaching communities, (c) consolidating the purpose and meaning of teaching, and (d) underpinning teacher professional identity work. Further recommendations for research, include a wider study of internship programs across Australia and an exploration of the conceptual framework with a broader demographic.

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.

The retention of graduate teachers in the current employment climate is critical to the profession and sustainability of our schools. In this research, participants were involved in a year-long internship program which offered the chance to partake in a community of practice within a school setting. The connection and sense of belonging those pre-service teachers developed with their school had a significant impact on their desire to remain or leave a school and the job. In this presentation, we share the importance that participants discussed in relation to belonging to a school community as part of their pathway to becoming and remaining a teacher. Implications of this study broaden the discussion and provide additional perspectives of fast-tracking quality graduates into the profession within a model that participants highlight as having long term impact on their early career development.

This case study presents the impact of a metropolitan-based preservice teacher who completed her remote placement in Broome, 2020. Rebecca was passionate about teaching in rural and remote settings and about fostering student engagement and motivation. She prioritised the success of Indigenous students and creating culturally inclusive environments. Like many career-change preservice teachers, Rebecca was a wife and young mother and embraced these roles alongside teaching. During her placement in Broome, Rebecca seized an opportunity to create a sequence of lessons in the Arts, producing a rich and culturally inclusive program. A highlight was the connection Rebecca established with a national touring group of Indigenous performers, resulting in a close relationship with the local students and school community. Working in collaboration with university staff, her mentor teacher and the performance group, Rebecca established strong relationships with staff and students and fostered creativity through the Arts Learning Area. By combining contemporary and traditional (and culturally responsive) teaching practices, she engaged and motivated students, nurtured their self-esteem, and facilitated a collective sense of pride and belonging. This culminated post-placement during NAIDOC Week celebrations, where the national touring group made a surprise visit and performed with the class to the entire school community.