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Clinical reflection with a focus on student impact is now a mandated attribute for graduate teachers across Australia via the capstone teacher performance assessment task. This policy move is forcing teacher educators to examine their programs to find space for activities that help pre-service teachers to develop the skills and dispositions required for the teacher performance assessment. Some of the best opportunities for clinical reflection occur after pre-service teachers teach lessons during their professional experience in schools. The data for this study were generated during the trial of a lesson feedback and reflection form for pre-service teachers in NSW, Australia. This study examined 13 pre-service teachers’ responses in 134 lesson feedback and reflection forms. A phenomenographic analysis was conducted on the responses to produce an inclusive and hierarchical four-level taxonomy of clinical reflection. These data showed that although all levels of the taxonomy were present in post lesson feedback and reflection forms, clinical reflection was less frequent than other categories of reflective practice such as causal. These findings have clear implications for the precision of the learning protocols deployed in professional experience experiences in teacher education for the purpose of fostering clinical reflection.

There has been an evolution in the teacher professional learning literature on what constitutes effective process. This evolution has seen a shift from a focus on the design elements to the theory of action that integrates and drives these disparate elements to create effective professional learning. This study argues that a focus on a theory of action can be enhanced when the construct of teacher collective efficacy is considered in relation to teacher professional learning. This study examined how participation in a collaborative professional learning model for primary science impacted on the teachers’ sense of their collective efficacy in a specific context in Australia. Data from interviews, professional learning sessions, written reflections and classroom observations of a group of 12 primary teachers were analysed using the construct of teacher collective efficacy. The evidence from this case study suggests that teacher collective efficacy employed as a conceptual framework may be a useful design heuristic that might enhance the quality of a teacher’s professional learning experience.

The Assessment for Learning disposition has been long established in the literature as a desirable attribute for teachers. To use the biological metaphor of adaptation, assessment for learning has been argued to be a key base pair on the teacher genome. We argue that the selection of the correct genotype for teachers is not enough. What is needed is empirical confirmation that these genotypes are expressed in the appropriate phenotypes, or teacher practices. The data in this study were generated from interviews that explored the phenotype, or practices, of six teachers who self-selected for the favoured genotype using the Teacher Assessment for Learning Literacy Tool. The findings indicate that the Assessment for Learning genotype was not always expressed in the phenotype, or practices of these six teachers. The selective environmental pressure of the Teacher Assessment for Learning Literacy Tool was not enough to activate plasticity in all the teachers. The implications are that there may need to be a combination of environmental pressures in the form of teacher professional learning interventions using the Teacher Adaptive Practice scale in concert with the Teacher Assessment for Learning Literacy Tool as well as an internal mechanism like a teacher selection tool that discriminates between rigidity and plasticity in a teacher's disposition.

Much research in the area of pre-service teacher (PST) identity formation has focused on the mentoring relationship between PSTs and their supervising teachers. While this is important to identity ...

The study uses reflexive leadership as a framework for considering teacher professional learning across a network of schools. The paper explores professional learning strategies for eight next generation leaders, both for their own leadership learning and to build their repertoire of professional learning strategies. The study found that the emerging leaders understood the benefit of collaboration between the big schools and the need for focused teacher professional learning within their own schools. They also appreciated the synergy between the design of professional learning and the types of communication required to develop shared goals and actions in teacher professional learning teams.

This study sought to tease out the antecedents of collective efficacy so they can be used to develop teacher professional learning programmes that accentuate the collective. Teachers’ sense of their collective efficacy is one of the most important in-school influences on student achievement and it demands the attention of school leaders and researchers invested in teacher professional learning. The data were gathered from focus group interviews with leaders of school-based teams of teachers. Evidence from this study points to the importance of communicative competency in these teacher leaders that enables the voice of all team members to be heard. This equitable communicative space provides for the expression of language that mediates and scaffolds teachers professional learning in their zone of proximal development. This type of professional learning environment nurtures a sense of collective efficacy among teacher teams. The findings of the study have implications for the preparation of the next generation of teacher leaders.

Teacher adaptability is a key disposition for teachers that has been linked to outcomes of interests to schools. The aim of this study was to examine how the broader disposition of teacher adaptability might be observable as classroom-based adaptive practices using an argument-based approach to validation. The findings from the initial phase of the validation study indicate that there is sufficient warrant to further develop a teacher observation instrument based on the construct of teacher adaptive practices. The study is of import to educational researchers and school leaders who are interested in the development and use of a valid and reliable teacher observation instrument designed for the purpose of promoting adaptive teacher practices.

