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This study focuses on early childhood pre-service teacher education students as they engage with the BRiTE (Building Resilience in Teacher Education) modules during their studies. These modules are designed to provide pre-service teachers with a range of strategies to support their resilience. The BRiTE modules are integrated into subject content in each year of the degree. The study explores pre-service teachers' capacity to exercise strategies and build resilience throughout their studies and during their Professional Experience placements. First-year students were surveyed about anticipated challenges in their initial placement following completion of the 'Building Resilience' and 'Relationships' modules. Eleven interviews were then undertaken with pre-service teachers across each year cohort, exploring individual stories of challenge and resilience whilst on placement. Analysis of responses revealed a range of challenges including the desire to 'belong' and develop relationships, which pre-service teachers managed in increasingly proactive ways as they took on teacher identity. Pre-service teachers identified strategies from the modules that they applied in their practice and had suggestions for effective ways to embed BRiTE in the degree. The study has implications for support of pre-service teachers preparatory to, and on, entering the profession.

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) were devised to identify the attributes, skills and practices required of teachers at various career stages. This study investigates final-year preservice teachers’ self-reported confidence against the APST at the graduate career stage. This mixed-method study used a Likert scale survey and interviews. Preservice teachers indicated areas of confidence, and also identified potential gaps in their teacher preparation with 30% or more of preservice teachers indicating they lacked confidence to: Use strategies to support full participation of students with a disability; demonstrate understanding for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; engage with parents and carers to support student learning; and report on student learning to parents and carers. Qualitative data (n=10) explained reasons for these potential gaps, such as a “lack of experience in these areas of teaching” and a need for “universities to ensure experiences in these areas during practicum”.

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) were devised to identify the attributes, skills and practices required of teachers at various career stages. This study investigates final-year preservice teachers’ self-reported confidence against the APST at the graduate career stage. This mixed-method study used a Likert scale survey and interviews. Preservice teachers indicated areas of confidence, and also identified potential gaps in their teacher preparation with 30% or more of preservice teachers indicating they lacked confidence to: Use strategies to support full participation of students with a disability; demonstrate understanding for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; engage with parents and carers to support student learning; and report on student learning to parents and carers. Qualitative data (n=10) explained reasons for these potential gaps, such as a “lack of experience in these areas of teaching” and a need for “universities to ensure experiences in these areas during practicum”.

This paper proposes a framework for building resilience in teacher education. The framework is informed by a focused review of relevant literature to determine factors that may be addressed in teacher education to support teacher resilience and ways in which this may occur. Findings show that personal and contextual resources along with use of particular strategies all contribute to resilience outcomes and that many of these can be developed in teacher education. Using these findings, a comprehensive resilience framework is proposed with five overarching themes - understanding resilience, relationships, wellbeing, motivation and emotions. Implementation possibilities are discussed.

The intention of this chapter is to align the perspectives of planning and assessment. It draws on the current debate about what drives planning and whether assessment informs, or is the endpoint, of planning. The chapter acknowledges that planning and assessment occur together and require concurrent attention and consideration. Learning how to plan has long been recognised as a foundation skill in teaching. Recent research indicates that teachers learn about teaching through planning, and in tum learn about planning through their teaching (Mutton et al., 2011). For you, as a pre-service teacher, lesson planning will involve making decisions about strategies for teaching and learning, questioning and assessment of, as, and for, learning. While much has been written about different approaches to teaching, practitioners in the classroom have some common intentions. The first is an acknowledged focus on learningwhere students are active participants in the learning journey. The second is the need to encourage students to think- learning is not meant to occur within a two-dimensional 'serve it on a platter' mode, but requires active cognitive involvement or engagement. The third intention is to engage students in activities. The underpinning of action and a focus on doing can be aligned with experiential learning- it is where students are encouraged to link their learning; to give it meaning and relevance. Context is also important, and creating a positive learning environment is not only conducive to effective learning, but also vital in developing self-efficacy and self-esteem. Ultimately, teachers want to help their students learn how to learn. This is integral to their role, as is their function as facilitator of learning.

This chapter focuses on how professionalism underpins the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. These Standards provide a framework for what teachers know, understand and do within classroom learning environments and how their teaching practice can be described in terms of focus points for ongoing professional learning.

The BRiTE (Building Resilience in Teacher Education) project aims to create a series of five online modules designed to develop pre-service teachers' personal and social capabilities for professional resilience. These modules will be created as reusable learning objects, so they can be embedded in a variety of learning management systems (i.e. Blackboard, Moodle) used by universities around Australia. This poster presentation will highlight the intended outcomes for a nationally funded project to deliver online modules designed to support pre-service teachers' professional resilience, it will review the online development that was informed by design-based research and engage participants in the approach of design, including the stakeholder trials and ongoing dissemination as an integral part of the process.