with data collection and analysis skills to assess the learning needs of all students.
While this approach could position teachers asdiscerning consumers of research,it
limits research literacy to data-driven approaches that might not engage teachers
with richer forms of research inquiry.
As discussed in the previous section on classroom readiness, there is implied
support in the TEMAG report for research to inform thecontentandstructureof
initial teacher education programmes, with little evidence to support the notion that
pre-service and graduate teachers, or teacher educators themselves, should engage
with and bediscerning consumersof research. At best, research engagement is
conceptualised in terms of teachers collecting and analysing student achievement
data in order to adjust and improve teaching strategies. While this could create a
data-richenvironment that supports school improvement, such an approach would
not necessarily immerse teachers in aresearch-richenvironment that draws on
multiple forms evidence from multiple sources.
43.6 Classroom Readiness and Research Literacy
One of our great concerns with the TEMAG’s focus on classroom readiness is that
it fails to take into account context. Contained within this failing is a standardised
notion of the‘ideal teacher’who can operate within any context. We are not
suggesting that teacher education does not need to reform or that the various
programmes throughout Australia currently prepare teachers to walk into any
classroom, in any location, conditions or situation, in which they mightfind
themselves when theyfirst begin their careers. However, we would argue that a
standardised notion of classroom readiness being articulated through the particular
recommendations being taken up by government will also not adequately prepare
pre-service teachers for the diversity of experiences they are likely to face in
Australia. In the Australian context, as in most other national contexts, a‘one size
fits all’model of teacher education is clearly not appropriate. If we were to take our
own State of Queensland, schools in rural and remote areas are vastly different from
those in urban areas, and even within these different locations, schools serve vastly
different populations, shaped around socioeconomic status, and the race and ethnic
background of students. Teaching, for example, in the remote Indigenous com-
munity of Aurukun is vastly different from teaching in any school in suburban
Brisbane. Preparing teachers for any possibility is extremely difficult. However, we
maintain that a concern in teacher education with research literacy will go some
way to supporting newly qualified teachers in diverse locations.
There has to be an awareness in pre-service teacher education programmes then
that not all schools are alike and that ensuring that pre-service teachers are
‘classroom ready’in any context requires that they have the abilities to adapt and
apply knowledges. For example, there are some clear indications that teachers who
will be working in communities with highly marginalised young people do need
some special attributes, knowledges and skills, and that teacher education
43 The Place of Research in Teacher Education?... 647