Top of the Class

Report on the inquiry into teacher education

Macquarie University

The Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre on campus is a strategic partnership with the NSW Department of Education and Training, supported by industry partners which provide state-of-the-art equipment. It promotes innovation in public schools through the use of new technologies, working directly with teachers and students. …¹

Recent reviews of teacher education (eg NSW Ministerial Advisory Committee on Quality of Teaching, 1999) emphasise the concept of partnership between schools and universities, and the need for closer collaborations between the two. Partnership has been a key aspect of the Macquarie Teacher Education Program since its inception. Much of the background material about Macquarie ’s program, particularly with regard to partnership, is contained in a PhD thesis (Smedley, 1996).

Smedley (1996) traces the interest in partnership and shows that the concept has been prominent at two points in this century, during the sixties and in the period of the 90s. It traces a significant, but short-lived, interest in partnerships in the 1960s and documents the far stronger and more widely influential re-emergence of the partnership concept more recently. The Macquarie University Teacher Education Program stands as an example of one program which emerged during the initial short-lived period of change and which has, since that time, continued to shape a particular form of partnership.

Based on the notion of the scholar-teacher and the theoretical perspectives listed above, the Macquarie model of teacher education was developed to incorporate ‘best practice’ as perceived by academics of the day, drawing upon a range of strategies conceived and trialled in other countries. In 1969 the program, which was developed through wide liaison with Macquarie academics, employing authorities, teacher unions and schools, provided Australia’s first concurrent, integrated degree and diploma pattern for teacher education. Its distinctive features included:

• Teacher Education seen as a university-wide program, with integrated academic, educational and professional studies;
• a concurrent structure where students were simultaneously enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts degree and the Diploma of Education;
• curriculum lecturers appointed jointly to the Teacher Education Program and the School of the academic discipline; and
• a developmental model of the practicum that provided a continuous experience in one school, with selected, contracted and paid Master Teachers holding a major responsibility for the instruction, supervision and assessment of student teachers.
• The concept of partnership underpinned the model, and not just one partnership but several overlapping partnerships:
• partnership between the different academic disciplines of the university through the co-operative planning;
• partnership between the academic and professional aspects of the program through the joint appointment of staff to the Teacher Education Program and to the School of the academic discipline (this was disbanded in 1992);
• partnership between the university and the major employer through the secondment of classroom teachers to provide recency of experience for the curriculum lecturers; and
• partnership between the students, curriculum lecturers and schools through the nature and organisation of the practicum.

Separately, each component stood as an innovation on the Australian scene. Combined, the various parts strengthened and enriched each other. It was their unique interaction which provided an opportunity for renewal in teacher education. ²

We at Macquarie believe that school systems should form strong university partnerships to assist in the delivery of educational programs. An example of collaboration is the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre between the NSW Department of Education and Macquarie University which offers programs for teachers and students and is outcomes focused in relation to classroom teaching and learning. In addition to the ICT Centre, Macquarie has partnerships with government and non-government schools for which there is an active program of support such as through the visit by a university staff member as a critical friend and inservice activities related to syllabus implementation and advice about the Higher School Certificate. Staff from ACES are frequently involved in school professional development days and have participated as critical friends with schools on an ongoing basis to assist staff in gaining value from system endorsed projects including the Priority Schools Project. ³

Charles Sturt University

The other issue that I wanted to highlight in this initial presentation is the relationship with industry partners and employers. We have very strong relationships built up through TEC with the major employer in New South Wales , which is the Department of Education and Training. We have regular meetings with the staffing and supply branch of that department, and we work actively to support programs they have for the recruitment and retention of teachers for hard-to staff schools—particularly the rural schools and the Western Sydney schools. The issues for them and for us are very similar: how do we get prac placements in hard-to-staff rural schools where distance becomes an increasingly important issue for funding? How do they get teachers in those schools? We have a shared area of concern there.

We also have good relationships—and we have had them in the past and they seem to be probably not as effective at the moment—with the transfer of duties from departmental staff to the universities to provide our students for a year or so with lecturers and teachers who have just come out of a school. They are actually practising teachers on secondment or on transfer duties to us. I think departmental exigencies of funding have meant that the gift they were able to give us in the past of releasing the teachers to work with student teachers has had to stop. We are now faced with the issue that we cannot afford to pay teachers the salary they were getting in a school to come and work in a university. We find that a very difficult problem to overcome. We do not have a solution, and we are using up budget for things like market loading to try to attract them. But that, of course, takes away from the available funding we have to run our schools. ⁴

University of Sydney

Partnerships with schools are central to the preparation of our preservice teachers and the Faculty has excellent long term relationships with a range of state, Catholic and independent schools. Each degree program has an Advisory Board which includes all stakeholders and these meet regularly to consider course offerings.

The Faculty currently employs 28 teachers who make part-time contributions to curriculum units of study in all education degree programs.