There is a strong critique of the reductionist, technical and instrumentalist impacts of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers from critical policy researchers in education. At the same time, advocates of the standards espouse their potential as providing a common language of teaching. We argue that both views are based on logical rather than empirical warrants. Therefore, this study sought to gather empirical data via a survey of 229 teacher education students followed by focus groups in an endeavour to record their perceptions on the use of the standards as assessment criteria for professional experience. The findings are that a majority of the students were advocates of the standards as a learning scaffold. This was especially true in contexts where their supervising teachers were not au fait with the standards. The implications of this study for teacher educators are that the formative assessment potential of the standards requires pedagogical consideration in professional experience alongside their more commonly understood role as summative assessment criteria.

There has been a call for effective professional learning to improve the quality of the science teaching of primary teachers in Australia. It seems from the literature that teaching science effectively is a challenging endeavour for primary teachers. Professional learning based on the instructional core framework is an emerging approach that has been utilised sparingly in teacher professional learning in Australia. This paper reports on a case study that investigated the outcomes of one instance of a professional learning programme for primary science teachers based on the instructional core. Using a case study methodology, the current study collected data from multiple sources, including video-taped lesson observations, teacher interviews, field notes and transcripts of the teacher learning sessions. The study shows a number of positive outcomes with reference to the three areas of the instructional core framework: content, pedagogy and student skill outcomes. The findings of the paper are especially rel...

There have been continuous calls for reforms in initial teacher education as it plays a critical role in preparing future qualified teachers. One of the burning issues challenging initial teacher education is to enhance the quality of professional experience to bridge the gap between theory and practice. However, there is a dearth of research which explores how the professional experience model can support and/or hinder the learning experiences of the stakeholders such as tertiary mentors, school mentors and pre-service teachers (PSTs) in the process of theory-practice integration. The current chapter reports a research study which examines the experiences of all the stakeholders in a community of practice model of professional experience, the learning opportunities offered to them, and their changing perceptions of roles. The main sources of data were collected from the interviews with PSTs and their university and school mentors. Implications from the study highlight the role of this collaborative practicum model in providing meaningful learning opportunities for pre-service teachers, supervising teachers as well as university supervisors and redefining their roles in the professional experience in a context in Australia.

The focus of this chapter is on a historical review of pre-service teacher education in normal schools, the historical term employed here to represent school-university partnerships in initial teacher education. The purpose of this review is to distil the lessons from the modes of translation employed in the historical models and compare them to current developments in school-university partnerships in the Anglo western hemisphere. The review is limited to records that are available and written in the English language, so it is not an exhaustive review of the normal School literature. There is enough in the review to draw some implications for the future pedagogy and governance of school-based initiatives in initial teacher education. The review highlights the critical role that proactive partnerships between schools and universities play in creating spaces where a dialogue between theory and practice can occur.

Students’ creative and critical thinking is a key outcome of interest as schooling systems in OECD countries position the so-called twenty-first-century learning skills as fundamental objectives of their educational endeavours. This policy shift has piqued interest in pedagogical models that promote student creative and critical thinking of which there are many. Most of these existing models focus on curriculum design rather than delivery. Adaptive teaching is a notable exception. This study posits a model of adaptive teaching that conceptualises the interaction of the personal and environmental determinants of adaptive teaching that influence the teaching behaviours that promote student creative and critical thinking. These teaching behaviours are labelled teacher adaptive practices in this study.

This book has examined the relationship between some of the personal, environmental and behavioural determinants of adaptive teaching. It found that there is a strong relationship between the personal and environmental determinants tested in this study. The relationship between these determinants and the behavioural determinant of teacher adaptive practices was moderate. The future directions for research into a model of adaptive teaching will investigate the relationship between existing and new personal and behavioural determinants. Future refinements in the methodologies adopted for these studies are examined in the last part of this chapter.

Collaborative efforts that link school sectors and universities have been encouraged to strengthen links between teacher preparation programs and classroom realities. This chapter reports on a collaborative school system and university partnership case study that embedded inclusive education policies and frameworks with prior knowledge of factors that contribute to the successful translation of research to practice across NSW schools. This approach represents an avenue that unites multiple research and practice sources of influence to provide an extended undergraduate teacher education opportunity that gives final year teaching students the opportunity to link research and practice in authentic classrooms for a full year during their teacher training.

