Jeanne Allen

Integrating theory and practice in the pre-service teacher education practicum

This article reports on a study into student teachers’ perceptions about their professional development during practicum. Framed within a symbolic interactionist perspective, the study examined to what extent, and how effectively, one group of student teachers was able to integrate theory and practice during a three-week practicum in the first year of their degree. The context for this mixed methods study was a Master of Teaching, graduate-level entry programme in the Faculty of Education at an urban Australian university. Although there is a strong field of literature around the practicum in pre-service teacher education, there has been a limited focus on how student teachers themselves perceive their development during this learning period. Further, despite widespread and longstanding acknowledgement of the ‘gap’ between theory and practice in teacher education, there is still more to learn about how well the practicum enables an integration of these two dimensions of teacher preparation. In presenting three major findings of the study, this paper goes some way in addressing these shortcomings in the literature. First, participants in this study largely valued both the theoretical and practical components of their programme, which stands in contrast to the commonly identified tendency of the student teacher to privilege practice over theory. Second, opportunities to integrate theory and practice were varied, with many participants reporting the detrimental impact of an apparent lack of clarity around stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities. Third, participants overwhelmingly supported the notion of linking university coursework assessment to the practicum as a means of bridging the gap between, on the one hand, the university and the school and, on the other hand, theory and practice.

A fundamental partnership: the experiences of practising teachers as lecturers in a pre-service teacher education programme

This paper reports an evaluation of an innovative university–school partnership in which teacher practitioners work as university lecturers in a regional Australian pre‐service teacher education programme. The philosophy of this programme encompasses authentic partnerships between universities, schools and other industry employers. The study was motivated by an interest inunderstanding the experiences and outcomes for the teacher practitioners and in documenting their experiences. Staff members who are currently on contract as university lecturers as well as teachers who have completed secondments and returned to school settings are surveyed. This paper focuses on suggestions to improve the partnership and discusses future directions for the partnership.

A 'Partnership in Teaching Excellence': ways in which one school-university partnership has fostered teacher development

This paper reports on some of the factors that contribute to an effective partnership between an urban Australian university and a State Department of Education. The partnership, currently in its third year of implementation, entails as a key purpose the development of school Centres of Excellence which contribute to the preparation of pre-service teachers. The foundational aims of the partnership include addressing the gap between theory and practice, facilitating pre-service teacher recruitment and providing a guarantee of future employment for identified Faculty of Education students through the provision of pre-service teacher scholarships. Data for the study were collected via two program reviews, conducted at the end of the first and third years of the program. Findings point to ways in which the partnership has enhanced pre-service teacher engagement and learning and also indicate ways in which partners in both institutions might further strengthen the partnership.

Using Mead's Theory of Emergence as a Framework for Sociological Inquiry into Pre-Service Teacher Education

In this paper we take up Changs (2004) challenge to apply Meads theory of emergence in sociological inquiry. Largely overlooked by scholars, this theory is shown to prove explanatory in one field where limited solutions have been found to date. Specifically, the theory sheds light on how the theory-practice gap is created and sustained in pre-service teacher education. The argument is that under current institutional arrangements the trainee/beginning teacher encounters different and oft-times conflicting environmental, social and cultural conditions in the two ‘fields of interaction’ (Mead, 1934: 249) of their training program, namely, the on-campus pre-service program and the school. The argument draws on interview and focus group data collected via a study of first-year graduate teachers of an Australian pre-service teacher education program. We conclude that the Meadian mechanisms of role taking and self-regulated behaviour within the two environmental fields of interaction inhibit the trainee/beginning teacher from exercising the power of agency to implement theory learned at university in practice in the classroom. In this sense Meads theory of emergence predicts the obduracy of the gap between theory and practice in teacher education.

Raising levels of school student engagement and retention in rural, regional and disadvantaged areas: is it a lost cause?

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the views of key members of the educational community about student engagement and retention in rural, regional and disadvantaged areas of the Australian state of Tasmania. It provides insights into the attributed reasons for the longstanding low levels of student retention in Tasmania, and the possible ways to militate against the widely censured problem of students leaving school too soon. The paper draws from principles of Bronfenbrenner’s model of ecology to situate the 25 participants who formed the sample of the study in the exosystem of the environment of the young people whose educational attainment and retention in schools is the focus of this work. Data analysis generated three major themes: families and the socio-cultural environment; teachers and teaching; and the school system. The study’s findings play an important role in prompting us to question when, and if, the dire situation of student dropout in the state and in similar contexts worldwide will begin to be reversed. Implications of the work include the need to develop and sustain a strong policy environment in which high-quality education and schooling success are contextualised as key features to which members across the systems and sections of society can contribute.

Partnerships in action: What's in it for us?

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of the role and experiences of the teacher practitioner within the partnership arrangement in the Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM) degree at the Rockhampton campus of Central Queensland University (CQU). The paper begins by discussing the concept of partnerships and the background to current pre-service teacher education programs in Australia. It then introduces the BLM, documenting the experiences of partner-teachers involved in the program and analysing this model of partnership. The paper concludes with some suggestions for improving teacher–lecturer partnerships.

