Balancing Stakeholders Interests In Evolving Teacher Education Accreditation Contexts
While Australian teacher education programs have long had rigorous accreditation pathways at the University level they have not been subject to the same formal public or professional scrutiny typical of professions such as medicine, nursing or engineering. Professional accreditation for teacher preparation programs is relatively new and is linked to teacher registration which in itself is relatively recent in most jurisdictions. As elsewhere, the goal of accreditation is to enhance the overall quality of teacher preparation programs and to meet jurisdictional requirements for initial teacher competence. Any new system of quality control takes time to develop and to embed into professional cultures and academic processes at the university or college level. Accreditation processes are no exception and Australia is grappling to develop procedures that meet jurisdictional legislative requirements, assure the public of the quality of teacher preparation and suit the professional context for each state. As yet these procedures have not focused on professional growth, accomplished or expert teaching, or quality within specific areas of preparation. While all agree that the ultimate goal of accreditation is quality assurance- to improve teaching quality in schools, negotiating optimum pathways to quality outcomes is no easy task in a country with an education system and population as diverse as Australia. This paper considers some of the practical and institutional issues confronting teacher education providers as they come to terms with new regulatory environments that require external accreditation of teacher education to meet varying state and national policy agendas. Specifically, it focuses on issues engaging a small and regional teacher education provider, Charles Darwin University as it negotiates developing registration and accreditation requirements. It also flags the need to improve teacher quality through acknowledgement of advanced practice in teaching and expert performance in delivering teacher education.
An Evaluation of the Bachelor of Learning Management at Central Queensland University
Lawrence Ingvarson, Adrian Beavis, Charlotte Danielson, Louise Ellis and Alison Elliott for that graduates of the Bachelor of Learning Management degree believed that they were better prepared for the first year of teaching than graduates from other Queensland universities. That finding was supported by an observational study of 18 BLM graduates that found they performed at a significantly higher level on a range of teaching standards than did graduates from other universities.
Historias de mi barrio: contemporary art in a community at high risk of social exclusion
Abstract Historias de mi barrio is a piece of pedagogic research aimed at highlighting the way art can articulate the relationship between the educational context and a neighbourhood at high risk of social exclusion. The starting point for this study was to ask whether this type of research, centred around the arts, was suitable in complex contexts and whether it might eventually lead to pedagogic improvement. The results gathered, and indeed the work carried out by the artists and university lecturers involved, together with pupils 6–12 years old and their instructors in a state school, provide evidence of a positive answer – and notably of the necessity of knowing about the socio-economic reality of the student cohort when planning learning projects and of the importance of the arts as a crucial element in education.