In addition, the Faculty and NSWDET have two conjoint appointments. These two lecturers work half time in the Faculty and half time in the Sydney region. They are based at Georges River College . This partnership provides opportunities for first year students to examine the implications of some of the issues discussed in some of the university based education units ( Sutherland , Scanlon and Sperring, 2005). ⁵

University of Western Sydney

UWS staff have a tradition of exploring innovative and effective ways of embedding school experience and the expertise of current classroom teachers into our teacher education programs. We can provide the inquiry with many examples of these. They include the Nirimba project, where secondary Mathematics and Science teachers have enhanced their professional understandings and outcomes through an extended placement in the Nirimba community of schools, operating out of effective School Departments. In this ongoing project university academics work with teachers from both state and private schools, and our UWS students, in building effective communities of inquiry that lead to innovative teaching practices in these schools. Students completing this program are regarded as highly skilled and easily placed in the school setting, and are highly sought after and quickly employed.

Additionally, we are developing a pilot project, Classmates, for implementation in 2006, to embed components of school-based teacher education, with components of school improvement programs to better prepare a particular cohort of graduates to teach in some of our most challenging schools. This program has been developed and resourced through a partnership between UWS and the NSW Department of Education and Training. A key element of this program is the emphasis on the mutual benefit to the schools involved and to the school-based teacher educators, and to practicing teachers who can engage with and benefit from the same program as the student teachers. Also, the School of Education’s governing body in professional experience is currently conducting an investigation into the establishment of a ‘professional development school’ based on US models of school-university collaborative approaches to teacher education and school development. ⁶

University of Wollongong

Mr Carroll —I moved into this area in 1988. The department here has had stronger and stronger links with the university over a period of time. The setting-up of the Australian Centre for Educational Leadership here was spearheaded by this university. … That was the beginning of the Centre for Educational Leadership, which has always had close links with its partners. Its partners have been the Department of Education and Training, the Catholic Education Office, the primary and secondary principals groups, the Australian College of Educators and the Australian Council for Educational Leaders. That has been at a local level. ⁷

Dr Kiggins —The knowledge building community program was started in 1999 with a small cohort of students and four local schools. We set it up to try to give students an alternative approach to their education at the university. We made a shift from that traditional lecture/tutorial practicum model to a problem based learning within a school site model. We were paying particular attention to the link between theory and practice and putting students into the schools very early on a two-days-a-week program with one day back on campus in the homeroom. The homeroom is an integral part of the knowledge building community program, because that is where we do all our workshops, our problem based learning and our knowledge building and sharing. It is a very collaborative environment and it is very much underpinned by four philosophical beliefs in that we promote that students should take responsibility for their own learning, collaborate, problem solve and reflect. These are all attributes that we believe beginning teachers need for their future careers.⁸

Deakin University

At Deakin University the various teaching courses are well known for their close partnership programs with schools, their staff, children and parents and the wider educational community. In addition to the compulsory Practicum experiences, many of the pre-service courses take student teachers out of the campus based classrooms and into either school based or community based sites. The two-year Bachelor of Teaching (Primary and Secondary) degree offered at our Melbourne campus at Burwood and Geelong campus at Waurn Ponds utilises a range of educational settings. In their first and second semester, student teachers are based weekly in a school setting for one of their educational units (a literacy focus for the first semester and a numeracy focus for the second). Practising teachers, teacher educators and teams of student teachers work closely together to negotiate learning projects that fit within both the school program and that of the content of their campus based unit. Students in this program also visit an educational setting to learn from teachers working in either the Melbourne Zoo, Melbourne Museum, Immigration Museum or CERES Environmental Park. Visiting teachers, principals and members of various education organisations regularly present seminars to all students in their education major subjects. The majority of the teaching staff of the Bachelor of Teaching (Primary and Secondary) teach in Victorian classrooms along with the student teachers and practising teachers to model particular teaching strategies.

A further initiative within the Bachelor of Education (Primary), is the Associate Teacher Program, a partnership between the Faculty of Education at Deakin University and St. Michael’s Grammar School. The program provides students in the Bachelor of Education with an opportunity to be placed in a school during the last year of the course while still undertaking studies. The students are expected to commit to the program for the full school academic year. Students complete their placement in the school and are exposed to a wide range of other experiences. Students become an integral part of the co-curricular program, coaching teams and working in the outdoor education program. This is a great opportunity for students to work within the wider context and culture of the school, establish relationships with students and staff, and develop confidence in teaching skills. One special attribute of the Associate Teacher Program is that each student has three mentors. A mentor is allocated for each discipline area, as well as a mentor for personal development.

