Sandi Fielder

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.

There is an unprecedented worldwide shortage of teachers that is expected to reach beyond 40 million by 2030. In Australia, this number was reported to surpass 4,000 in 2025. One strategy being promoted to fill the gaps in the workforce is utilising unqualified teachers who are studying an initial teacher education qualification. Conditions for unqualified teachers within Australia vary depending on the state, and Western Australia has had unique requirements in comparison with the remainder of the country. The call to utilise unqualified teachers relies on little evidence of impact and outcomes for those involved and the system overall. Little evidence is currently available on why undergraduate pre-service teachers choose this pathway, the impact the role has on them and their course progression, and ultimately, their retention in the workforce. This longitudinal qualitative research seeks to understand what motivates pre-service teachers to undertake teaching before course completion within the Western Australian context from a participant’s perspective. Key motivations are identified and explored, leading to further research directions and links to evidence to support unqualified teachers in the future.

Within initial teacher education (ITE), there is a complex and dynamic relationship between the theoretical content delivered within university settings and the practical components experienced within schools. Strengthening the nexus between the two represents the ongoing work of teacher educators and an ongoing challenge for pre-service teachers. Extended teaching internships (e.g., of 12 months duration) provide opportunities to develop pre-service teachers’ knowledge through classroom application. These extended professional experience components are justified through how they facilitate entry into the profession and support graduate teachers’ traction within the early career phase – an outcome commonly referred to in Australian policy and public discourse as being ‘classroom-ready’. This mixed-methods research presents findings from an examination of a year-long internship. Through surveys and interviews, graduates shared their experiences and perspectives of what they gained from their involvement. Drawing on conceptual tools of community of practice and pillars of the Framework of Conditions Supporting Early Career Teacher Resilience, the analysis identified participants’ sense of belonging and employability as regular and significant outcomes of the internship. Participants reported feeling a sense of belonging to their internship school colleagues and to teaching, explaining this as an influential factor to graduate employment, early career traction and pathways that carried them beyond the early career phase. These findings have implications for the priorities and outcomes pursued through extended internships, especially during a time where employment-based internships are burgeoning. Further long-term research is needed to understand the extent of impact of extended internships on career trajectories and continuity.

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.

Early career teacher retention and progression are complex issues which inform discourse about and review of pre-service teacher preparation. Debate about how to best connect pre-service teachers’ theoretical learning about teaching to practical application and reflection within the classroom (praxis) is ever-present within this dialogue. Extended teaching internship is identified as effective for connecting these elements of learning to teach, through sustained placement activity situated within supportive school environments. These extended experiences are located within communities of practice and facilitate ongoing reflection on transitions from pre-service to early career teaching. The mixed methods research reported here focused on participants’ retrospective views of an extended internship and highlighted key elements that connected practice with developing understandings of what it means to be a teacher. Participants’ perspectives emphasised how their experiences established vital connections between them and the profession. Analysis of these data underpinned the development of a conceptual framework (Teacher Development and Progression Framework) that illustrates the complex nature of learning to teach and how interdependent factors support momentum and traction into and beyond the early career phase.