Education futures : transforming teacher education in the middle years

The young people who populate our classrooms live in a changed and rapidly changing society: a society where information is the most valued commodity and where traditional ‘truth’s such as nation and family are increasingly destabilized and fragmented. Educators at primary, secondary and tertiary level must, with some urgency, address issues relating the emergence of new citizenships and identities, the impact of new technologies and new economies. Our pedagogy and curriculums must be relevant to the need of students now and in the future. The School of Education, The University of Queensland is addressing issues of change, new technologies, new work places, critical citizenry and the need for pedagogical and curriculum innovation through the development of a new Middle Years of Schooling Dual Degree program. This program is designed to equip pre-service teachers to approach pedagogy and curriculum in innovative ways and to challenge them to embrace diversity and change. This paper outlines the key features of the Middle Years of Schooling Dual Degree, identifying a number of innovative approaches to pre-service teacher education.

A Malaysian tale : pre-service teacher education and ICT integration for a better world

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education is often a topic of much discussion within all sectors of education with educators and educational researchers continually looking for innovative ways of using these technologies to support and enhance student outcomes in education. Consequently, Malaysia is no exception to this and as the Ministry of Education (MOE), Malaysia strives to meet its government’s Vision 2020, educational reform across all educational sectors has become imperative. ICT will play an integral role in the educational reform process and teacher education programs are no exception to this. ICT and capacity building will play an important role in the re-conceptualisation of teacher education programs. This paper reports on how a collaborative capacity building project between two Malaysian teacher education Institutes and an Australian University has given lecturers and pre-service teachers an opportunity to redefine their use of ICT in their prospective teaching areas of science, mathematics and design and technology. It also highlights the positive capacity building programs that occurred between both Australian university lecturers and Malaysian Institute lecturers and how this contributed to the effective integration and use of ICT.

Aligning school reform and teacher education reform in the middle years : an Australian case study

This paper discusses the development of a new Bachelor of Education (Middle Years of Schooling) at The University of Queensland, Australia. The middle years of schooling have increasingly been the focus of education reform initiatives in Australia, but this has not been accompanied by significant increases in the number of teacher education institutions offering specialised middle schooling-level teacher preparation programmes. Considering the rapidly changing social and economic context and the emergent state of middle schooling in Australia, the programme represented a conceptual and practical opportunity and challenge for The University of Queensland team. Working collaboratively, the team sought to design a teacher education preservice programme that was both responsive and generative: that is, responsive to local school contexts and to current education research and reform at national and international levels; and generative of cutting-edge theories and practices associated with middle schooling, teachers' work, and teacher education. This paper focuses on one component of the Middle Years of Schooling Teacher Education programme at The University of Queensland; namely, the practicum. We first present the underlying principles of the practicum programme and then examine "dilemmas" that emerged early in the practicum. These issues and tensions were associated with the ideals of "middle years" philosophy and the pragmatics of school reform associated with that approach. Within this context, we explore what it means to be both responsive and generative, and describe how we as teacher educators negotiated the extremes these terms implied.

Copyright, digital media literacies and preservice teacher education

This article considers copyright knowledge and skills as a new literacy that can be developed through the application of digital media literacy pedagogies. Digital media literacy is emerging from more established forms of media literacy that have existed in schools for several decades and have continued to change as the social and cultural practices around media technologies have changed. Changing requirements of copyright law present specific new challenges for media literacy education because the digitisation of media materials provides individuals with opportunities to appropriate and circulate culture in ways that were previously impossible. This article discusses a project in which a group of preservice media literacy educators were introduced to knowledge and skills required for the productive and informed use of different copyrights frameworks. The students’ written reflections and video production responses to a series of workshops about copyright are discussed, as are the opportunities and challenges provided by copyright education in preservice teacher education.