La Trobe University

This program [Partnership program with Bendigo Senior Secondary College for secondary preservice teachers] which operates over the first six weeks of the course has two parts: the Classroom Experience Program, where students team up with a teacher in the first week of the year to observe and participate in as many classes as their timetable permits; and a formal program presented by College teachers, focusing on new technologies for teaching and learning, Victorian curriculum documents, teaching and learning resources, and contextual factors relevant to beginning work in schools. This program is perceived by students as enabling a very effective orientation to both practical and theoretical issues in teaching and learning.⁹

Monash University

Probably the best, most recent example of that is the final year internship in the primary program at Peninsula , where students are placed in the same school for the entire year and effectively become junior staff members. It is turning into a real win-win because the very smart schools recognise the very smart students and see this as an opportunity to acculturate those students in the mores of that school and at the end of that year offer them a position in teaching. So the line between being the student and the beginning teacher becomes blurred. It is working very effectively for the schools. It works effectively for us because we develop a more intense relationship with a smaller number of schools who we feel we can rely on to support our students along the lines that John is describing—that it is not a recipe and that it is a very complex role. That process of enculturation and support is something that we are starting to see in that internship developing as a very effective partnership. ¹⁰

Victoria University

Additionally our intimate relationship with teachers and schools, through Project Partnerships and the School of Education Reference Group, supports our knowledge, understanding and capacity to respond and innovate specifically with colleagues in the Western Melbourne Region, the Victorian Institute of Teaching and the Department of Education and Training and a wide range of community agencies more broadly. This enables our pre-service and in-service activities to be sensitive to and informed by recent discourses and developments in education. Additionally other programs in the School of Education such as the Bachelor of Arts (Youth Studies) and the Bachelor of Arts (Early Childhood Education) provide an extended perspective of ways of working with learners and communities.

Pre-service teacher education at Victoria University is distinctive because it engages the learning of school students as the central feature of the course through negotiated Project Partnerships with schools and other education settings. Small teams of pre-service teachers are able to make a year long commitment to the learning of students in one school. In 2005, there are over 250 Project Partnerships being developed and undertaken in approximately 200 primary and secondary schools and in a small range of other educational settings with young people. Examples of Project Partnership applied curriculum projects include early years literacy programs, lunchtime activity programs, developing webpages across the curriculum with year 9 secondary students, supporting the establishment of an SRC and related studies in the secondary SOSE curriculum, linking mathematics, developing, trialling, teaching and evaluating units of work at the Melbourne Museum education serviced and ICT across the primary schools or running specialised outdoor activity programs at school camp sites. ¹¹

The principle of our work is that the learning of the young person is the high priority. That is our central focus—the young person in the school. From that, we construct our programs around what we call partnerships. Our partnerships with our schools and community learning settings, mostly with schools, are about engaging our preservice teachers in work that schools value as contributing to the learning of their students. We begin our partnership construction with the negotiation with the schools telling us what it is that their young people need and how our preservice teachers, while they are in their preservice teacher education program, can build their own knowledge about being a professional through the engagement of real learning needs that young people might have. So that is our underpinning philosophy and our underpinning practice.

From there, we work to engage with the diversity that is our communities. We work in the western suburbs of Melbourne primarily but also to the north. We have the Career Change Program, which is a state-wide teacher education program for people who are changing careers and coming to teaching after being something else. Mostly, our communities tend to be very diverse and they tend to be socioeconomically disadvantaged in the main, so it is very important to us that we bring a rich diversity to the student body, the preservice teacher group, as well. So our selection processes are by application and often interview in an attempt to reflect the diversity and to build a cohort of teachers who are different and who are valued for their difference. ¹²

The other thing we do is that each partnership has a university lecturer attached to it to help generate, discuss and build the nature of the partnership, monitor progress and work with preservice teachers and the mentor teachers in the schools. We would love to have more money to spend more time. … We have actually had some site based teacher education running where we have done more of our work in schools with larger groups using teachers more as colecturers, if you like, in curriculum development and curriculum learning for preservice teachers. The great constraint around that is resourcing and finances for schools and the university.¹³

Note: See appendices in submission for further details.

Mr Hannett —I am doing a four-year Bachelor of Education at Footscray Park . As Andrew said, our university is partnership focused so we are actively engaged with the students at the schools we are at. We can also come back to our classes—our lecturers—and talk about things we see. We have a really strong relationship with our mentor teachers. We have a good relationship with the school. This year is my fourth year. I will assume full control of the class at some stage. Because I am there every week, I can see where the kids are at, where they are going and what the focus of the school is, rather than just walking in and doing a three-week block, where it is, ‘Hello, goodbye’ without actually seeing the kids develop and grow. We become part of the school. ¹⁴

Note: Partnership information also in appendices to submission.

