Longitudinal Teacher Education and Workforce Study (ltews) Final Report

Graduate teachers’ overall satisfaction with their teacher education program

Overall, a large proportion of graduate teachers felt positive about their teacher education programs and this was consistent in all three rounds of the Graduate Teacher Surveys. Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement on a five-point scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ to the question ‘I would recommend my teacher education program to someone else wishing to qualify as a teacher’. When cross-tabulated with teaching employment, about three quarters of graduate teachers who held teaching positions either agreed or strongly agreed that they would recommend their teacher education program to others for all three rounds. Over 12 months (across 2 calendar years), there is no significant change in respondents’ perception of their teacher education programs, increasing slightly to 79 per cent agreement for this group of teachers (See Table 72).

Table 72. Graduate teachers – by level of agreement with the statement ‘I would recommend my teacher education program to others’

	Round 1		Round 2		Round 3
	n	%	n	%	n	%
Teaching
Strongly Disagree	41	4.2	67	3.2	51	3.1
Disagree	92	9.5	175	8.3	126	7.6
Neither Agree nor Disagree	104	10.7	316	14.9	165	10.0
Agree	459	47.4	1003	47.4	824	49.8
Strongly Agree	273	28.2	555	26.2	490	29.6
TOTAL	969	100.0	2,116	100.0	1,656	100.0
Not teaching
Strongly Disagree	21	6.1	22	5.9	19	5.9
Disagree	47	13.7	42	11.4	49	15.2
Neither Agree nor Disagree	45	13.2	61	16.5	45	13.9
Agree	153	44.7	155	41.9	155	48.0
Strongly Agree	76	22.2	90	24.3	55	17.0
TOTAL	342	100.0	370	100.0	323	100.0

Note: Round 1: p<0.05; Round 2 p<0.05; Round 3 p<0.01

Significantly, when compared with those who were not teaching, the results suggest that graduate teachers who have a teaching position feel more positive about their initial teacher education than those without a teaching position. This is evident especially in the case of the graduate teachers who had full-time permanent positions with regular and intensive classroom experiences for the previous six months. For example, in Round 3, for those with a teaching position, 79 per cent either strongly agreed or agreed that they would recommend their teacher education program to others, but for those without a teaching position, this agreement group was 65 per cent. For those with a teaching position, 11 per cent either strongly disagreed or disagreed about recommending their program to others. In comparison, for those without a teaching position, the disagreement group was 21 per cent. A chi-square statistic was calculated to examine whether there was a relationship between graduates’ having or not having a teaching position and their level of satisfaction with their teacher education program. The test was found to be statistically significant (p<.05 in all three rounds).

This finding was also evident in analysis of the interviews and survey free text responses. First, responses showed graduate teachers’ concern about the lack of jobs (‘There are very few teaching jobs available and we were not made fully aware of that’, ‘Too many students, too few jobs’) and second, interview findings showed how graduate teachers’ employment status influenced their perceptions about their preparation for teaching. While those who were in permanent teaching positions were more positive about their opportunities to draw on the knowledge and skills they gained in their teacher education programs, many holding casual and relief positions felt that they were not able to apply that knowledge and those in positions. Box 11 illustrates an example of this situation.