Personal epistemology in pre-service teachers : belief changes throughout a teacher education course

Classrooms of the 21st century are complex systems. They support diverse learners from varied contexts and function in a “messy” bricolage of policy contexts. This complexity is also evident in the nature of teaching and learning deployed in these classrooms. There is also, in current contexts, a general expectation that teachers will support students to construct, rather than simply receive knowledge. This process of constructing knowledge requires a focus on critical thinking in complex social and real world contexts (see also Elen & Clarebout, 2001; Yang, Chang & Hsu 2008). Critical thinking, which involves the identification and evaluation of multiple perspectives when making decisions, is a process of knowing – a tool of wisdom (Kuhn & Udell, 2001). Schommer-Aikens, Bird and Bakken (2010) refer to classrooms that encourage critical thinking as “epistemologically based” in which “the teacher encourages his/her students to look for connections among concepts within the text, with their prior knowledge, and with concepts found in the world beyond themselves” (p. 48).

Pre-service teacher education and the development of middle school teacher identity : an exploratory study

This research study investigated the factors that influenced the development of teacher identity in a small cohort of mature-aged graduate pre-service teachers over the course of a one-year Graduate Diploma program (Middle Years). It sought to illuminate the social and relational dynamics of these pre-service teachers’ experiences as they began new ways of being and learning during a newly introduced one-year Graduate Diploma program. A relational-ontological perspective underpinned the relational-cultural framework that was applied in a workshop program as an integral part of this research. A relational-ontological perspective suggests that the development of teacher identity is to be construed more as an ontological process than an epistemological one. Its focus is more on questions surrounding the person and their ‘becoming’ a teacher than about the knowledge they have or will come to have. Hence, drawing on work by researchers such as Alsup (2006), Gilligan, (1982), Isaacs, (2007), Miller (1976), Noddings, (2005), Stout (2001), and Taylor, (1989), teacher identity was defined as an individual pre-service teacher’s unique sense of self as a teacher that included his or her beliefs about teaching and learning (Alsup, 2006; Stout, 2001; Walkington, 2005). Case-study was the preferred methodology within which this research project was framed, and narrative research was used as a method to document the way teacher identity was shaped and negotiated in discursive environments such as teacher education programs, prior experiences, classroom settings and the practicum. The data that was collected included student narratives, student email written reflections, and focus group dialogue. The narrative approach applied in this research context provided the depth of data needed to understand the nature of the mature-aged pre-service teachers’ emerging teacher identities and experiences in the graduate diploma program. Findings indicated that most of the mature-aged graduate pre-service teachers came in to the one-year graduate diploma program with a strong sense of personal and professional selves and well-established reasons why they had chosen to teach Middle Years. Their choice of program involved an expectation of support and welcome to a middle-school community and culture. Two critical issues that emerged from the pre-service teachers’ narratives were the importance they placed on the human support including the affirmation of themselves and their emerging teacher identities. Evidence from this study suggests that the lack of recognition of preservice teachers’ personal and professional selves during the graduate diploma program inhibited the development of a positive middle-school teacher identity. However, a workshop program developed for the participants in this research and addressing a range of practical concerns to beginning teachers offered them a space where they felt both a sense of belonging to a community and where their thoughts and beliefs were recognized and valued. Thus, the workshops provided participants with the positive social and relational dynamics necessary to support them in their developing teacher identities. The overall findings of this research study strongly indicate a need for a relational support structure based on a relational-ontological perspective to be built into the overall course structure of Graduate Pre-service Diplomas in Education to support the development of teacher identity. Such a support structure acknowledges that the pre-service teacher’s learning and formation is socially embedded, relational, and a continual, lifelong process.

Service learning in teacher education

If the student wellbeing pedagogy characterised by the troika metaphor is to become more widely adopted, beginning teachers need to be inducted into service learning. In this chapter, we discuss the implementation and outcomes of a service learning program in a Bachelor of Education course in Australia. The program provides pre-service teachers with insights into service learning practice. Pre-service teachers are given supported opportunities to examine and challenge traditional beliefs and values about student diversity and the role of schools in developing a more inclusive society. They are supported in developing ethics of care and concern for inclusive and equitable practices – characteristics necessary for quality teaching. Thus, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) service learning program is an ideal example of the troika effect in practice, in that the pedagogy fuses values education, quality teaching and service learning to develop within each student an inclusive ethical framework that will inform their classroom practice as beginning quality teachers.

