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paired placement. In this agreement the university also made a commitment to
improve the quality of the professional experience by providing an academic men-
tor to work with the school and preservice teachers to develop a tailored curriculum
for the professional experience. In this model, supervising teachers were offered the
opportunity to supervise two preservice teachers at the same time. If teachers did
not want to supervise two preservice teachers, then preservice teachers were still
placed in pairs, but with different supervisors in the same school for the purpose of
peer collaboration and observation. However, as a result, most preservice teachers
were placed in pairs with one supervising teacher, as well as in groups of four to
eight in a school. They were supported to make focused critical observations of their
supervising teachers and their pair using an observation protocol that utilised the
descriptors from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers at the Graduate
level. The university provided an academic as a mentor who met the school-based
group of preservice teachers each week over the 4-week placement. The purpose of
these meetings was to discuss the focused observations of the preservice teachers
and to scaffold their development of collaborative teaching and learning practices.
At some schools the university academic mentor invited supervising teachers to
these meetings. While this was considered the ideal practice, it did not always occur
due to supervising teachers being unable to commit to this extra duty. Other schools
allocated time for the supervising teachers to participate in the paired placement
discussions, indicating a stronger level of commitment to the success of this model
of professional experience.
Model B: The Teaching School Embedded Paired Placement
Model
The teaching school model for professional experience was implemented in a mul-
ticampus university in Victoria and focused on placing preservice teachers in pairs,
in schools for 2 days a week over a whole year or a whole semester. An important
aspect of this model that was attractive to partner schools was that preservice teach-
ers had to meet minimum grade requirements to apply for this paired placement
and to present at the school for interview prior to being accepted (Lang et al.,
2015 ). This model was available to final-year preservice teachers in Master’s or
Bachelor’s courses in primary or secondary contexts. In the first pilot of this model,
the partner schools were co-located or in close proximity to the university campus.
This enabled the preservice teachers to travel between school and campus readily.
While the university committed to providing schools with their final-year students,
the schools also committed to ensure that supervising teachers in the teaching
school model were their most experienced teachers. In larger schools, as many as
28 preservice teachers were placed in pairs in a single school; while in smaller
primary schools, there may only have been one or two pairs of preservice teachers
placed. All primary preservice teachers were paired with one supervising teacher;
C. Lang and H.T.M. Nguyen