The instrument Samples of Teaching Performance (STP) was developed to assess student teachers' capacity to plan, deliver and evaluate a unit of instruction. The current study reports consequential validity data collected from supervisors (n = 20) and student teachers (n = 62) from three elementary and five secondary teacher preparation programs…

This article traces the gradual increase in primary teachers' workloads over several decades to the point where workforce reform was introduced to ameliorate the problem. A central feature of the reform was the use of teaching assistants to undertake various duties, so that time should be available for primary teachers to plan and prepare future…

A recent move in the effort to professionalize teaching has been a call for a professional designation for teachers in some Canadian jurisdictions. While teacher certification or licensure seeks to protect public interest and is concerned about professionalism--the quality of teachers' work--professional designation is concerned with public…

"Partnership between parents and teachers" is a taken-for-granted feature of the philosophy and practice of early childhood education. Yet, the literature suggests this rhetoric belies a more complex and problematic reality for teachers. Making connections with the families and communities they will serve may help teacher education…

For beginning teachers to make the transition to full professional membership they need to increase their professional knowledge of the art and science of teaching. This paper explores the difference in knowledge growth between beginning teachers who commence teaching in fragmented teaching situations in the first two years of teaching, and their…

There is very little argument that one of the major developments to have impacted in schools in the past decade is the rapid and world-wide development of information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the Internet. In Hong Kong, reforms in the ICT teacher training policy, and the fact that Hong Kong is a "wired" city,…

This paper explores the expectations of a group of site-based teacher educators as each attempted to support a pre-service teacher who struggled to achieve satisfactory outcomes on their professional placement. Discourse analysis of teachers' narratives provided my personal, partial and dynamic (Mauthner & Doucet, 2003) interpretation of what…

This paper discusses policy and practice relevant to teacher education and professional experience programs in Australia, aiming to assist not only reading our past and present, but also offering strategic direction with respect to the challenges and opportunities that are emerging within the Australian context. A meta-analysis of current major…

This study investigates the attitudes of teacher educators in China toward recent reforms in professional experience for pre-service teachers proposed by the Chinese Ministry of Education and their perception of the challenges facing the implementation of the proposed reforms. An analysis of data from an online survey and semi-structured…

Professional experience in initial teacher education continues to be a very challenging area in which to work in Australian universities, given the changing times in which we live and the multiplicity of political, professional, economic and pragmatic issues that surround professional placements. The past decades have seen myriad responses to…

Professional experience is a field increasingly defined by institutionally prescribed practices and outcomes. However, for the pre-service teacher, at an individual level, it is commonly navigated through complex and diverse experiences that for them may defy coherence. What is publicly shared is filtered frequently through a pre-service teacher's…

The poor performance of Australian Indigenous students in mathematics is a complex and enduring issue that needs a range of strategies to enable success in schooling for these students. Importantly, large numbers of teachers in remote Indigenous contexts are new graduates who, although full of enthusiasm, lack experience. Similarly, many of them…

"Learning through play" in early childhood education is widely advocated, but studies show that play is not easily enacted in classrooms. The quality of learning through play has been questioned in various countries, especially when learning outcomes are a global concern. This paper examines how one teacher implemented learning through…

Educating a student on teaching placement involves a "village", just as it takes a whole "village" to raise a child. Creating a "village" around each student teacher gives them greater agency, a sense of belonging and being valued as a member of that professional "village". Participating students, teachers…

This paper reports on a qualitative interview study with eleven pre-service primary teachers in Queensland about their career plans, exploring whether, and how, a global imagination motivates this next generation of teachers. The study is framed within sociological theory of globalisation, with regard to the growing possibilities for international…