An evidence-based approach to professional development planning in large state educational systems

This paper presents a systems-level approach for adjudicating the prioritization, selection, and planning of inservcie professional development (PD) for teachers. We present a step-by-step model for documenting and assessing system-wide 'bids' for professional development programs

The teacher as reflexive professional : making visible the excluded discourse in teacher standards

In the current climate of accountability, political manoeuvring, changing curriculum, increasingly diverse student cohorts and community expectations, teachers, more than ever, need to develop the skills and abilities to be reflective and reflexive practitioners. This study examines national teacher professional standards from Australia and the UK to identify the extent to which reflexivity is embedded in key policy documents that are intended to guide the work of teachers in those countries. Using Margaret Archer's theories of reflexivity and morphogenesis, and methods of critical discourse analysis, we argue that these blueprints for teachers’ work exclude reflexivity as an essential and overarching discourse of teacher professionalism.

What's missing in teacher education? A middle years perspective

Recently in Queensland a group of concerned educators raised a key question: What is missing in teacher education? The group of teacher educators, teachers, educational consultants and other significant stakeholders met in Warwick to interrogate the nature of teacher education with a view to reshaping the key constructs in the field for the future. It was agreed at this meeting, as it has been elsewhere, that there is a serious need to rethink pre-service teacher education programs in Queensland. Major employing authorities are currently engaging in curriculum and pedagogical reform. Further, the intensification of teachers' work has reached a point where all teacher education authorities are cognisant of the increasing numbers of teachers who are struggling to contend with what is expected of them from a myriad of stakeholders.

An integrated approach to professional development in secondary schools

Following the implementation of the National Professional Standards for Teachers, all teachers in Australia will be required to undertake 30 hours per year of professional development (PD) to maintain their registration. However, defining what constitutes effective PD is complex and often contested. This paper looks at a case study in Queensland, Australia, where a high school worked collaboratively with a university lecturer to deliver effective whole-school professional development. The lecturer acted as an external change agent, working closely with the principal and staff to build a relationship of trust and to develop a strategy for the delivery of PD on-site. This case highlights how partnerships between teachers and teacher educators combined with a willing school leader can provide positive opportunities for collaborative, sustainable, professional growth and learning.

Examining preservice teachers’ applied learning experiences in the Teacher Education Done Differently (TEDD) project

Reviews have criticised universities for not embedding sufficient praxis for preparing preservice teachers for the profession. The Teacher Education Done Differently (TEDD) project explored praxis development for preservice teachers within existing university coursework. This mixed-method investigation involved an analysis of multiple case studies with preservice teacher involvement in university programs, namely: Ed Start for practicum I (n=26), III (n=23), and IV (n=12); Move It Use It (Health and Physical Education program; n=38), Studies of Society and its Environment (SOSE, n=24), and Science in Schools (n=38). The project included preservice teachers teaching primary students at the campus site in gifted education (the B-GR8 program, n=22). The percentage range for preservice teacher agreement of their praxis development leading up to practicum I, III, and IV was between 91-100% with a high mean score range (4.26-5.00). Other university units had similar findings except for SOSE (i.e., percentage range: 10-86%; M range: 2.33-4.00; SD range: 0.55-1.32). Qualitative data presented an understanding of the praxis development leading to the conclusion that additional applied learning experiences as lead-up days for field experiences and as avenues for exploring the teaching of specific subject areas presented opportunities for enhancing praxis.

Exploring emotional climate in preservice science teacher education

Classroom emotional climates are interrelated with students’ engagement with university courses. Despite growing interest in emotions and emotional climate research, little is known about the ways in which social interactions and different subject matter mediate emotional climates in preservice science teacher education classes. In this study we investigated the emotional climate and associated classroom interactions in a preservice science teacher education class. We were interested in the ways in which salient classroom interactions were related to the emotional climate during lessons centered on debates about science-based issues (e.g., nuclear energy alternatives). Participants used audience response technology to indicate their perceptions of the emotional climate. Analysis of conversation for salient video clips and analysis of non-verbal conduct (acoustic parameters, body movements, and facial expressions) supplemented emotional climate data. One key contribution that this study makes to preservice science teacher education is to identify the micro-processes of successful and unsuccessful class interactions that were associated with positive and neutral emotional climate. The structure of these interactions can inform the practice of other science educators who wish to produce positive emotional climates in their classes. The study also extends and explicates the construct of intensity of emotional climate.

