Teacher Educators as Policy Reformers? Understanding the Teacher Education Workforce in the Australian Context

• In Event: Teacher Educators as Reformers? The Complicated U.S. Case

Abstract

Problem and Educational Significance
Australian teacher education amalgamated in the late 1980’s into the higher education sector where it remains to date. There are however growing pressure for more school-based programs and alternative routes into teaching opening the way to a more diverse teacher education sector in the future. The current teacher education reform policy (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, 2014) specifically called for schools to have a greater responsibility for initial teacher education. Classroom teachers as the main subject of this policy reform are however increasingly reluctant to take on the mentoring and supervision of pre-service teachers in a growing testing and accountability environment. Further complicating the issue of who takes on the responsibility of preparing teachers,
is the ‘late comer’ and ‘lower status’ of teacher education (Maguire, 2000, p. 151). Indeed an Australian study (Author, 2011) revealed that many academics employed within Faculties of Education, do not identify themselves as teacher educators due to negative perceptions of their work (Kosnik, et. al, 2011). This situation exists at time when this occupational group have never been more focused upon or viewed as vital to reform by policy makers and the public alike.

Objectives, Perspectives and Modes of Inquiry (up to 200 words
This paper explores the phenomenon of who identifies and becomes a teacher educator in the Australian context examining the policy reforms and implications for those placed at the heart of teacher education reform. A key objective of the paper is to shine a light on the occupational group and workforce needs of what has been coined the ‘hidden profession’ (Snoek, Swennen & van der Klink, 2011). Policy documents are interrogated using framing questions of who is implied as a teacher educator; what are the policy implications for the work of teacher educators and; what are the professional learning needs of teacher educators. Policy document analysis (Bowen, 2009) is employed as well as a review of two empirical studies into the work of teacher educators conducted over the past three years. The first with school-based teacher educators and the second a study of community-based teachers as part of a broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander initiative to improve teacher education.

Analysis, results and contributions
Findings from the policy interrogation reveal a wide range of identities and roles exist across the occupational group, ranging from university-based to school-based and to new hybrid forms of work across school-university and community spaces. While the workforce needs of teacher educators is clearly expanding, the main focus of policy is firmly set on school-based colleagues. The studies reveal the need for a new set of professional learning support and career trajectory structures for teacher educators is required. The paper offers a more productive way forward for turning the current accountability policy into a more productive and agentive way for teacher educators to name their work and to be more involved in creating ways forward for the education for all students.

Author

• Simone Jane White, Queensland University of Technology