The implementation of the teaching standards in Australia has been informed by both developmental and regulatory discourses. Standards can be employed developmentally on professional experience as part of a growth mentoring model, through interim PEX reports and through critical dialogue about the role of the standards on campus. The developmental implementation of the standards has a better chance of achieving the translation of theory to practice in initial teacher education. This use of the standards fits well with the schema of this text. The developmental discourse fits well with the tenets of implementation science. The regulatory may fit within the principles of implementation science if the accreditation becomes a dialogue between teacher educations schools and the regulatory authorities rather than the imposition that it has been to date. The upcoming second round of accreditation with its emphasis on outcomes rather than inputs might provide an opportunity for such a discussion to occur.

Program Standard 1.2 for initial teacher education across Australia requires that all graduates from accredited programs have demonstrated that they meet the Graduate Teacher Standards in a classroom setting (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership in Guidance for the accreditation of initial teacher education in Australia. AITSL, Melbourne, 2016). AITSL (Guidance for the accreditation of initial teacher education in Australia. AITSL, Melbourne, 2016) require that this assessment be valid, reliable and moderated. There is also an underlying policy intention to make graduates not only classroom ready but assessment capable as well. This intention is labelled the pursuit of assessment-centric graduates in this chapter. Findings are reported of the implementation of a Teacher Performance Assessment based on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL in Australian professional standards for teachers. AITSL, Melbourne, 2011). The aim of the study was to make the assessment valid, reliable, moderated and feasible within the context of the current supervisory arrangements for final year teacher education students (TES). These key concepts are reviewed before the reporting of the results of the application of these concepts to a Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA). There are four main implications that can be drawn from the case study. First, steps towards increasing the standardisation of the TPA will improve its reliability but may reduce its validity. Second, the ongoing collection of all five types of validation evidence for the TPA will improve its rigour as well as generate useful benchmark evidence for ITE accreditation. Third, top-down models of TPA implementation might not be as cost-effective as the incremental improvement of reliability and validity in existing models. Finally, the focus on the assessment moderation of evidence sets will direct attention to the refinement of existing protocols such as lesson planning guides and lesson observation forms. The success of the TPA implementation will hinge on whether universities can build the type of proactive partnerships with schools built upon a shared understanding of the intention of the assessment.

The gap between research and practice in education is well articulated. A critical component that links these two key domains is implementation. Implementation science is an emerging field which appreciates that effective interventions will only result in the desired outcomes if they are employed. The implementation of research into practice is at the core of this chapter. It presents an ex post facto causal-comparative case study that builds on prior Research-To-Practice (RTP) knowledge and promotes a greater comprehension of the factors that both enabled and interfered with the successful implementation of Research-Based Programs (RBP) in school settings.

This book showcases a range of school-based and university-based research that is eclectic in its theoretical approach, design and implementation. It draws on plausible theoretical resources as they fit the authors positions, just as school-based colleagues pragmatically apply theory where it is required. The knowledge presented emerges from and is informed by the work of both researchers and practitioners who continue to work with a diverse range of current and future educators in the field of teacher education. Collectively, Grima-Farrell, Loughland and Nguyen’s work advocate for the high quality teacher education experiences that link research, theory and practice to build graduate teacher capacity for evidence-based practice. Their work shares differing insights, expertise and experiences whilst acknowledging that the empirical research that supports the translation of practices from teacher preparation courses into real world settings continues to evolve and can be further developed.

Classroom observation as a methodology is not without its critics. This critique ranges from epistemological arguments to validity issues with its controversial application as an evaluation measure of teacher effectiveness. On the methodological front, there are significant reliability and validity threats when classroom observation is used in both educational research and teacher evaluation (Harris in Carnegie Knowledge Network Brief 5, 2012). This chapter acknowledges this critique and proposes a third way for classroom observation in teacher improvement. The improvement agenda disciplines the classroom observation and moves it away from pure research or evaluation (judgement of performance) to helping teachers improve their practice. This position is supported by the argument approach to test validation endorsed by the AERA, APA and NCME.

The translation of theory to practice is a long-standing ‘wicked’ problem in initial teacher education. Recent policy debates on this problem have focused on superficial issues like the location of the program in either school or universities. These debates have overlooked the critical issue of the mechanisms within these programs that promote or hinder the translation of theory to practice for their students. The authors believe that the critical policy debate establishes a false binary that is not helpful to the practice of teacher education. This book has presented an empirically rigorous and theoretically robust discussion about what enhances the translation of theory to practice in initial teacher education regardless of location. This discussion has highlighted the important of the fundamental relationship between effective translation and implementation science. This relationship is underpinned by a developmental model of learning characterised by reciprocity, collaboration and shared goals between all the stakeholders in initial teacher education. Translation is also enhanced through models of teacher education that grant equal status to practice and theory. This equality negates the need for translation as the program logic and design embodies the abductive reasoning required when learning how to teach.