Enhancing teacher education : the School-Community Intergrated Learning (SCIL) pathway

National Australian reviews advocate exploring new models for preservice teacher education. This study investigates the outcomes of the School-Community Integrated Learning (SCIL) pathway as a model for advancing preservice teachers’ understandings of teaching. Thirty-two final-year preservice teachers were surveyed with extended written responses on how the SCIL pathway advanced their understandings of teaching. Results indicated 100% agreement on 6 of the 27 survey items. Indeed, 78% or more preservice teachers agreed that they had a range of experiences across the five categories (i.e., personal-professional skill development, understandings of system requirements, teaching practices, student behaviour and reflective practices). Extended responses suggested they had developed understandings around setting up classrooms, whole school planning processes with professional development, the allocation of teacher responsibilities (e.g., playground duties), parent-teacher interviews, diagnostic testing for literacy and numeracy, commencing running records of students’ assessment results, and the development of relationships (students, teachers and parents). Although a longitudinal study is required to determine long-term effects, the SCIL pathway may be viewed as a positive step towards preparing final-year preservice teachers for their first year as fully-fledged teachers.

The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development

This document calls on governments, civil society and in particular educators to prioritize processes that develop and strengthen education for sustainable development (ESD). The world has changed since the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. While there have been significant initiatives and progress has been made, the scale of effort is still overshadowed by the scope of the problem. For instance, human-induced climate change is creating a long-lasting ecological crisis with severe economic and social consequences. Recently the global economic crisis has drawn attention to the problem of borrowing from resources that do not exist. Poverty, conflict and social injustice remain critical issues on the global agenda. A renewed sense of commitment to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 is required. Formal, informal and non-formal education and learning processes for sustainability must be strengthened and prioritized. This document supports and builds on the concepts and values that are put forward within UNESCO’s International Implementation Scheme for Education for Sustainable Development and in the Earth Charter. The purpose of ESD is to reorient education in order to contribute to a sustainable future for the common good of present and future generations. ESD recognizes the interdependence of environmental, social and economic perspectives and the dependence of humanity on a healthy biosphere. Participation and involvement are necessary components of ESD, with an emphasis on empowerment and agency for active citizenship, human rights and societal change. Re-orientation is necessary at all levels and in all phases of education, and encompasses community learning, thus making ESD a wider process challenging the form and purpose of education itself.

Embedding EfS in teacher education : an introductory guide to using the systems change model

Welcome to this introductory guide on using a systems change model to embed Education for Sustainability (EfS) into teacher education. Pressing sustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and depletion of non-renewable resources pose new challenges for education. The importance of education in preparing future citizens to engage in sustainable living practices and help create a more sustainable world is widely acknowledged. As a result many universities around the world are beginning to recognize the need to integrate EfS into their teacher education programs. However, evidence indicates that there is little or no core EfS knowledge or pedagogy in pre-service teacher courses available to student teachers in a thorough and systematic fashion. Instead efforts are fragmented and individually or, at best, institutionally-based and lacking a systems approach to change, an approach that is seen as essential to achieving a sustainable society (Henderson & Tilbury, 2004). The result is new teachers are graduating without the necessary knowledge or skills to teach in ways that enable them to prepare their students to cope well with the new and emerging challenges their communities face. This guide has been prepared as part of a teaching and learning research project that applied a systems change approach to embedding the learning and teaching of sustainability into pre-service teacher education. The processes, outcomes and lessons learnt from this project are presented here as a guide for navigating pathways to systemic change in the journey of re-orienting teacher education towards sustainability. The guide also highlights how a systems change approach can be used to successfully enact change within a teacher education system. If you are curious about how to introduce and embed EfS into teacher education – or have tried other models and are looking for a more encompassing, transformative approach – this guide is designed to help you. The material presented in this guide is designed to be flexible and adaptive. However you choose to use the content, our aim is to help you and your students develop new perspectives, promote discussion and to engage with a system-wide approach to change.

