that primarily the learning of children and young people is at the heart of all teacher
education but with layers above that level, for example [focusing] on the learning of
teachers and on the learning of teacher educators. (p. 7)In this chapter, we explore these learning layers and consider their interrelationship;
namely, that by learning more about teacher education and becoming a teacher
educator, a mentor teacher can further contribute to not only the learning of the
pre-service teacher but also to their own professional learning and thus the learning
of their students. We consider the professional development of supervisors/mentors
as akin to becoming teacher educators (albeit school-based) and argue that greater
attention be paid to researching and understanding their learning processes as
they move more towards becoming‘second order practitioners’(Murray 2002 )
without necessarily shifting the location of their work outside of the school as
workplace.
To support our thinking, we draw from a particular study of 12 mentor teachers
engaged in one such mentor professional learning program. We document their
increasing awareness of the complexity and importance of teacher education and
the ways in which their professional identities shifted towards the recognition of
themselves as school-based teacher educators, working together with university-
based teacher educators, within a particular school-university partnership model.
Like Boyd et al. ( 2014 ) we found that the mentors involved explored, for example,
‘explicit modelling’to make their tacit knowledge visible for the pre-service teacher
and by doing so illuminated more about their own knowledge of practice and
learning.
Before discussing thefindings further, it is important to take a step back and to
outline the Australian initial teacher education context and the current policy ini-
tiatives that led to such a program.
19.2 The Australian Initial Teacher Education Context
In the Australian context, initial teacher education is led by higher education pro-
viders (majority as Universities) in partnerships with schools. Teacher‘training’—or
as we prefer, ‘teacher education’—moved out of Teaching Colleges and into
Universities in the late 1980s. Pre-service teachers now typically complete a four
year undergraduate Bachelor of Education degree or a two year post-graduate Master
of Teaching degree. They spend the majority of their time learning at the University
site with mandated days spent in workplace learning (known as professional expe-
rience or practicum) in schools. Pre-service teachers are typically assigned a‘su-
pervising or mentor teacher’(language used in Australia) who takes the main
responsibility for mentoring and assessing their professional learning, while the
University takes responsibility for assessing the course/program work and ultimately
awards the degree. The majority of Universities have now moved their practicum
284 S. White and R. Forgasz