Practitioner research is considered an integral form of professional learning for teachers but in its implementation it will often encounter significant challenges. This qualitative comparative case-study of teachers in Singapore and NSW investigated the range of challenges they encountered during their work as practitioner researchers. The study employs Schatzki's practice theory to analyse the impact of practitioner research on the existing practice architectures of schools. A total of 42 participants from NSW and Singapore were interviewed for this study. The results explicate the various challenges teachers encountered and how these act to prefigure and remodel practitioner research as a practice within each of the two different settings. The findings are of interest to teacher educators working with teachers across the career span who are considering using practitioner research in their professional learning repertoire.

Non-government actors such as think-tanks are playing an important role in Australian policy work. As governments increasingly outsource policy work previously done by education departments and academics to these new policy actors, more think-tanks have emerged that represent a wide range of political views and ideological positions. This paper looks at the emergence of the Grattan Institute as one significant player in Australian education policy with a particular emphasis on Grattan’s report ‘Turning around low-performing schools’. Grattan exemplifies many of the facets of Barber’s ‘deliverology’, as they produce reports designed to be easily digested, simply actioned and provide reassurance that there is an answer, often through focusing on ‘what works’ recipes. ‘Turning around low-performing schools’ is a perfect example of this deliverology. However, a close analysis of the Report suggests that it contains four major problems which seriously impact its usefulness for schools and policymakers: it ignores data that may be more important in explaining the turn-around of schools, the Report is overly reliant on NAPLAN data, there are reasons to be suspicious about the evidence assembled, and finally the Report falls into a classic trap of logic—the post hoc fallacy.

Professional experience (PE) is a key element in the preparation of future teachers. However, a growing number of researchers have raised concerns about the need to enhance the effectiveness of the professional experience in teacher education programs and have called for innovations that will enhance the current school-based experiences within these programs. In response to this call, there have been many innovations which have been implemented worldwide. Most of the innovations place emphasis on bridging the gap between theory and practice by enhancing the quality of school-based experiences, including the one we describe in this chapter. Within the scope of this chapter, we report the findings of a case study that explored the learning experiences of preservice teachers through professional experience. The focus of this chapter is to examine the boundary objects and brokers that assisted the preservice teachers’ boundary crossing between the university and school context. The innovation in this chapter is the novel use of activity theory to examine preservice teacher learning in professional experience.

This article draws on the sociology of Basil Bernstein to show how his detailed theories of ‘recontextualisation’ and the ‘pedagogic device’ provide useful analytic levers to examine the politics of educational change. We focus on recent policy developments that have significantly impacted Australian school education: the Program for International Student Assessment; the National Assessment Programme for Numeracy and Literacy; and the government’s public dissemination of school achievement data through the MySchool website. The analysis illustrates the ways in which the logics of economic rationalism not only have become ubiquitous in Australian education policy, but have come to recontextualise – or reshape – discourses of social and educational equity through new norms of competition, standardisation and commensurability. In doing so, the paper highlights the value of a Bernsteinian approach to understanding the vernacular character of neoliberalism in contemporary educational policy.

This action learning study in a year three classroom explored the implementation of five formative assessment principles to assist students' understandings of the scientific topic of liquids and solids. These principles were employed to give students a greater opportunity to express their understanding of the concepts. The study found that the principles of formal assessment worked well in concert with the pedagogical framework of the interactive teaching model.

The study reported in this paper emerged from a concern that despite 20 years of theorizing about the practice of environmental education in Australian schools it continues to be marginalized in the school curriculum. The educational problem we set out to address was how to improve teaching and learning in relation to environmental issues in schools and the broader community in Australia. In this paper we position our study in relation to Rickinson's report on research focused on learners and learning in environmental education. We also draw on Hart and Nolan's 1999 paper on trends in environmental education research. We argue that while the aims of environmental education are well documented, and there is agreement that environmental education in schools is an important strategy in achieving environmental improvement, little is known about the environmental understandings held by children. Our study sought to provide data on the environmental understandings of young people. In order to achieve this aim w...

