Jeana Kriewaldt

Reorienting Teaching Standards: Learning from Lesson Study.

Teaching standards are regularly described as a mechanism for improving the status of the teaching profession and as a means to develop high-quality teachers. Less attention has been paid to the difficulties of fostering professional learning when externally produced standards are imposed on teachers. This paper outlines how lesson study can inform the use of teaching standards to shift the focus to centre on learning rather than teaching to richly inform national and international views on the use of teaching standards. More specifically, it explores how lesson study was a powerful process that developed a lived understanding of teaching standards and fostered two significant discursive shifts in teacher understanding of standards: from individual to collegial activity; and secondly from statements of teaching to centring the focus on processes of learning.

Learning with and from: positioning school students as advisors in pre-service teacher education

This article reports on an innovative pedagogical approach within the Learning Partnerships program in which school students help to ‘teach the teachers’ within pre-service teacher education. Classes of school students join with classes of pre-service teachers to provide input on how teachers can enhance school students’ engagement and wellbeing. The article draws on data collected from 125 students (aged 13–16) and 120 pre-service teachers in these workshops. Findings generated from a mixed methods study combining pre-workshop focus groups (n = Students: 38, Teachers: 33) and post-workshop focus groups (n = Students: 69, Teachers: 15) and post-workshop surveys (n = Students: 96; Teachers: 101) demonstrated that the workshops were mutually beneficial for both students and pre-service teachers. Participants found that workshopping together enhanced their belief in the possibility of positive student–teacher relationships. The pre-service teachers reported greater confidence in communicating with young people about the issues that affect student engagement and wellbeing. The school students reported that they were more willing to use teachers as a source of help. Implications include the need for increased attention to a ‘third space’ for learning in teacher development which provides opportunity for learning with and from young people about how to foster their engagement and wellbeing.

Educating Future Teachers: Insights, Conclusions and Challenges

Educating the teachers of the future is not without its challenges, however innovation offers alternative ways of thinking and doing. At the heart of innovation and innovative practices in initial teacher education is the professional experience, a highly valued and significant component of learning to teach. When we speak of innovation we refer to changing or creating better processes, products and ideas. This chapter highlights the insights, challenges and conclusions that have emerged from research findings of new practices in professional experience in Australian initial teacher education programs. Our analysis of the innovations presented in this volume of work brings to light three themes that help us to answer the questions that were proposed in our quest to unearth innovation in professional experience.

Clinical Practice in Education: Towards a Conceptual Framework

Clinical practice has recently emerged as a promising approach that is being applied to teaching and teacher education. Despite this growing interest, however, conceptual and practical ambiguities continue to surround the term. This chapter provides a critical and comprehensive review of how clinical practice is being conceptualised in education by: (a) identifying the core components that characterise clinical practice in education; and (b) discussing the complexities and possibilities of clinical practice in theory and practice. The chapter begins by forging a conceptual framework for understanding clinical practice by identifying three core components that are central to characterising teaching as a clinical practice profession: (1) a focus on student learning and development; (2) evidence-informed practice; and (3) processes of reasoning that lead to decision-making. In summary, we argue that clinical practice offers important possibilities for deepening the theoretical and practical aspects of teaching and teacher education, but that several cautions need to be born in mind in order for it to continue to develop into a meaningful and sustainable concept. While adapting a medical model to teaching should be done with caution and a number of caveats, on balance it offers an approach that has the capacity to strengthen teaching and teacher education.

Fostering Professional Learning Through Evidence-Informed Mentoring Dialogues in School Settings

This chapter examines how the use of a descriptive observation tool mediates post-lesson conversations that teacher educators and mentor teachers have with preservice teachers. Our principal focus was to investigate the effects of the use of evidence-informed lesson observations in combination with a dialogic approach, as the basis for feedback on teaching practice and student learning. An interpretive case study approach was designed to investigate how mentor teachers and teacher educators used the observation tool. The findings provided data about the effects the tool had on the dispositions of the participants towards collecting and interrogating classroom evidence and how these impacted on their post-lesson conversations with preservice teachers.

Introduction: Researching Innovative Perspectives in Professional Experience

Professional experience in initial teacher education has always been valued, though there is limited agreement in Australia around the structure and knowledge base. Teacher educators from a wide range of institutions and jurisdictions worked together at a conference in early 2016 to share, critique and celebrate their different perspectives and innovative programs. The result is this edited volume of 14 chapters, representing the work of 30 authors from 18 different Australian universities, a secondary school and a state regulatory authority. Through collaborations across borders and within the field, a more nuanced understanding of the varied elements of professional experience, including new and renewed knowledge, has been recorded. This chapter provides the background, aims, rationale and synopsis of sections and chapters in the volume.