Online teacher education : lessons from the cyber-trenches

This paper provides an overview of ‘lessons learned’ from the author’s decade long involvement in online teaching and learning, including eight years in the development, implementation, teaching and administration of a wholly online Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics coursework degree program, which attracted several hundred students annually from around the world, and has won awards for innovation, including being identified as a ‘flagship’ program during an external review of the university.

Becoming an inclusive educator : applying Deleuze & Guattari to teacher education

New ways of thinking are required in teacher education to promote beginning teachers as change agents in education. Twenty years after the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994) that called for schools to provide equitable opportunities for all children, teaching practices in many classrooms are informed by the deficit view of learning. Beginning teachers need to be prepared to challenge the ideological influences that operate in schools. Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) model of the rhizome is used to report one beginning teacher’s journey as she learnt to negotiate structural and personal obstacles to create an inclusive learning environment. Data from reflective diaries, semi-structured interviews and classroom observations highlight contextual and personal factors in one case study that contributed to the nonlinear, complex process of becoming an inclusive educator. The paper concludes by arguing the voice of beginning teachers is essential for the ongoing movement towards the creation of just, inclusive schools.

Examining early childhood education through the lens of education for sustainability : revisioning rights

This chapter calls for rethinking about the rights base of early childhood education. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (UNICEF1989) has been seen as an important foundation internationally for early childhood education practise. In this paper, I argue that whilst the UNCRC (1989) still serves its aspirational purpose, it is an inadequate vehicle for enacting early childhood education in the twenty-first century given the pressing challenges of sustainability. The UNCRC emerged from an individual rights perspective, and despite attempts to broaden the rights agenda towards greater child participation and engagement, these approaches offer an inadequate response to global sustainability concerns. In this chapter, I propose a five dimensional approach to rights that acknowledges the fundamental rights of children as espoused in the UNCRC and the call for agentic rights as advocated more recently by early childhood academics and practitioners. Additionally, however, discussion of collective rights, intergenerational rights and bio/ecocentic rights are forwarded, offering a expanded way to think about rights with implications for how early childhood education is practised and researched.

How do preservice teacher education students move from novice to expert assessors?

Despite the acknowledged importance of assessment in education, there has been minimal research into the preparation of preservice teachers for the important role of involving preservice teachers in marking, grading, moderating and providing feedback on student work. This article reports on a pilot project in which preservice teachers participated in an ongoing peer assessment and social moderation process in a dedicated course on assessment. The purpose of the project was to investigate specific ways in which key assessment processes can be effectively taught to preservice teachers. The research involved 96 preservice teachers who completed a Likert scale survey and free text responses to set questions. The results indicated that while preservice teachers valued the process, continual opportunities to learn the nature and purpose of essential assessment practices related to marking, grading, moderating and providing feedback are necessary to graduate competent and work-ready assessors.

Catholic teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes: A large scale Queensland based comparative study

A key feature of the current era of Australian schooling is the dominance of publically available student, school and teacher performance data. Our paper examines the intersection of data on teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes in 26 Catholic Systemic Secondary Schools and 18 Catholic Independent Secondary Schools throughout the State of Queensland. We introduce and justify taking up a new socially-just measurement model of students’ end of schooling outcomes, called the ‘Tracking and Academic Management Index’, otherwise known as ‘TAMI’. Additional analysis is focused on the outcomes of top-end students vis-à-vis all students who are encouraged to remain in institutionalised education of one form or another for the two final years of senior secondary schooling. These findings of the correlations between Catholic teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes are also compared with teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and students’ end of schooling outcomes across 174 Queensland Government Secondary Schools and 58 Queensland Independent Secondary Schools from the same data collection period. The findings raise important questions about the transference of teachers’ postgraduate qualifications for progressing students’ end of schooling outcomes as well as the performance of Queensland Catholic Systemic Secondary Schools and Queensland Catholic Independent Secondary Schools during a particular era of education.