Central Queensland University

The first thing is the primacy of partnership. The classical B.Ed model—the model that I am most used to and, I must say, most of my teacher education colleagues are most used to—is an on-campus teaching program which is articulated with schools, where the schools carry out things like supervision of practise and so on but are normally not part of the decision making process. The BLM program was developed by a committee of school teachers, university staff, union members and so on, where the academics were outnumbered by people out of the profession. The essential thing is that the partners were in from the moment of conception and helped develop the model and the procedures for implementation. That is a critical point. ¹⁵

Prof. Smith —That is a very important thing. One of the sales pitches right at the beginning with EDS—Executive Directors (Schools)—and principals of schools was this circle. The schools teaching profession was involved in setting up the degree and the kinds of knowledge areas and so on and the construction of the courses. They then became what we call part of a family. Those people then were our mentors in the schools and in doing so they had a double-barrelled effect on the schools: not only graduating new kinds of teachers into the profession but also upgrading the work force capability. That was the great promise. ¹⁶

The other comment that I would share is that the partnership has come from a different paradigm. The traditional paradigm that I have been used to is: this is your business; this is my business, and if you get it wrong I will blame you. This is not about that paradigm at all. This is about a paradigm that says: teacher education is our business, and we are in a partnership in that construct. The notion that schools do not have a role in teacher education is fundamentally challenged in this partnership so that our schools, and our principals as leaders particularly, see themselves as having a role in developing the work force that they need to deliver on QSE2010. They see that they have a role to build their work force capability through this program and through a range of other programs. ¹⁷

Mr McAlpine —The relationships that underpin the model are critical. The development of those local sets of relationships, the mind-sets—almost the philosophical underpinning and framework—are essential to the success of the model. It is not simply a matter of saying, ‘This is the model that is successful.’ Education Queensland has a number of successful partnerships with universities—the RATEP model, for example, and so on—that are different to this one. So I would not promote the idea that this model is simply able to be picked up and mandated. The relationships, the philosophical underpinning, the work of the university and the disposition of the university have been critical to the success of the program. The mind-set that Professor Richard Smith came to the table with when he said, ‘We want to start with a blank page and design this in partnership with you,’ is something that principals have not been used to. They have embraced it and they have seen the benefits. It is also about listening to one another. Perhaps those principals, if they are able to replicate it, can develop the model, but it is not simply the model being picked up and moved. ¹⁸

Griffith University

The memorandum we have with Camp Hill Infants School has our students on-site. They are immersed. When they are not doing their theoretical studies in the first semester of their final year, they help out in classrooms. They get lots and lots of additional experience. Teachers at the school are highly motivated to help that happen and the administration of Education Queensland and of our university sees this as a positive. Staff at the school who are helping out in return are becoming increasingly interested in using the university’s award courses to do their professional development. So, as well as doing mentoring of students, they are starting to theorise about what they are doing, how to do it better and how to use this opportunity of having additional participants in the class to benefit the youngsters. So they come into our courses and there is a pay-off for us in that. The second of the partnerships that Neil mentioned is a large group of about 10 schools with the university. We have a seven o’clock meeting on a Wednesday once a month.

Prof. Dempster —In the morning.

Prof. Bartlett —And the process that we have there is to look at ways in which the university can channel into the professional development needs that individual teachers suggest. As you know, in many schools, very often teachers are told what they need to do to develop professionally. Part of the university’s contribution to this partnership has been an annual survey where we invite from teachers across all the schools involved a description of what the barking dogs issues are for them—what they really need in order to feel that they are doing better with their work. That is a thumbnail sketch of how the alliances work. We have seven of these.

Prof. Dempster —And there are many others. I can speak of the professional development alliance with the approximately 150 schools that surround the university. The alliance works with our Centre for Leadership and Management in Education. It has been alive for 10 years. It comes up to its 10th annual conference this year. It provides professional development on a needs basis for those principals in each of the four terms of the year—professional development that they are not getting from their own employing authority. This is the specific reason for the existence of the PDN. What do those principals believe they and their leaders in schools—heads of department and deputy principals—need that they do not get from their employer?

It has survived on a subscription basis in association with the university for 10 years now and has been going very strongly. In fact, we have just had overtures from Education Queensland to extend state wide the model with our leadership centre. So that is a very interesting development and obviously will bring us into a stronger partnership as a university much beyond our own regional area where that particular partnership currently exists. But at the Gold Coast campus we have the Teacher Education Advisory Group, which has been in existence for 14 years with some very strong partnerships. We have the Logan Education Alliance of 12 or so schools around our Logan campus. We are constantly trying to ensure that there are these localised links between us and our partners. Obviously there are benefits both ways, but clearly we need to be seen to be in partnership in harness with schools because our teachers in training need to have those opportunities. ¹⁹

Queensland University of Technology

At QUT we are actively pursuing new approaches to teacher Professional Development (PD) that are developed in partnership with practicing educators, and delivered in partnership with other faculties and educational providers. For example, in late 2004, we offered a Science Education PD program for more than 200 Science teachers on the Gold Coast. The program was offered in conjunction with the QUT Faculty of Science and Science educators from the Queensland Studies Authority who are experts in the new Science syllabus.

We are also partnering with the Faculty of Creative Industries, in the recently-announced ARC Centre of Excellence in Cultural and Media Studies, to establish a Learning Lab at the Kelvin Grove campus, where visiting teachers and students both can experience cutting edge technology at work for educational purposes.

