practising teacher educators. This under representation speaks to the devaluing of
academic knowledge about teacher education and creates the impression of‘doing
to’teacher educators rather than‘doing with’.
The Executive Summary ofAction now: Classroom ready teachersrefers to the
need to improve the quality of teachers in Australian schools by focusing on when
teachers‘arefirst prepared for the profession’(p. xi). It is clear that initial teacher
education providers are being held accountable for producing‘classroom ready’
graduates, and there is an implied criticism that this is not already happening in
Australian university programmes.
The report delivered six keyfindings:(1) National standards are weakly applied in accrediting initial teacher education
programmes and assessing the classroom readiness of graduates.
(2) There is a need to lift public confidence in initial teacher education, especially
in terms of entry requirements.
(3) There is evidence of poor practice in a number of programmes, which do not
provide graduates with adequate content knowledge or evidence-based teaching
strategies.
(4) There is insufficient integration of university-based teacher education providers
with schools and systems in the professional experience component of initial
teacher education.
(5) There is insufficient professional support for beginning teachers.
(6) There are gaps in workforce planning data, and insufficient information on the
effectiveness of initial teacher education programmes.
This set offindings works to undermine much of the current practice in teacher
education, and in some respects targets issues that are often outside the domain of
university programmes. For example, the responsibility for accreditation and quality
assurance of programmes (findings 1 and 3) is shared by universities and the national
regulatory body, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
(AITSL), currently chaired by John Hattie. Also, while entry requirements for initial
teacher education are set by universities, these requirements are influenced not so
much by trends in workforce supply and demand or by academic prerequisites
considered necessary for successful university study, but byfinancial considerations
in maximising enrolments. The fourthfinding works to highlight that somewhat old
tension between theory and practice which suggests that there is too much theory in
teacher education and that the real world experience of the classroom requires that
more attention be paid to practice. This is not to say that partnerships between
schools and universities are unimportant; however, concerns with such partnerships
need to go beyond the organisation of the professional experience component of
initial teacher education. Such partnerships also need to attend to concerns with the
intellectual enterprise of teaching as a research endeavour.
Whilst the latter two of thesefindings clearly relate to education departments,
and other employing agencies, by linking the last of these to the‘effectiveness of
teacher education programmes’the blame for poor workforce planning is attached
642 M. Mills and M. Goos