Editorial: Teacher education for enduring impact

The six papers in this issue address, in different ways, teacher education1 programs and initiatives for practising teachers. While the necessity of ongoing professional learning across all the professions is a given, we argue that it is of increasing importance in teaching in the current era. The shift in many countries in the 21st century to the standardisation of teaching means that teachers and school leaders are required to account for their teaching practices in ways to which they were not previously called. In Australia, for example, engaging in professional learning represents one of seven standards of practice (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), 2011) and, in the United Kingdom, the Teachers’ Standards (United Kingdom Department of Education, 2011) require teachers to take responsibility for developing their teaching skills through appropriate professional development. The introduction of these types of accountability measures has led to changes in many quarters in the ways in which professional learning is conceived and delivered, as well as to increased scrutiny from the educational and broader communities of the efficacy of teacher professional learning measures (see, e.g., Darling-Hammond, Chung Wei, & Andree, 2010; Productivity Commission, 2017).

Supporting quality research in teacher education

In complex and often volatile environments, all those associated with the work of teaching are increasingly challenged to demonstrate the ways in which we impact positively upon the diverse students, families and carers who must be at the centre of our decision making. Demonstrating the value of our work (in all its many and varied forms) requires access to research and research data that is of the highest possible quality: research that is regarded internally and externally as credible, reliable and meaningful. This credibility rests, in large part, upon the rigorous review and critique of our scholarship through the processes of peer review.

Some reflections about the political epistemologies of teacher education research

This issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education highlights the breadth of scholarship associated with teacher education. Given the complexity of the field of educational research, including the diversity of theoretical and methodological ideas/ approaches that the field draws upon, this breadth is to be expected. Like the authors of the papers in this journal, we as members of the editorial team, need to continuously reflect on our own research practices. All of us involved in teacher education research need to ask questions about what have become normalized or normative research practices and attempt to push at the boundaries of such practices. In this editorial, we briefly review each of the papers in this issue. Then, we attempt to generate a pause, and space for reflection; to slow down our scholarship, in order to raise some questions that have arisen for us recently as we have engaged in teacher education research. In what follows, we present an overview of each of the papers in this issue of the journal, and then we return to our “pause” for reflection. In the first paper, Moodie and Patrick write about their work with non-Indigenous teacher educators in relation to the Australian Professional Standards requirement that all teachers demonstrate knowledge and understandings of Indigenous students and cultures. The authors use an anticolonial theoretical framework that attempts to disrupt “settler grammars” in their work with teacher educators. They justify the use of this anticolonial theoretical framework arguing that the Australian Professional Standards requirement could be interpreted within essentialist and ahistorical understandings of Indigenous peoples and perspectives. Settler grammars, the authors argue, attempt to maintain colonialist myths around Indigenous homogeneity, and in so doing, subordinate the knowledges of Indigenous people, and marginalise political questions around reconciliation. The paper has significance beyond Australia to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond dealing with the political dimensions of settler colonialism. In the second paper, Burridge and Chodkiewicz focus on the issue of human rights and how this might be an essential component of the Australian curriculum. The authors argue that teachers have a moral responsibility to create social change through schooling. Social change is to be generated through teacher activism, critical pedagogy, and inculcating in students capacities to think critically. In this paper the vehicle for teacher activism for social change is centred on the inclusion of human rights education in the school curriculum and incorporates teaching about human rights, through human rights, and for human rights. The authors open up a discussion about the purposes of schooling and the purposes of education, making a case for the transformative role of schooling in society. ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION, 2017 VOL. 45, NO. 5, 435–438 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2017.1377916

Motivation matters: the role of teacher education research in responding to long-standing problems

Thirty years later, de Certeau’s words continue to resonate powerfully with us and, we believe, with many who work in education. In formal and informal sites of learning, people, ideas, beliefs and opinions are routinely ranked and sorted creating hierarchies of belonging and exclusion and relegating, in the process, so very many “others” into the landscape of the forgotten. Explorations of the gaps and silences produced and reflected in educational practices have, of course, motivated research in a great many fields. Enriched and informed by scholarship that draws upon, for example, queer, feminist or post-colonial theory, many educational researchers have worked hard and long to highlight those who are forgotten within so-called mainstream educational texts and contexts. We have become increasingly conscious of the ways in which some individuals and groups are positioned on the margins of an educational environment and, by extension, routinely kept silent. But what is the impact of this work on the day-to-day practices through which teacher education is constituted? As knowledge concerning the diverse and complicated ways in which factors such as sexuality or gender or cultural background or socio-economics can shape, constrain or enable educational and life journeys has continued to grow, it often seems that teacher education programs have constricted in regards to the space that is devoted to in-depth analysis of these complicated issues. As more and more policies and interventions seek to ensure the “quality” of teacher preparation – and as more and more anxiety is communicated about teachers’ skills in areas relating to literacy, numeracy or science – subjects that explore the social context of schooling sometimes struggle to assert their legitimacy. This is, of course, more than slightly ironic. Extremely diverse data sets demonstrate that in Australia and internationally teachers commonly identify the need to teach “diverse” and diversifying learners as a major and serious challenge. Government solutions to the “long tail” of underperformances within tests such as PISA and TIMMS routinely focus on teachers’ content and disciplinary knowledge. And yet, of course, teachers don’t just teach subjects. Teachers teach people. The skills required to work with heterogeneous learners in appropriate, respectful and impactful ways are many and varied, but rest upon the foundational ability to understand how meanings about difference are constructed in the first place. ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION, 2017 VOL. 45, NO. 3, 209–212 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2017.1308671