207internally and are located within the university campus footprint. Partnership
arrangements with schools are a vital component of the success of the program, and
each campus footprint has a number of schools that mentor preservice teachers;
these schools are referred to as ‘teaching schools’. The success of the final-year
immersion program relies on teaching schools that will mentor and embrace the
preservice teachers into the school community. The preservice teacher is seen as a
school staff member and is treated as a teacher rather than a preservice teacher. In
this respect mentor teachers and school staff receive specific professional develop-
ment that provides them with a clear understanding of the intentions of the program
as well as the expected outcomes and learning of the preservice teachers. Like other
immersion programs, a number of roles are key to the success of the preservice
teachers. Each teaching school has a nominated site coordinator who is paid as a
university tutor and delivers school-based professional development sessions to pre-
service teachers. Teaching schools also have an allocated university coordinator
who supports, troubleshoots and works in collaboration with the site coordinators,
preservice teachers and mentor teachers.
Structure and Implementation
The final year of the Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM) program consists of
three professional experiences known as Embedded Professional Learning 3, 4 and
5 that occur over the course of three school terms. The structure of these culminat-
ing courses is shown in Table 12.1.
Preservice teachers are allocated to a school in the previous year so that they can
meet their mentor teacher and be inducted into the school prior to the beginning of
their placement. This process is designed to build the foundations of mentoring
whereby the preservice teachers and mentor teachers form a professional relation-
ship and begin to discuss expectations and goals for the year.
Key to the success of the professional experience in the final-year program is the
combination of work experience days and assessable days. The positioning of the
work experience days in embedded professional learning 3 (EPL3) at the beginning
Table 12.1 Final-year professional experience structure
Embedded professional learning 3 Undertaken in school term 1 and
Two student-free days (work experience) followed by ten school term 2
consecutive days (work experience)
Ten single day visits (five work experience and five
assessable) followed by 15 consecutive assessable days
Embedded professional learning 4 Undertaken in school term 3
Twenty consecutive assessable days
Embedded professional learning 5 (internship) Undertaken in school term 3
Thirty consecutive assessable days12 Immersion Programs in Australia: Exploring Four Models for Developing...