177existing programs of professional learning and curriculum and imply the need for
new pedagogies in teacher education where the workspace of the school and the
concerns and needs of its various stakeholders (preservice teachers, students, school
community and the teaching profession) are actively taken into account.
While the work of supporting an individual to become a teacher has traditionally
belonged to both the university and the schools, ownership has been clearly divided.
The university has been responsible for the theoretical and pedagogical preparation
and the schools responsible for the practice of those methods, strategies and the
enactment of theory (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009 ). All learning is situated within
boundaries, and the challenge in education is to create constructive collaborations
across and between learning sites. As such, it is becoming increasingly evident that
preservice teachers are required to develop knowledge and expertise across and
often in-between the school and university sites. Preservice teachers in this context
are positioned as boundary-crossers who at times find themselves in new learning
spaces and unfamiliar territories. Tsui and Law ( 2007 ) observe that crossing bound-
aries forces participants to take a fresh look at their long-standing practices and
assumptions and can be a source of deep learning.
The professional experience initiatives discussed in this chapter each situate pre-
service teachers within a boundary zone (i.e. a classroom, a cohort of students, a
curriculum discipline area). Preservice teachers as boundary-crossers are encour-
aged to engage with members of other communities of practice whereby they
encounter tensions, contradictions and rich learning opportunities that often result
in a transformed activity system of learning for all participants (Engestrom, 2011 ).
Taylor, Klein, and Abrams ( 2014 ) also observe that teacher education must exist
across multiple spaces. They argue that the role of teacher education is simply too
complex to reside solely in the university, isolated from the realities of schools. In
this chapter, we discuss and demonstrate this overlap of systems that seeks to
address the often discussed alignment of theory and practice in initial teacher
education.
By focusing on a professional experience-related initiative that has been inte-
grated into the initial teacher education programs in three Victorian universities, we
highlight the learning potential of engaging preservice teachers in the following
site-based projects in schools and communities:
- Victoria University and the Applied Curriculum Project
- Deakin University and the Aspire Program
- University of Melbourne and the Yirrkala Indigenous Schools’ Program
Despite exhibiting distinctive features, these innovative projects share important
characteristics:
- The projects/programs were preservice teacher led in collaboration with school/
community personnel. - They were all site-based and located in, and focused on, schools/community
priorities/strategic improvement initiatives.
11 Professional Experience and Project-Based Learning as Service Learning