A third new partnership involves the faculty and ESRI Australia, with plans to provide Australia-wide PD for educators and research in the pedagogy of Geographic Information Systems, across the teaching of a wide range of disciplines including Science and Geography. This work relates closely to education for sustainability and another major cross disciplinary research initiative at QUT in the new Institute for Renewable Systems and Resources. Researchers from this Faculty will be working alongside colleagues from other QUT faculties such as Built Environment and Engineering, Science, and Humanities and Human Services in this Institute. ²⁰

Ms Bell —When Brisbane Girls Grammar redid its strategic design we particularly looked not only at our obligations but also at our wish to contribute back to the profession. We were witnessing institutions as well as QUT that desperately needed to place student teachers in schools where they knew that the mentor teacher would want to have them in the room and want to develop their skills et cetera. So we built that into our five-year plan. We went to QUT and said, ‘We want to have an arrangement with you where we will take your students and give them the best mentor teachers that we have, but we want you to help us train those teachers to be good mentors.’ And that is exactly what QUT has done.

Our teachers apply to become mentor teachers and they attend professional development workshops with the staff of QUT and so their training to become a really good trainer of teachers is increased. At the same time, I pay their fees if they wish to convert that training to credit points towards a master’s degree with QUT. So it became a very attractive proposition for my staff, and the school and the board were very keen to put money towards creating this centre and having the partnership and putting money into it. At the same time, I think QUT know that when their student teachers come to us they are going to get the best possible attention, training, mentorship and nurturing, if you like, towards being contributors to the profession. ²¹

University of Queensland

Dr Bahr —It is a two-way street. The universities are providing significant support to schools. As an example, in the middle years program the students go out on prac. A team of academics go to the schools and say, ‘What is an issue you would like to work on with us?’ An example is the literature futures project at Ipswich State High School . We provided a PD for the school. We got the students, our preservice teachers, involved and they rolled out as an infiltration into the school a literate future initiative. Their practicum was almost a project based on a partnership between the University of Queensland and the school. That happens quite often. It does not make sense when we say that we will pay individual teachers to supervise students, because it is not the way it always works. We try to develop partnerships with schools that feed into our programs at all levels. For example, we have MYSTAs—middle years of school teaching associates—come out and form part of our teaching team. We work in with their schools and they work with us on the development of our research grants and so forth. ²²

University of Tasmania

In mid-2004, the Faculty and the Department of Education demonstrated their shared commitment to enhancing the pre-service teacher programs by agreeing to appoint a jointly-funded officer to progress various collaborative initiatives, with a particular focus on addressing the flaws and weaknesses in current processes and practices related to the practicum. The non-government school sectors accepted the invitation to participate in a joint working group, established to support the work of the liaison position. Outcomes to date include:

• A new model of school-experience placement, supervision and support, based on clusters of schools, is being developed through which the capacity of schools, teachers and faculty staff to work together to build tangible theory-practice links will be further developed. The model, which will be trialled in 2005-2006, will address such aspects of school experience as the need for increasing numbers of placements; the recognition and accreditation of the skills and understandings of colleague teachers; review of policies, guidelines, incentives and payments; school and teacher input to course content (getting the balance right) ; standards of beginning teacher performance; and assessment of preservice teacher competence.
• The role of principals and school leaders in the education of new teachers will be given a higher profile through both the pilot model above and professional learning opportunities under development within the Faculty and the Department of Education.
• A Graduate Certificate in Supervision, Mentoring and Induction is under development in the Faculty, with input from experienced colleague teachers who have supported preservice teachers on school experience over a number of years.
• A research module within the Graduate Certificate will enable articulation across to research higher degrees where desired. ²³

The Faculty values its strong student-university-school partnerships. Collaboration is a crucial ingredient in developing supportive and professional relationships in the current educational community.

Developing a strong sense of community is recognised as an important attribute for pre-service teachers. The Faculty is interested in developing programs with local community stakeholders and organisations to introduce pre-service teachers to the education and responsibilities of their community. For example, the Faculty has already strong connections with local Land Care groups, in the conservation of the local environment and other options are being explored.

The Faculty is committed to furthering its partnerships and relationships with transnational communities and universities, as well as focusing on its local and regional community partnerships. This is seen as crucial in developing a quality teacher education program both locally and overseas. This is represented by the following initiatives:

• The development of a new satellite campus in Tasmania ’s north-west, the Cradle Coast Campus, which is trialling a new model of delivery involving locally trained teachers and preservice teachers in school workshops. Strong community partnerships are being formed with two schools: Cooee Primary and Penguin Primary. Both of these schools have agreed to provide facilities and staff for UTAS preservice teachers in order to complete modules such as art, drama, music and physical education. The benefit of this partnership will include preservice teachers learning about and absorbing the school environment; opportunities for preservice teachers to interact with students; and current educational theory and practice being disseminated to the teaching staff involved.
• The Faculty of Education is proposing to establish a Bachelor of Education and Care in the Early Years (title provisional only), to be articulated with Child Care qualifications from the Institute of TAFE Tasmania and other registered training organisations. Currently in Tasmania there is no undergraduate degree in ‘Inquiry into Teacher Education’ from the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania early childhood education specialising in the education of children from birth to four years of age; nor is there a degree course which allows educators to train in leadership, management and administration in early childhood services. This is a deficit which this proposal seeks to address in order to ensure that early education services in Tasmania are of the highest quality. The proposed course will be delivered by flexible mode to suit potential students, some of whom may already have full-time employment, and will emphasise the important links between child care and schooling.
• Establishing strong community partnerships with industry representatives and performance artists to act as mentors for preservice teachers in their learning to teach. One project involved preservice teachers creating and performing a theatre in education piece for students at Mowbray and Spreyton Primary schools . A theatre professional was invited to assist in this creative process.
• A strong partnership has been formed with the Education Officers at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery at Inveresk. Preservice teachers enrolled in art modules are introduced to the Education Officers and given a guided tour of the gallery and in particular the Museum Education Learning Centre. During this time they are informed about the number of opportunities available for teachers visiting the museum and how these can be utilised within their own classes in the future. It is also an important opportunity to increase their knowledge of arts literacy, which is to be reported on in the Essential Learnings in 2007.
• Partnerships with leading educators such as Maxine Greene , Emeritus Professor at Harvard University and Doctor Malcolm Skilbeck strengthen scholarship in the Faculty.
• A number of preservice teachers have taken advantage of an opportunity to travel to Thailand during the summer vacation to teach on a voluntary basis.
• There is a reciprocal exchange program which includes bringing teachers from Thailand to spend time in the Faculty working with colleagues and in Tasmanian schools.
• The development of research scholarships for students and lecturers living overseas to enhance cross cultural ties and relationships.
• Research into the development of a crosscultural program which will enhance the development of intercultural understandings across undergraduate programs in the Faculty of Education.
• Establishing and implementing regular seminars and expertise in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for professionals and other interested parties in regional centres.
• Young Children Learning (2004). During 2003, a collaborative project between the Department of Education and the Faculty of Education was undertaken in which seventy-five 4th Year Bachelor of Education students designed learning materials for young learners in Early Childhood classrooms. This project encapsulated the philosophical approach of the Tasmanian Department of Education’s Essential Learnings curriculum. These Early Childhood student teachers collaborated with 8 classroom practitioners in the publication of the book Young Children Learning (2004) . The joint success of this project has been acclaimed by Early Childhood practitioners across Tasmania . In the words of the Principal Education Review Officer with the Department of Education: I have received so many comments about the resource ‘Young Children Learning’ from teachers, staff from support schools and those working in child care. The resource is highly professional, easy to use – and practical.²⁴

We are particularly enthusiastic about our program called Partners in Professional Practice and Innovation. You will have heard a lot about the practicum or in-school experience and the difficulties people have supporting it, funding it and so on. I hope you have already heard about the very strong relationship we have with the Tasmanian Department of Education, the Catholic Education Office and the independent sector. One of the things that is distinctive about Tasmania is the possibility of having very good relationships—provided you get the vision right. We are working closely with the Department of Education to invite certain schools to work very closely with us—so that the teachers can be true professional partners with us and the practicum can be improved by getting the students to have positive experiences in schools.

A large number of schools in Tasmania give us prac places. I had a report yesterday that most of those schools are very committed to the work they are doing with us. But we want to acknowledge what they are doing for us and upgrade that by asking the teachers to deliver the teacher education part of the program alongside us, rather than having the separation between universities and schools. We want to develop true partnerships, and we believe that is possible in Tasmania . We are grateful for the support of our major stakeholders—the Department of Education, Catholic Ed and the independent sector, who are very much on board with us in moving forward with that kind of relationship. ²⁵

The issues of partnerships and reciprocal learning are very important. We have had three students in our school this year. The feedback from our colleague teachers and from preservice teachers has been exceptionally positive. We would like to grow that experience in future years. I know that the model Kate has led certainly allows that. For example, we meet with the students and we know that, as a school, we have so much to learn from preservice teachers. But we also know that we can impart some reciprocal learning. Also, down the track we believe there are opportunities under the proposed Graduate Certificate in Mentoring and Coaching for some of our teachers to actually come back to the university, be presenters, work closely at the coalface here on site and also grow their own learning and understanding about how the faculty of education works.

That reciprocity is important. We have preservice teachers going from the university into our clusters and schools and staff from our clusters coming to the university. This notion of lifelong learning and commitment to learning for all is so important. One of our supervising teachers this year has expressed an interest already in coming back to university to complete a PhD. We are looking at ways we can grow, particularly in various disciplines. So already there is momentum in schools. I am sure that, as our clusters continue to gather momentum and continue to be effective for education in the state, there will be strong partnerships and commitment from all. ²⁶

Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education

Ms Bainbridge —That is one of the good things that we are currently exploring. There is another model that we are currently working on, certainly in the IEW—Indigenous education worker—area, and that we want to look to in the higher education work. We have a memorandum of understanding with the Catholic Education Office, where their teachers in schools deliver some of the courses. We support the assessment, and we have visits and workshops out in the community as well. We are in a partnership so that they are delivering some of the course with the teachers on the ground whilst we support through assessment, resource materials and occasional visits. We have a good model out at Galiwinku at the moment, where, with the school, we are jointly funding the position, with the lecturer based out in that community. They have put up half the salary; we have put up the other half. That is a model we think is working very well, and we are extending that. ²⁷

