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.

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.

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.

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.

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.