Kay Martinez

Academic Induction for Teacher Educators.

This paper is a reflective exploration of major challenges facing new teacher educators as they make the transition into the academy, and of ways that best support them. The transition problems identified in the emerging body of literature about teacher educator career entry were offered for comment to a small group of new teacher educators in an Australian regional university. Their responses added complexity and nuance, suggesting a heterogeneity of entry pathways and experiences, as well as avenues for further inquiry. Consideration of the resulting issues leads to wider questions about the place of teacher education in the academy. In turn, this leads to question if the challenges faced by newly appointed teacher educators are distinctive from those experienced by all new academics. The paper argues for multidisciplinary cohorts for induction, and makes recommendations for systematic, inclusive induction programs for all new academics, including teacher educators. The paper concludes with two further recommendations. First, large‐scale research is required to inform us about the contemporary teacher education workforce. Little is currently known about entry and career pathways, nor of the impact of recent policy and funding changes such as research performativity measures and increasing employment of sessional staff. Second, induction must be seen as an organisational and professional responsibility shared by many, including new and experienced academics, faculties, departments, institutions and professional associations.

Mentoring New Teachers: Promise and Problems in Times of Teacher Shortage.

Currently enthusiasm for mentoring of new teachers has re-emerged among teacher employing authorities in Australia and the United States. The literature on mentoring provides strong support for the importance of mentoring in retaining good teachers and in invigorating the teaching workforce; it also abounds in practical strategies and processes for developing and managing mentoring programs. This paper examines several contextual aspects affecting mentoring in the current educational landscape: the differentiated impact of teacher supply, appointment and retention; changing teacher entry and career pathways; an expanded knowledge base for teaching, accompanied by increased accountability; systemic preparation and reward of mentors; and improved communication technology. Based on the premise that all learners in all schools are entitled to high quality teachers, the paper explores the potential of mentoring as both promising and risky, and calls for research to monitor the impact of mentoring on both teacher retention and learning outcomes for all children.

Unsung Heroes: Exploring the roles of school-based professional experience coordinators in Australian preservice teacher education

The literature on practicum in preservice teacher education provides varied and detailed accounts of the roles of the student teacher, the supervising teacher, and the university-based teacher educator. However, the school-based professional experience coordinator, usually the principal or deputy principal, has been dismissed as an administrative outsider to the essential triad of supervision. Feedback from the field suggested that the coordinators role may in fact be crucial in ensuring that practicum is an occasion for quality learning. This paper reports on a study to explore ways in which a small selection of professional experience coordinators contribute to the establishment, support and appraisal of high quality practicum experience in a variety of settings. The research fills a gap in the existing literature on the practicum by providing some illumination of the varied ways the school-based coordinator role is filled. In addition, the paper raises questions about selection and support of coordinators, about ownership of the practicum, and argues for a reconceptualisation of the practicum as the site where all shareholders engage in the partnership, with continual opportunities for construction, reconstruction and renewal of the teaching profession.

Preservice Teachers Adrift on a Sea of Knowledges

Abstract The paper argues for fresh recognition of the complexities faced by preservice teachers, particularly during the practicum, where they are expected to bring their stockpile of diverse, and sometimes conflicting, knowledges about effective teaching to immediate use with classroom learners. The paper abo draws on insights from postmodern theorising on the privileging of knowledges. While the major focus of the paper is on issues surrounding multiplicity of knowledges about effective classroom teaching, it is also recognised that much of learning to teach occurs in affective, ethical and interpersonal ways as well as cognitive. Several suggestions are made to assist preservice teachers negotiate the complexities of the process of becoming teachers. It is argued that the practicum in preservice teacher education can be seen as a rich site for further exploration of this process—and should be resourced commensurately. Such explorations have the potential to illuminate the ways in which preservice teac...

