Learning and working beyond: Australian pre-service teachers' experiences outside teacher education programs

• In Event: Teachers’ voices matter: Their stories, experiences, and perspectives

Proposal

Background:
Debates regarding the ‘best’ forms of teacher preparation have persisted for decades, often with little agreement from stakeholders. One area of convergence, however, concerns the benefits of teaching/classroom experience, whether gained through university teacher education professional placements (i.e., student teaching practicums), on-the-job training provided by fast-track alternative routes to teaching (e.g., Teach For All), or work with schools and individual students beyond teacher preparation programs. As debates have raged about the first two, research examining the latter is nascent. Yet pre-service teachers (PSTs) increasingly undertake diverse forms of work with children to accrue additional experience beyond teacher education. This is a growing global phenomenon with direct relevance to the field of comparative and international education and implications that extend far beyond particular teacher education programs; it has the potential to reshape local and global notions of the teaching profession and influence education systems both within and across nation-states (e.g., Duong & Silova, 2021).
Purpose:
This study examines how primary education PSTs from one Australian university gained additional teaching experience beyond tertiary practicums. We broadly conceptualised ‘additional experience’ as opportunities outside of teacher education programs where participants worked directly with students and/or in schools, including both paid and unpaid positions through either informal (e.g., babysitting, tutoring) or formal structures (e.g., work as a teacher’s aid, school learning support officer). The study investigates three specific research questions:
1. Where and how do PSTs gain additional experience?
2. What benefits do PSTs feel they gain from these experiences?
3. What challenges do they face?
Conceptual Framework:
The paper is grounded theoretically in sociological conceptualisations of learning to teach within and beyond traditional teacher education programs (e.g., Author, 2022; Britzman, 2021; Lortie, 1975; Kretchmar & Ziechner, 2016; Tatto et al., 2017). It also draws on recent literature related to globalised pressures that are reshaping the nature of teacher preparation (e.g., Burn & Menter, 2021; Sorensen & Dumay, 2021), including renewed shifts toward practice in and beyond universities (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2014; Forzani, 2014). Finally, the paper extends extant international research on ‘shadow education’ (Bray, 1999; Zhang & Bray, 2020) – a private industry often supported by the work of PSTs – to consider the diverse forms of work in which PSTs are involved before and during their teacher education coursework.
Research Methods:
The participants comprised primary education pre-service teachers enrolled at a large, metropolitan university in Australia. Following university ethics approval, data were collected through an online survey (n=98) consisting of open- and close-ended questions exploring this phenomenon among PSTs and their perceptions. In addition, nine PSTs took part in three separate focus groups to complement the survey results. The closed survey items were analysed descriptively. The qualitative survey responses – as well as the focus group recordings, transcribed verbatim – were analysed inductively through open and in vivo coding (Saldaña, 2013).
Key Findings:
First, the findings suggest PSTs pursued a range of additional experiences. Nearly half had engaged in babysitting and tutoring activities (48.0% and 46.9%, respectively), while nearly a quarter had worked in before/after school care or as a teacher’s aide (25.5% and 22.5%, respectively). A small minority also engaged in work as an extra-curricular educator (e.g., swimming coach, piano teacher), camp counsellor, or religious school educator. To attain these roles, the participants employed a range of strategies, such as utilising university-based connections, drawing on their own social capital, and even cold calling or sending blanket emails. Second, the PSTs perceived several benefits from their additional experiences. Most notably, 63.9% of the participants ‘strongly agreed’ (another 34.4% ‘agreed’) that their experiences helped better prepare them to be primary teachers. The ability to test and apply concepts taught in university teacher education programs within these experiences was a driving factor; one participant explicitly noted they are able to spend ‘more time applying class theory into practice’. The ability to increase their ‘marketability’ was the second most common benefit, highlighting the PSTs’ deep anxiety about finding a (good) job. One focus group participant elaborated:
‘I quit my retail job to work in after school care because I felt if I didn't…my resume wouldn't be as hireable…No one would hire me over everyone else…I got stressed that everyone at Uni[versity] at the time was working in after school care jobs.’
Third and finally, the findings outlined their challenges. The lack of time and a flexible schedule surfaced most often, followed by financial stress and difficulty accessing positions and building connections with schools/educational providers. Conflicts between university teacher education timetabling and the PSTs’ work/volunteer schedules emerged as a frustrating paradox, expressed clearly by one focus group participant:
it's almost impossible to find that balance because we don't have the opportunities to find the experience that you need. Because we're doing not only the contact hours [attending university lectures and tutorials], which are insane in itself, but then also constant assignments, group assignments, which are even harder. And then you've got prac[ticum] where you literally can't work unless you work like a bar job on the weekend. But then you're not getting that experience with kids because there's no ‘real’ kids jobs on the weekend. And then you get in trouble from your tutors because you're not doing kid-focused jobs. You're doing jobs that don't seem important.
This PSTs’ frustration as well as the broader findings are explored in greater detail in the paper.
Conclusions:
Questions about where, when, and how pre-service teachers are prepared have vexed policymakers, researchers, university providers, and even everyday citizens for years, seemingly increasing as discourses of a teacher education ‘crisis’ proliferate globally (see Barnes, 2021; Furlong, 2019; Mockler, 2022). While these debates and studies are vital, this study posits a considerable amount of ‘preparation’ also occurs outside of teacher education programs. It is therefore vital to better understand how these additional experiences (re)shape the expectations, pedagogies, and work of PSTs; likewise, it is necessary to consider symbiotically their effects on teacher education. In sum, this exploratory study highlights a growing global phenomenon with immense implications for teacher education in Australia and beyond.

Author

• Matthew A.M. Thomas, The University of Glasgow