Longitudinal Teacher Education and Workforce Study (ltews) Final Report

4.5 The Practicum

This section examines the relevance and effectiveness of the practicum component of teacher education programs by drawing on analysis of the Graduate Teacher Surveys and the Principal Surveys, and supported by interview data and the activity which mapped teacher education programs across Australia as they were for the cohort being tracked (see Appendix 1). It discusses the nature of practicum and its impact on graduates’ decisions whether or not to seek teaching employment, the structures and approaches considered effective for early career teaching, the ways in which practicum processes influence or support graduates’ career retention and advancement, and the extent to which it is adequate for subsequent classroom teaching.

Professional experience in schools is a requirement of all teacher education programs in Australia and although terms used to describe components of professional experience vary from state to state, ‘professional experience’ generally refers to a range of experiences including internships, observations, supervised teaching practice or practicum as well as community placements. In this report, we use the term ‘practicum’ to define the days in schools where pre-service teachers are supervised (i.e. the number of supervised days required for teacher registration purposes).

The Australian Government provides funding to Higher Education Institutions for practicum supervision. These Institutions then contract directly with individual schools for the provision of supervision of pre-service teachers. Until 2011, an Industrial Award, the Australian Higher Education Practice Teaching Supervision Award 1990, provided guidelines for the eligibility of teachers for practicum supervision as well as the rates for payment for supervising in all Australian States and Territories. Teacher regulatory authorities in each state and territory have required a minimum number of supervised practicum days for accreditation of teacher education programs. This is now framed by the new national program standards for accreditation of teacher education programs that detail consistent requirements for all states and territories. However, at the time of accreditation of the programs that the LTEWS cohort would have completed, there was much variety in what was required in each state and territory.

As noted earlier in this report, the past decades have seen many government inquiries on teacher education, including comments on the practicum. Australia’s Teachers: Australia’s Future (Committee for the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education, 2003) highlighted considerable variation in the professional experiences in teacher education programs and also financial and structural constraints. Ingvarson, Beavis and Kleinhenz’s (2004) study underlined placement shortages and other structural processes that seemed to hinder pre-service teachers’ opportunities for school-based professional experiences. Other studies have stressed the need for increased professional engagement between universities and schools in the professionalisation of the teaching profession (e.g Caldwell & Sutton, 2010; White, Bloomfield, & Le Cornu, 2010). Research has also shown that effective time spent in the classrooms during initial teacher preparation impacts on teachers’ decisions to stay on the job longer (D. Boyd, Lankford, Loeb, Rockoff, & Wyckoff, 2007; U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics, 2000). However, more needs to be known about the particularities of practicum approaches and delivery that can effectively support early career teachers to integrate their knowledge in skilful ways (White et al., 2010).

Box 13 lists the main findings for Section 4.5.

Box 13. Main Findings: The Practicum Nearly all graduates with a teaching position agreed that the skills they developed during the practicum were important and that this prepared them for their current teaching context, irrespective of the ways in which the practicum was structured – days per week or blocks. Regardless of the practicum type, virtually all graduates who were teaching considered that they were successful in influencing student learning Approximately a third of graduates either strongly agreed or agreed that their university-based units were relevant for their current teaching contexts. However, as compared to their practicum experiences, graduates felt that their university-based units were less helpful in preparing them for their current teaching contexts. More than 83 per cent of graduates undertook some of their practicum in one or more weekly blocks. Graduate teachers’ and principals’ responses highlight the value of the teacher education program including a combination of 1 to 2 days per week and block placements of 5 weeks duration, and then internships in the final part of the program. Graduate teachers and principals highlighted the value of an internship in the final part of the program to provide a sustained time transitioning into teaching employment. In free text responses, some principals highlighted the value of internships in helping them ascertain a graduating teacher’s suitability for employment. Many graduate teachers stressed the need for greater theory and practice linkages to apply what they have learnt into real world contexts. Graduates who participated in the telephone interviews highlighted the importance of strong school partnerships for sustained and on-going professional learning in real-world settings in order to improve their effectiveness. Interviews with provider representatives revealed that difficulties associated with costs and the difficulties in finding partner schools to work with. Graduate teachers’ interview responses highlighted inconsistencies in the quality and provision of university and teacher supervision during their practicum experiences. They also highlighted the value of professional learning conversations as they learn to teach and refine their practice. Graduates highlighted the value of completing a variety of teaching experiences in diverse settings in order to understand classroom complexities that come with different social and cultural spaces. In the interviews, graduates highlighted preferences for: More practicum time A range of practicum experiences in different types of school settings More contact from their university supervisors during practicum, and strong partnership and mentoring structures from both the university and teachers in schools.