Abstract
Initial teacher education (ITE) in Australia is currently under reform, particularly in light of the 2014 review by the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). This review renewed the call for the responsibility for ITE to be shared between schools and higher education providers. Since the work of supervising and assessing pre-service teachers (PST) in schools primarily falls to classroom teachers, this research explores the attitudes of a small group of supervising teachers towards shouldering this responsibility. It does this by adopting the lens of symbolic interactionism to examine the development of teacher educator identities among supervising teachers, the impact of environment and the supervising teachers’ practices as a result of their identities. The data from the four one-to-one interviews highlight the teacher identities and how the teachers view themselves and their roles and responsibilities in ITE. The school environment is identified as an important enabling or disabling factor in effective supervision of PST. The results also draw attention to the relatively new issue of the assessment of PST against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL) and the supervising teachers’ knowledge of and confidence with these Standards.
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Isaac, A., Hudson, S. (2018). Classroom-Ready Teachers: Who Is Responsible? Exploring Supervising Teacher Identity and Practice. In: Heck, D., Ambrosetti, A. (eds) Teacher Education In and For Uncertain Times. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8648-9_4
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