Teacher Education In Australia

In the last decade in Australia teacher education has undergone numerous critical reviews, yet little on the teacher education front appears to have changed. Related to this, the teaching profession's struggles to cope with a changing world have been publicly documented and an increasing push for improved school outcomes from Australian governments, at both the state and federal level, appear as regular pieces in the national press. This forms a complex situation involving competing concerns, and raises questions concerning what to make of the situation and how to move teacher education forward in Australia. This book seeks to answer these questions by providing an evidence-based framework for investigating and directing teacher education practice into the future.

The book is a study of teacher preparation policy and practice in Australia from the establishment of the first colony there in 1788, to the present day. It will highlight, within an international context, how the focus of preparation moved through the following five interrelated and overlapping phases.

This book, an inaugural publication from the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), Teacher Education: Innovation, Intervention and Impact is both a product of, and seeks to contribute to, the changing global and political times in teacher education research. This book marks an historically significant shift in the collective work and outreach of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) as it endeavours to become an even more active contributor to a research-rich foundation for initial teacher education and to a research-informed teaching profession. The book showcases teacher education research and scholarship from a wide range of institutional collaborations across Australia. Studies highlight the multiple ways in which teacher education researchers are engaging with students, teachers, schools and communities to best prepare future teachers. It informs both teacher education policy and practice and is ‘a must read’ for those engaged in the education community. Above all it marks a shift for teacher educators to build a research rich teaching profession.

This study explored the range of future policies preferred by a selected sample of Australian educators and identified the grounds on which the preferences were based. Seventy-eight policy options for teacher education in Australia were identified through workshop participants and examination of reports of inquiries and investigations in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The policies were concerned with practices at the level of teacher education institutions and with national and state administration. The desirability of each policy was established through a Delphi study with a national sample of senior government administrators, heads of teacher education programs, academic staff of teacher education programs, teachers and parents of school children, and student teachers. The results can be grouped under three themes: (1) A national perspective was advocated, as much for funding reasons as for the advantages in coordinating activities; (2) There was concern that the standards and status of teachers be raised; and (3) Respondents wanted the support of teacher education increased to the level of that provided for other professions with an emphasis on quality rather than on quantity. An appendix provides detailed analyses of the responses. (Author/FG)

This volume presents distinctive, innovative models of teacher education from Australia, discusses their successful elements and considers possibilities for successful teacher education in the twenty-first century. Each model is couched within the international teacher education concerns of the theory practice nexus, school-university partnerships, reflective practice, and the role of technology. The contributing authors, drawn from different contexts and locations around Australia, each offers research-based perspectives on successful teacher education. Responses to teacher education challenges in rural and regional contexts, metropolitan areas, among low socio-economic populations and Indigenous communities are considered. Ways in which technology, and in particular mobile technology, can be used to support learning across these diverse contexts are illustrated, as is the role of reflective practice to encourage critical reflection for improving teacher learning. Collectively, the authors present a range of directions that can guide the future of teacher education both nationally and internationally, demonstrating that context, partnerships, reflection and technology are critical elements in the provision of successful teacher education.

BEST PRACTICES FROM AUSTRALIA'S HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOL SYSTEMS Empowered Educators in Australia is one volume in a series that explores how high- performing educational systems from around the world achieve strong results. The anchor book, Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World, is written by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues, with contributions from the authors of this volume. The authors of Empowered Educators in Australia take an in-depth look at the policies and practices surrounding teaching quality in two different states: New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. NSW offers significant support for government schools in areas such as staffing and teacher professional development. Victoria operates a highly devolved school system. Each provides a contrasting view of how federal and state policies combine to shape learning outcomes for students in Australia. The interplay between state and federal policy characterizes an intriguing "centralizing decentralization." Initiatives to create national curricular, teaching, and teacher education standards all sit in balanced tension with a movement towards greater devolution of authority to schools. Together the NSW and Victoria case studies provide insights into policies that can support high-quality teaching in a federal education system. Australia's current educational reforms place increasing emphasis on issues of teaching quality, reshaping teaching as a standards-based, evidence-informed profession, and one that seeks to foster collegiality and professional exchange. These reforms encompass many aspects of a system that supports teaching quality, and highlight: the way teachers are trained, how they are inducted into the teaching profession and supported with mentors, the professional learning they receive, how they are appraised on their work, and the career pathways for teachers.