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- School leaders had a role within the PIP by engaging in a scheduled professional
conversation with preservice teachers discussing school structure, philosophy,
school plan and professional expectations. - A well-structured program was communicated to all participants through work-
shops, emails and meetings. Each week of the PIP had a specific focus of tar-
geted school experiences, classroom observations and reflective tasks.
The Professional Immersion Program was evaluated after the first year. Changes
were implemented in response to feedback from focus groups and school leaders,
which included a reduction of the number of activities and flexibility in what tasks
were completed based on the school context. Greater in-servicing of mentor teach-
ers and an online platform were established to share and communicate information
to all participants.
Model: Queensland (Central Queensland University)
Introduction
At the beginning of the new millennium, Central Queensland University launched
the Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM), an undergraduate teaching degree
that was developed in consultation with Queensland schools located in its regional
footprint. The goal of the BLM was to produce workplace-ready and future-
orientated graduates who would be the future agents of change within a twenty-first-
century education circumstance (Smith & Lynch, 2010 ). In order to achieve such
goals, the professional experience component of the BLM was explicitly linked to
the coursework undertaken on campus (Ingvarson, Beavis, Danielson, Ellis & Elliot,
2005 ). As such, the preservice teachers applied theory to practice through ‘portal
tasks’ that were completed during the professional experience. A portal task can be
described as a structured experience that demonstrates and applies understanding of
important teaching knowledge (Smith & Lynch, 2010 ). The professional experience
component of the BLM thus became integral, and due to this, it included over
130 days of professional practice. The final year of the BLM program placed pre-
service teachers into a school for 87 days, creating a context of workplace immer-
sion for the demonstration and application of teaching knowledge.
Context
The Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM) program is delivered on five regional
Queensland sites (Bundaberg, Gladstone, Mackay, Noosa and Rockhampton) with
a sixth regional site added in 2012 at the Geraldton University Centre in Western
Australia. Students in the Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM) are enrolled
S. Tindall-Ford et al.