223however, sometimes secondary preservice teachers could only be paired in one of
their discipline specialisations.
The intention of the model for the university and the teaching schools was to
improve the professional agency of preservice teachers while also supporting the
professional development of the supervising teachers. The 2 days a week embedded
placement allowed preservice teachers to have a more authentic teaching experience
during all stages of the school year as opposed to an episodic 15- or 20-day place-
ment. Their experience was similar to that of a part-time teacher who is at the school
for the same days each week of the whole year or semester and could experience the
ebb and flow of school life including staff meetings, professional development,
reporting to parents, school sports and fetes, for example. There were high expecta-
tions between the university and the schools of a shared information flow, as well as
preservice teachers and supervisor experiences that expanded beyond the boundar-
ies of the traditional master-apprentice model. The intention was to run tutorials at
the school as well as beam in lectures for the students that teachers could also attend
if they did not have classroom duties.
The teaching school model is now in its fifth year of operation and has been
expanded to a third regional campus. The university is actively promoting the model
to an increasing number of schools because it satisfies the AITSL recommendations
for authentic experiences and partnerships in initial teacher education. To support
the participating schools in the paired placement model and preservice teachers for
such an extended period, the university committed to providing academic advisors
to conduct relationship visits to the school each semester as well as free professional
development opportunities. There was also a guaranteed rapid response process if
any issues arose between preservice teachers and supervising teachers. The latter
was common to all participating schools.
Enablers and Barriers Encountered in These Paired
Placement Models
This chapter builds on our earlier and separate publications that report on the advan-
tages of the paired placement model (Lang et al., 2015 ; Nguyen, 2013 ). In sum-
mary, these publications present the evidence of a stronger community of learning
between preservice teachers and supervising teachers who participated in the paired
placement models. There is evidence of both models enabling an effective zone of
proximal development allowing preservice teachers to work together to evolve their
teacher identity. In this project we use comparative analysis of our previous empiri-
cal data from our pilot studies and identified three enabling factors that develop the
quality of paired placement programs. Firstly, there must be commitment from all
stakeholders; secondly, trust and respect between the paired preservice teachers are
essential; and finally there must be strong lines of communication between all
13 Paired Placements in Intensified School and University Environments: Advantages...