Curtin University of Technology

There is a particular focus on prospective students from an Indigenous Australian background who are encouraged to apply for entry through TER or STAT scores or alternatively they may enter Early Childhood and Primary courses via non-standard entry access agreement with Curtin’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies. In addition to these pathways an innovative program for Indigenous students has been operating through a partnership between the Department of Education and Training, Western Australia (DETWA) and Curtin’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies. In this program Aboriginal and Islander Education Officers (AIEO) who are currently employed in Western Australian schools upgrade their qualifications as they combine their ‘in situ’ everyday work and university study. ²⁸

Edith Cowan University

The idea of the partnership was to invite schools to join it initially through their districts because the district had its own structures—I should add as an aside that we sought to do a similar thing with the non-government sector, but they are not a system and they were not all that keen on joining anything as a connectivity although some of the same principles that we operate apply to the non-government schools, particularly the Catholic system, as well. We wanted to build this relationship and have a university staff member associated with a particular school so that there could be some continuing contact between that school and the university and to try and find ways in which, with the work of the university and the work of the school, there could be some common mutual advantage. Some of that mutual advantage came from the professional contact between the school and ourselves. Some of it came from people from the university being able to provide some resources either via professional development or PD or just availability of staff to connect to the school and to find from the school staff who could teach and assist us with our programs, provide us with advice and help us out in other different kinds of ways.

This partnership arrangement is now in a sense firmly established. Not all of our students are currently placed in partner schools, but we expect that progressively the whole relationship between ourselves and schools will take that particular form. I do not want to say any more because I want you to have the opportunity to hear from my colleagues—one from the Swan district and one from the Joondalup district, Mr Zeid and Mr Chesny; Sue Sharp, who knows how it all runs; Carmel Maloney, who manages the whole practicum experience; and Graeme Lock, who has been instrumental in setting up the Swan partnership. My final comment would be that, in talking with my colleagues, fellow deans in other parts of Australia , there are a small number of universities that have gone down this path—the Victoria University is one. There are some others that we link with, and we feel that it is providing a framework for building quite strong relationships, not just nominal relationships, regarding what the university does in the school, with all kinds of additional benefits.²⁹

Prof. Maloney —In the Swan partnership we have over 80 schools that have partnership status. But, to add to the previous point, more and more schools are now asking to come on board and become a partnership school. They do see that there are added benefits to being a partner, and the numbers are increasing each year. We started with 20 schools as a trial. Over three years, that has developed. Over 80 schools are now in a partnership arrangement with us.

Mrs Sharp —On the Joondalup campus, we would have pretty much 75 schools that we are in partnership with. We would have started with 35 to 40 in our first year. One of the interesting factors of partnerships for us has been that, even though we have increased the number of schools coming into partnerships, what is really significant for us is that we have increased the penetration into the schools that we had. So, instead of taking one or two students a year, some of our schools take up to 30 students a year. As Lou said, they really are part of the school culture. We even have schools now that put us in their school development plans. They look at our prac timetable for the following year and say: ‘Which one of these pracs would contribute most to our school this year? Where can we use these students most effectively?’ They are really thinking along the lines that Max was talking about. We get a lot of requests, as well, for students with specific talents—for example, ‘I have a music specialist who would like student; is it possible to have someone with a music background?’ and so on. We often send our students, even before university starts, on school camps. I just put out a call. They have to apply to me to be allowed to do that in their own time. The partnerships have opened up those sorts of possibilities. ³⁰

Dr Lock —When we started the Swan partnership in 2003 Max asked me to manage it and get it going. A colleague and I actively undertook some research in the second school term of that year. We went and interviewed 14 of our partnership principals. We were very open, saying, ‘How is it going? What do you think works? What do you think doesn’t work. How can we improve?’ One of the features of this partnership is this continual conversation we have with our schools saying ‘How can we improve? We listen to our schools and resources permitting, we shall do so.’ As a result of this research—we actually had a refereed journal article published, which really pleased as. It was read by a university in another state who visited us this year to ask us how our partnership had developed. So it is seen by a fairly established university in the eastern states that we have developed a model on which they can also develop relationships with the school.

