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Session Summary

The Teach For All Teacher Education Experience in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil

Sat, April 14, 4:05 to 5:35pm, New York Hilton Midtown, Floor: Concourse Level, Concourse G Room

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This presentation examines the case of ‘Teach for' policy and its enactment in the Australian context since the commencement of Teach for Australia (TFA) in 2010. In 2014, Deakin University became the second Australian university contracted to deliver an award bearing degree in the program funded by the Australian Government. Deakin University offers a range of innovative and ‘alternative’ teacher education modes. These continued to be offered during this period. The evidence is situated in a comprehensive literature review that includes Australian and international literatures and data generated from the policy analysis.
Theoretical framework

The theoretical work that underpins this curriculum problem research is informed by complexity theory and policy analysis, an approach used previously by a core group of researchers in other large-scale teacher education research (see Mayer, Dixon, Kline, Kostogriz, Moss, Rowan, Walker-Gibbs, White, 2017). We argue, following Davis and Sumara (2006) that teacher education systems are adaptive and therefore education can be thought of as sites of learning which emerge from experiences that trigger transformations in learners and within teacher education.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

The qualitative study that commenced in 2015 is designed around three questions:

How do pre service teachers learn to teach in a course that is largely located outside the university system?

What elements of the teacher education curriculum are supportive of learning to teach?

How does collaboration across institutions (schools and university and not for profit organisations) affect pedagogy and curriculum?

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

The presentation has a policy and teacher education curriculum focus. The larger project uses qualitative research methods – documentary evidence and 22 interviews, associates, school mentors and Deakin University teacher educators.


Findings and scholarly significance of the study

We argue, following Davis and Sumara (2006), that teacher education systems are adaptive and can be thought of as sites of learning which emerge from experiences that trigger transformations within teacher education. Social and material analysis of the policy context emerges as a space to foreground the possibilities for refreshed thinking about the curriculum design of teacher education. We close by focusing on the conclusion from our previous research, Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education: Early Career Teachers in Diverse Settings (SETE), the largest longitudinal mixed-method evidence based study of beginning teachers in Australia, that states ‘Thinking about teacher education as a complex system in a third hybrid space involving universities, schools and their communities, and systems, as part of a continuum of lifelong learning and doing teaching, will require examination of questions about where learning teaching happens, who does it and how they are prepared for the task, as well as a rethinking of where in this continuum employment and teacher certification occurs and (re)occurs’. (SETE, 2017, p. 132, emphasis added)

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