Embedding 'philosophy in the classroom' in pre-service teacher education

The holistic conception of the troika, as described in the first chapter, centres on the relationship between the implicit and explicit teaching of values the nurturing of the specific dimensions of quality teaching and the opportunity to ‘walk the talk’ of the values education program through aspects such as practical citizenship (Lovat, Toomey, Clement, Crotty & Nielsen, 2009). It is proposed in this chapter that the conception can be realized through the embedding of Philosophy in the Classroom within pre-service teaching programs. The troika, a Russian sleigh with three horses, only function well when there is complete synergy and balance between all Classroom is a scaffold for ensuring that all three elements of the troika, namely, quality teaching, values education and service learning in the form of education for citizenship, exist within the classroom to achieve an optimal learning, growth and wellbeing for all students. For this to be more widely accomplished Philosophy in the Classroom and discusses how it constitutes a successful synergy and balance of the troika for effective teaching. It then proposes how it might be embedded into pre-service teacher education.

Fostering cultural awareness in pre-service teacher education : an experiment in Asia literacy capacity building in an Australian university

This paper presents the findings of a small pilot study conducted with a group of final year pre-service teachers studying a secondary social science curriculum method unit in an Australian university. One of the study’s research objectives aimed at identifying how students responded to efforts to embed intercultural understanding through Studies of Asia in their final curriculum method unit. The unit was designed and taught by the researcher on the assumption that beginning social science teachers need to be empowered with pedagogical skills and new dispositions to deal with value laden emerging regional and global concerns in their Australian secondary school classrooms. This pilot study’s research methodology was located within the qualitative framework of a participatory action research model whereby the lecturer who designed, coordinated and taught the unit was also the researcher. Its scope was limited to one semester with volunteer students. The pilot study sought to investigate responses to several issues, and this paper reports on pre-service teacher reflections on the content, pedagogy and learning they experienced in their weekly sessions with specific reference to cultural understanding, Studies of Asia and the development of Asia literacy. It also reports on pre-service teacher reflections about their own evolving capacity as beginning teachers. The findings indicate that pre-service teachers valued the opportunity to engage with learning experiences which enhanced their conceptual understandings about culture whilst also extending their pedagogical and content knowledge.

Embedding values through global education in social sciences pre-service teacher education : linking the head and heart

This chapter aims to situate values education as a core component of social science pre-service teacher education. In particular, it reflects on an experiment in embedding a values laden Global Education perspective in a fourth year social science curriculum method unit. This unit was designed and taught by the researcher on the assumption that beginning social science teachers need to be empowered with pedagogical skills and new dispositions to deal with value laden emerging global and regional concerns in their secondary school classrooms. Moreover, it was assumed that when pre-service teachers engage in dynamic and interactive learning experiences in their curriculum unit, they commence the process of ‘capacity building’ those skills which prepare them for their own lifelong professional learning. This approach to values education also aimed at providing pre-service teachers with opportunities to ‘create deep understandings of teaching and learning’ (Barnes, 1989, p. 17) by reflecting on the ways in which ‘pedagogy can be transformative’ (Lovat and Toomey, 2011 add page no from Chapter One). It was assumed that this tertiary experience would foster the sine qua non of teaching – a commitment to students and their learning. Central to fostering new ‘dispositions’ through this approach, was the belief in the power of pedagogy to make the difference in enhancing student participation and learning. In this sense, this experiment in values education in secondary social science pre-service teacher education aligns with the Troika metaphor for a paradigm change, articulated by Lovat and Toomey (2009) in Chapter One.