We have also been involving, this year in particular, teachers from our partnership schools in our course reviews. Each semester we review our courses with respect to improving what we can do. For the primary course this year we invited practising classroom teachers who are teaching in the program and three deputy principals. They felt very valued in coming in and made some very worthwhile contributions, which will continue to improve the courses which we deliver and continue to improve the structure our in-school experiences for our students. ³¹

Prof. Hackling —For example, in the science education projects a lot of our research has been funded by DEST. Basically we spent five years building up a collaborative consortium of partners to support bids for DEST funding, and key players in that are the Australian Academy of Science, as the peak body for science; the Australian Council for Educational Research, which has the educational measurement expertise in the country; the Australian Science Teachers Association, which is the professional body; and the Curriculum Corporation, which is the curriculum development agency for the states and territories. They are the key players in science education at the national stage. All those partner groups have been involved in all five of the DEST funded projects I have mentioned. At the state level we strongly partner with the state Department of Education and Training and, particularly with the Fogarty work, the Catholic Education Office and the Association of Independent Schools, so we are strongly linked to the sectors within this state. The state department, the national players and DEST are our main partner groups. ³²

Tabor College

In South Australia we are very privileged in that there is an excellent collegial relationship between the public and private providers of teacher education. We enjoy working with colleagues in the public sector and Tabor is part of a practicum partnership arrangement, chaired by Frank Davies , our head of education, who is here. This group includes representation from the three state universities and Tabor Adelaide and it organises the allocation of primary schools in the Adelaide metropolitan area for student-teacher practicum placements. Tabor actually maintains the state database record of these practicum placement allocations for all members of the partnership and Frank is also the South Australian coordinator for the National Association of Field Experience Administrators. We also work with the state universities and others in a professional development pathways network framework. This is concerned with professional development of teachers and the offering of units for their postgraduate studies. ³³

University of South Australia

Prof. Hattam —I am going to be talking about one particular project which we are calling Redesigning Pedagogies in the North. It is an Australian Research Council Linkage project. It has got the following features at this point. Its partners are the northern Adelaide public secondary schools, the Australian Education Union and the Social Inclusion Unit, with representatives from the School of Education at the University of South Australia . The project has a full-time PhD student, and I think we are negotiating for another one. As well, a couple of our EdD students are working out in the north, so their work is related to this project. We have got two honours students. The project has the involvement of the program coordinator of our middle-school teaching program. We have got some nascent plans to try and involve practicum students in the project next year.

Dr Nichols —My remarks are about the relationship between our graduate programs and the industries that are our partners. The graduate certificate in education is a highly industry-responsive program. Every year or two years, we develop new strands to that program, which relate to the service development needs identified by our partners for their experienced teachers. Over the last four years, we have developed new strands in the fields of science and maths education, inclusive education, new literacies and new technologies and community capacity building. Our student and stakeholder evaluations have been highly positive. ³⁴

Prof. Brennan —Perhaps the disappearance or the almost invisibility of the employing authority is because they are so always here. We would have 20 staff from there or from us with each other in meetings every week. We have a Teacher Education Liaison Committee, which meets quarterly, which brings together all the employers, all the providers and other interest groups to talk about supply, demand, issues about professional development and a whole range of topics that people want to put on the table. A subcommittee of that is the group referred to before by Ian Hamilton and John Holmes , the Teacher Practicum Coordinating Committee, where the employers and the providers sit down and work out who is having what, so that we do not have demarcation disputes with four providers asking every school to provide placements. ³⁵

Submission No. 130, p. 2 (Macquarie University). Back

Submission No. 130, pp. 6-7 (Macquarie University). Back

Submission No. 130, p. 27 (Macquarie University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 8 March 2006, pp. 36-37 (Charles Sturt University). Back

Submission No. 133, p. 9 (University of Sydney). Back

Submission No. 152, p. 9 (University of Western Sydney). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 4 April 2006, p. 44 (University of Wollongong). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 4 April 2006, p. 33 (University of Wollongong). Back

Submission No. 65, p. 2 (La Trobe University). Back

Submission No. 21, p. 11 (Victoria University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 7 June 2005, p. 80 (Victoria University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 7 June 2005, p. 82 (Victoria University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 7 June 2005, p. 93 (Victoria University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 5 July 2005, p. 2 (Central Queensland University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 5 July 2005, p. 11 (Central Queensland University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 5 July 2005, p. 20 (Central Queensland University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 5 July 2005, p. 30 (Central Queensland University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 6 July 2005, pp. 54-55 (Griffith University). Back

Submission No. 72.1, p. 15 (Queensland University of Technology). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 6 July 2005, p. 47 (Queensland University of Technology). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 7 July 2005, p. 48 (University of Queensland). Back

Submission No. 119, p. 8 (University of Tasmania). Back

Submission No. 119, pp. 11-13 (University of Tasmania). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 24 November 2005, p. 4 (University of Tasmania). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 24 November 2005, pp. 39-40 (University of Tasmania). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 30 August 2005, p. 18 (University of Tasmania). Back

Submission No. 158, p. 4 (Curtin University of Technology). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 26 October 2005, p. 26 (Edith Cowan University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 26 October 2005, p. 30 (Edith Cowan University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 26 October 2005, p. 32 (Edith Cowan University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 26 October 2005, p. 46 (Edith Cowan University). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 29 September 2005, p. 48 (Tabor College). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 28 September 2005, p. 31 (University of South Australia). Back

Transcript of Evidence, 28 September 2005, p. 35 (University of South Australia). Back