Longitudinal Teacher Education and Workforce Study (ltews) Final Report

Graduate teachers’ preparedness in key teaching areas – the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers

The Round 1 Graduate Teacher Survey includes a preparation scale featuring 46 items.  The areas covered in the preparation scale are based on the literature and previous research in the area of preparing teachers for teaching. This work was prepared for the SETE study, upon which the LTEWS work is based. SETE found the literature highlights ten key areas of preparedness for teaching, which are as follows:

• 
  Collegiality
  
• 
  Understanding, design and implementation of curriculum
  
• 
  Demonstrating an understanding of professional ethics
  
• 
  Engagement in ongoing professional learning
  
• 
  Assessment
  
• 
  Classroom management
  
• 
  Parent and community engagement
  
• 
  Catering for diverse learners
  
• 
  Pedagogy
  
• 
  Relationships with students
  

Principal components analysis (PCA) on this scale showed that the 46 items reduced to four sub-scales, or components. The first component contained 22 items from the scale, and did not have a unifying descriptor, other than ‘preparation’ in general.  The other three components found through PCA were assessment, professional learning and classroom management. Because there was not a clear, single description that encompassed all items for the first component, the PCA for these 46 items is not useful and was not used in the data analysis. In order to make it parsimonious to do analysis with these 46 items (such as cross-tabulating demographic information on the teachers to gauge averages, variability and correlations), the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers were substituted as the 'principal components' reducing the number of items down from 46 to seven for subsequent surveys. It was possible to check the commonality of the items that were grouped under each standard by using a measure of internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha). See Appendix 16 for more information about refinement of the preparation scale.

Thus section examines the perceptions of graduate teachers’ level of preparedness and effectiveness in the seven key areas of teaching framed by the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

1. 
   Know the students and how they learn
   
2. 
   Know the content and how to teach it
   
3. 
   Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
   
4. 
   Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
   

Box 11. ‘I still feel quite uneasy with my identity’ Jenny has experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining teaching employment in Tasmania. She has been limited to doing casual relief work for over a year. She also works as a teacher’s aide in a permanent speech pathology job. Jenny takes a very positive stance towards learning and teaching and is encouraged by the level of support given to her at the school where she has done most of her work, a small primary school in Hobart with strong community links. Experience and time in the classroom in addition to school support have helped her to develop professionally. Jenny still feels that classroom management is a challenge, especially as a relief teacher. Not knowing the students and not knowing classroom routines, she feels she has to try to offer material that is meaningful and adaptable: ‘I think managing classroom behaviour is a bit different for relief teachers, not … knowing the students and not necessarily knowing as well how the teacher’s … classroom rules and values, and how those are implemented.’ She nonetheless feels more confident and feels that her knowledge in primary education is growing everyday: ‘I’ve got more of an understanding of what it is to be a teacher and trying to progress that for myself. Also I’m developing a much better awareness of the developmental trajectory, because I’m teaching across different classes all the time, I’ve got a much better idea of what it means to be a year one typical kind of student and class and what they might enjoy and engage with and do, whereas a lot of that for me previously was quite theoretical.’ She feels that the real challenge for her is to progress her career to become a fully-fledged teacher and to develop skills as a classroom teacher in an ‘ongoing way with the students’. She talks about the contrast between a full-fledged teacher identity versus a relief teacher identity: ‘I still feel really quite uneasy though with my identity as a teacher in that I really want to have an identity as – … I want to develop skills in being a classroom teacher that works in an ongoing way with the students.’ She feels uncertain about whether she is making a difference to student learning. She sees her success and efficacy in terms of how students relate to her and respond to her teaching. On the whole, Jenny feels that her teacher education program has given her a good foundation in terms of curriculum planning. However, she feels uncertain as to how this translates into the situations that she experiences as a relief teacher: ‘You don’t know the students and you can’t do formative assessment to guide your planning, so a lot of the things that I learnt in my pre-service training about planning for students aren’t relevant to me as yet, but they’d be obviously highly relevant if I had a regular class.’ Graduate teacher from Tasmania, Casual Relief

5. 
   Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
   
6. 
   Engage in professional learning
   
7. 
   Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community
   

Three other key areas of teaching were also examined but are discussed later in Section 4.6:

1. 
   Teaching culturally, linguistically and socio-economically diverse learners
   
2. 
   Use of information and communications technologies (ICT)
   
3. 
   Literacy and numeracy
   

The survey included questions to examine two constructs i) preparedness and ii) effectiveness, in the key areas of teaching based on a five-point Likert scale (1=‘strongly disagree’; 5=’strongly agree’).

The table below shows the results of graduates' level of agreement with their preparation in relation to the professional standards in all three rounds. The questions were only asked of those respondents who were teaching.

Table 73. Graduate teachers – by preparation in the professional standards

	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neither agree nor disagree	Agree	Strongly agree
Preparation for:	%	%	%	%	%
Round 1
Know students and how they learn	1.4	4.6	21.8	57.8	14.4
Know the content and how to teach it	1.2	6.2	28.3	54.7	9.6
Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning	1.0	3.9	21.4	60.9	12.9
Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments	1.3	9.1	27.6	50.7	11.3
Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning	1.9	5.1	21.8	58.4	12.7
Engage in professional learning	0.6	2.0	8.4	49.6	39.3
Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community	1.1	8.2	32.5	48.7	9.5
Round 2
Know students and how they learn	1.0	6.2	15.0	63.5	14.2
Know the content and how to teach it	2.8	14.9	20.5	48.0	13.8
Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning	1.3	8.3	14.5	60.3	15.6
Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments	1.4	7.4	16.8	55.3	19.1
Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning	5.6	18.8	21.1	43.3	11.1
Engage in professional learning	3.0	9.8	20.2	48.4	18.6
Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community	9.6	26.0	27.6	30.2	6.6
Round 3
Know students and how they learn	1.3	8.6	17.4	60.6	12.0
Know the content and how to teach it	4.5	16.7	22.5	43.8	12.4
Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning	2.1	10.0	16.0	57.7	14.2
Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments	2.0	8.5	18.1	53.7	17.7
Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning	5.4	19.5	22.6	43.4	9.1
Engage in professional learning	3.2	11.2	22.9	45.4	17.3
Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community	9.2	26.5	29.0	28.6	6.7