Environmental education in schools is an important strategy in achieving environmental protection and improvement. However, it needs to be based on children's understandings of environment rather than on assumptions of what children know and believe. In a previous article (Loughland et al ., 2002), we reported on a research project where school children's responses to an open-ended statement 'I think the term/word environment means…' were analysed using the qualitative research method of phenomenography. An important qualitative difference was found between conceptions that treat the environment as a relation and those that treat it as an object. In this article, we examine statistically the factors that incline students to a 'relation' rather than an 'object' conception of environment. We argue that development of the former would seem to be an important aim of environmental education, and indicate how this may be achieved.

Environmental education in schools is an important strategy in achieving environmental improvement. However, it needs to be based on children's understandings of environment rather than on assumptions of what children know and believe. This paper reports on a research project where school children's answers to a question 'I think the term/word environment means …' were analysed using the qualitative research method of phenomenography. Six distinct conceptions were isolated, ranging from the least sophisticated--environment as a place--to the most inclusive and expansive--environment and people in a relationship of mutual sustainability. An important qualitative difference was found between conceptions that treat the environment as an object and relational conceptions. The implications of these findings for environmental education are discussed.

The Federal Government in Australia has recently established Centres for Excellence in Teacher Education. These Centres represent a power shift towards schools in teacher education and away from centralised bureaucracies and university faculties of education. Given this shift, it is interesting to examine other historical and current school-based models of teacher education, specifically demonstration schools in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia and professional development schools in the United States. This paper discusses both models with a detailed case study of the operation of one demonstration school in Sydney, Australia. The discussion and case study reinforces the lessons of the historical models that initiatives in this area need long-term support so that they can develop the momentum necessary to achieve the long-term cultural change required., Le gouvernement fédéral de l’Australie a récemment mis sur pied des Centres d’excellence en formation des enseignants. Ces centres représentent un transfert de pouvoirs dans le domaine de la formation des enseignants, des bureaucraties centralisées et facultés universitaires vers les écoles. En regard de ce changement, il est intéressant de faire l’examen d’autres modèles de formation des enseignants en milieu scolaire. Historiques ou actuels, les modèles étudiés sont les écoles de stages d’Angleterre, des États-Unis et de l’Australie ainsi que les écoles de développement professionnel américaines. Cet article présente les deux modèles ainsi qu’une étude de cas détaillée sur les opérations d’une école de stages située à Sydney en Australie. La présentation des deux modèles et l’étude de cas supportent les leçons tirées des modèles historiques. En effet, ceux-ci soutiennent que les initiatives dans ce domaine requièrent un support à long terme pour développer le dynamisme nécessaire à la concrétisation des changements culturels requis à long terme.

This paper analyses action research’s uncertain foundations in graduate teaching degrees. This analysis focuses on one Master of Teaching program in Australia, and is conducted by the program coordinator in partnership with a recent graduate of the program. Uncertainty is traced to the structural incoherence of the program that is created by the influence of disparate philosophies of teacher education. The philosophy and practice of the program is informed by both the scholar teacher and reflective practitioner models of teacher education. It is argued that these models are incommensurable and lead to a poor use of action research during the internship of the program. The action research would be more authentic if a phronetic model of teacher education underpinned the entire program rather than just the final internship. This phronetic model will remain an ideal because of the prevailing hegemony of neo-liberalism that supports a means-rationality associated with performing to the graduate standards rather than a values-rationality associated with developing a lifelong habit of phronetic practice., Cet article explore les bases incertaines sur lesquelles repose la recherche-action dans les programmes de maîtrise en enseignement. Il cible son analyse sur un programme de maîtrise en enseignement offert en Australie, analyse pilotée par un coordonnateur du programme et un étudiant récemment gradué de ce programme. L’incertitude trouve son origine dans une incohérence structurelle du programme, incohérence créée par l’influence de diverses philosophies hétéroclites de la formation des enseignants. La philosophie et la mise en pratique du programme s’inspirent à la fois du modèle de l’enseignant chercheur et du concept du praticien réflexif, approches du domaine de l’éducation. Les auteurs soutiennent que ces modèles sont incommensurables et engendrent une mauvaise utilisation de la recherche-action lors des stages faisant partie du programme. La recherche-action serait plus authentique si un modèle phronétique de la formation des enseignants soutenait le programme dans son ensemble plutôt que seulement le dernier stage. Ce modèle phronétique demeurera un ideal puisque l’hégémonie néo-libérale actuelle préconise une action rationnelle en finalité, associée à l’atteinte de normes de graduation, plutôt qu’une rationalité spécifique aux valeurs, nécessaire au développement d’habitudes de vie propres à la pratique phronétique.