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Introduction
In February 2015 the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG)
reported to the then Australian Education Minister Christopher Pyne that universi-
ties and schools are not efficiently working together in initial teacher education
programs or in the development of preservice teachers. The TEMAG ( 2015 ) report
outlines that a series of fundamental principles significant to the reform of teacher
education are required which include:
- Effective initial teacher education programs provide preservice teachers with
immersion in theory about learning, development and subject matter in contexts
where these can be applied and ensure a strong link between theory and
practice. - Initial teacher education providers, teacher employers and schools must share a
commitment to improve initial teacher education and work in partnership to
achieve strong graduate and student outcomes. All academic components of
teacher education should be integrated with practice in schools so that initial
teacher education becomes a fused and mutually reinforcing experience of higher
education and professional learning.
Professional experience is a fundamental component of initial teacher education
as its nature and type has a major influence on the learning of preservice teachers.
Professional experience has been variously known as the practicum, field experi-
ence and teaching rounds. It is the linking of theory and practice that enables the
preservice teachers to develop capacities to be able to act like a teacher and to more
deliberatively think like a teacher (Wilson & Demetriou, 2007 ) and to develop the
feeling of being a teacher and identify with the role (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011 ).
However, as Fox and Wilson ( 2015 ) acknowledge in their recent study on beginning
teachers, ‘becoming a teacher is not merely to acquire necessary knowledge and
skills to teach in classrooms’ (p. 94). Initial teacher education programs need to
ensure that the professional experience component in particular stimulates preser-
vice teachers’ personal responsibilities for leading learning.
Increasingly professional experiences for preservice teachers are taking different
forms, especially where school communities are actively seeking input and assis-
tance from teacher education providers to assist them in achieving their strategic
goals. Professional experiences outside the traditional professional experience can
emerge from school-university partnerships where learning communities/communi-
ties of practice are created and fostered and where service learning is emphasized
and created with a view to aligning missions and strategic directions. Indeed as
Rossner and Commins ( 2012 ) identify, genuine school-university partnerships are
collaborations of professional conversations, collegial learning and aligned
processes.
Teacher educators are responsible for coordinating and negotiating connections
between professional knowledge and working knowledge, as well as between the
workforces and workspaces of universities and schools. New times challenge our
B. Eckersley et al.