Problems of Ethnic and Cultural Differences Between Teachers and Students: a story of a beginning teacher of Australian Aboriginal children

ABSTRACT This paper uses the story of a beginning teachers experiences in an Australian Aboriginal Community School to illustrate the challenge of teaching children who are culturally unfamiliar to the teacher — a challenge identified as crucial for teacher education in the 90s. Brians story is recounted in some detail, and implications are drawn for teacher education; selection, appointment and appraisal of teachers; support structures for beginning teachers in such settings; and official curricula documents in those sites. It is argued that teaching is deeply imbedded in its institutional and social contexts and can make no pretence at neutrality, when faced with the demands of creating a socially just world.

A national evaluation of the Australian Occupational Therapy Competency Standards (1994): a multistakeholder perspective.

This paper summarises results from an evaluation of the adequacy and utility of the Australian Competency Standards for Entry-Level Occupational Therapists (OT AUSTRALIA, 1994a). It comprised a two-part study, incorporating an online survey of key national stakeholders (n = 26), and 13 focus groups (n = 152) conducted throughout Australia with occupational therapy clinicians, academics, OT AUSTRALIA association and Occupational Therapy Registration Board representatives, as well as university program accreditors. The key recommendations were that: (i) urgent revision to reflect contemporary practice, paradigms, approaches and frameworks is required; (ii) the standards should exemplify basic competence at graduation (not within two years following); (iii) a revision cycle of five years is required; (iv) the Australian Qualifications Framework should be retained, preceded by an introduction describing the scope and nature of occupational therapy practice in the national context; (v) access to the standards should be free and unrestricted to occupational therapists, students and the public via the OT AUSTRALIA (national) website; (vi) the standards should incorporate a succinct executive summary and additional tools or templates formatted to enable occupational therapists to develop professional portfolios and create working documents specific to their workplace; and (vii) language must accommodate contextual variation while striking an appropriate balance between providing instruction and encouraging innovation in practice.

Encounters of the first kind

This paper will discuss the analysis of the first stages of data gathering in an ethnographic research project designed to investigate the changing perspectives of beginning teachers. In November, 1986, four graduands of a B. Ed. programme of preparation for secondary teachers were interviewed. Follow-up interviews and classroom observations were conducted in February, 1987 in their third week of practice — three in state co-educational high schools and one in a private all-girls’ school.The investigation focused on the young teachers’ perspectives on teaching; on the origins of those perspectives; on their perceptions of the institutional contexts of their particular schools; and on their reactions to the world of practice. Beginning analysis suggests mixed patterns of stability and instability in teachers’ perspectives in practice, and mixed patterns of acceptance of and resistance to the institutional and systemic contexts in which these young teachers found themselves.

Teacher education: Wasteland or watershed?

It is established that the literature presents diverse positions on the impact of teacher education on beginning teacher practices. Teacher education is seen as a wasteland, a watershed for conservatism or progressivism, or a temporary influence quickly washed out by institutional and social conditions of school settings. The literature is unanimous in declaring teacher education inadequate.Data from a small scale interpretive study of entry into secondary school teaching are used to support two major claims. First, teacher education can function as a watershed equipping some beginning teachers with the competence and confidence to attempt reconstruction of existing school conditions. Second, no simple linear relationship exists between teacher education and beginning teacher practices; rather, they exist along with many other personal, institutional and social factors in a complex, interconnected network.

Personal and Institutional Influences on Beginning Teachers’ Classroom Management Perspectives

Abstract The current investigation focused upon the changing perspectives of four young student teachers in their transition from university to secondary schools. Use was made of an interpretive inquiry method, including employing interviews and classroom observations for data collection.

Still Blowin’ in the Wind: Elizabeth Eddy's diagnosis of persistent educational ills

ABSTRACT The case is argued for the continuing importance of research conducted by Eddy (1969). The work remains invaluable for its application of an anthropological framework to the investigation of linkages between beginning teachers’ work in poor inner city schools and the educational life chances for students of those schools. It is further argued that many issues raised by Eddy remain relevant to education research, policy and practice in the 1990s — issues such as the bureaucratic context of teaching, and schools’ failure to educate adequately students already socially disadvantaged.