Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) : building the ICT in education capacity of the next generation of teachers in Australia

The Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) project is a unique nationally significant project funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations (DEEWR, Au$8.8 million) and the Information and Communication Technology Innovation Fund (ICTIF). This 2011-2012 project has ambitiously attempted to build the ICT education (ICTE) capacity of the next generation of Australian teachers through its focus on pre-service teachers, teacher educators and the new Australian Curriculum. This paper will provide an overview of the project including a description of its genesis in a changing educational and political landscape, its structure and operations, its grounding in contemporary theory, the research opportunities it has engendered and its tangible outcomes.

An enquiry into the professional competence of inclusive education teachers in Beijing: Attitudes, knowledge, skills, and agency

Attitudes, knowledge, and skills are widely recognised as the three pillars of professional competence of inclusive education teachers. Studies emerging from the Chinese context consider these three pillars important for the practice of Learning in Regular Classrooms—an idiosyncratic Chinese form of inclusive education. Our mixed methods study reveals that agency is the fourth pillar of the professional competence for inclusive education teachers in Beijing, China. Results from comparative analysis indicate that the level of teachers’ agency is significantly lower than that of their attitudes, knowledge, and skills. We offer some implications for policy and practice in inclusive education.

The discursive positioning of graduating teachers in accreditation of teacher education programs

This paper uses discourse analysis techniques associated with Foucauldian archaeology to examine a teacher education accreditation document from Australia to reveal how graduating teachers are constructed through the discourses presented. The findings reveal a discursive site of contestation within the document itself and a mismatch between the identified policy discourses and those from the academic archive. The authors suggest that rather than contradictory representations of what constitutes graduating teacher quality and professionalism, what is needed is an accreditation process that agrees on constructions of graduate identity and professional practice that enact an intellectual and reflexive form of professionalism.

Digital competence and professional development of vocational education and training teachers in Queensland

Teaching with digital technologies is essential to the development of 21st century students’ graduate capabilities. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which Queensland VET teachers engage with digitally-enhanced teaching, or have the capacity to do so. Using a mixed methods approach, this thesis investigated the current digital teaching capacities of VET teachers and how current professional development opportunities are helping to address their learning needs.

Professional development for the integration of biotechnology education

Views on the nature and relevance of science education have changed significantly over recent decades. This has serious implications for the way in which science is taught in secondary schools, particularly with respect to teaching emerging topics such as biotechnology, which have a socio-scientific dimension and also require novel laboratory skills. It is apparent in current literature that there is a lack of adequate teacher professional development opportunities in biotechnology education and that a significant need exists for researchers to develop a carefully crafted and well supported professional development design which will positively impact on the way in which teachers engage with contemporary science. This study used a retrospective case study methodology to document the recent evolution of modern biotechnology education as part of the changing nature of science education; examine the adoption and implementation processes for biotechnology education by three secondary schools; and to propose an evidence based biotechnology professional development model for science educators. Data were gathered from documents, one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions. Analysis of these data has led to the proposal of a biotechnology professional development model which considers all of the key components of science professional development that are outlined in the literature, as well as the additional components which were articulated by the educators studied. This research is timely and pertinent to the needs of contemporary science education because of its recognition of the need for a professional development model in biotechnology education that recognizes and addresses the content knowledge, practical skills, pedagogical knowledge and curriculum management components.

The genesis of science education research in Australasia

Although the sciences were being taught in Australian schools well before the Second World War, the only evidence of research studies of this teaching is to be found in the report, published by ACER in 1932 of Roy Stanhope’s survey of the teaching of chemistry in New South Wales and a standardized test he had developed. Roy Stanhope was a science teacher with a research masters degree in chemistry. He had won a scholarship to go to Stanford University for doctoral studies, but returned after one year when his scholarship was not extended. He went on to be a founder in 1943 of the Australian Science Teachers Association (ASTA), which honours this remarkable pioneer through its annual Stanhope Oration. In his retirement Stanhope undertook a comparative study of science