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Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers During the Early Stages of Implementation: A Case Study
Dissertation   Open access

Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers During the Early Stages of Implementation: A Case Study

Kairen Call
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00848
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Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers During the Early Stages of Implementation - A Case Study3.38 MBDownloadView
Thesis Open Access

Abstract

Education policy, sociology and philosophy Education systems Other psychology preservice teachers Australian Professional Standards for Teachers critical pragmatism Empowerment Theory case study research
In 2015, the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) called for greater quality assurance and regulation of Australian Initial Teacher Education (ITE), prompting ITE providers to participate in rigorous program accreditation of preservice teachers’ professional learning aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST). Whilst the APST was established, in part, as a mechanism to guide both formal professional learning aligned with regulated program content and informal professional learning developed from experiences, the increased regulation created tension in their regulatory and developmental application. This situation presented significant challenges for stakeholders who were learning to manage the complexity of this duality, one such group being preservice teachers. At this time, whilst there was general agreement that the APST were here to stay, there was scant literature to inform how teacher educators could enable preservice teachers’ sustained use of the APST for their formal and informal professional learning, not only as preservice teachers but long into their careers. This situation presented an opportunity to significantly add to the body of knowledge of preservice teachers’ APST use, and document on-the-ground policy implementation perceptions, during this important period of implementation change. Employing what Yee and Niemeier (1996) characterise as pseudo-longitudinal Case Study Research (CSR), the study presented in this thesis with publication applied repeated cross-sectional design from 2015 through 2017. With a keen, yet pragmatic eye on the policy context, this thesis presents a historical capture of preservice teachers’ perspectives of the APST and their use of it during this critical post-TEMAG period of APST implementation. Applying Zimmerman’s (2000) psychological empowerment theory to the methodology, 303 responses to three annual surveys (2015-2017) and focus group data from 15 preservice teachers (2016-2017) were gathered and analysed. The research presented here identified that this group of preservice teachers believed in the necessity of the APST for the profession, and that it was tangible in their assessments, but its dominance in assessment resulted in them feeling judged by it. They also perceived the APST to be visible in their course content, but they struggled to understand and decode the content and its relevance to them, leaving them confused by it and pushed away from using it. Additionally, three-quarters of participants also perceived they did not use the APST in lectures or tutorials, and just half perceived they used the APST in their professional experiences in schools. Yet, those who perceived the presence of the APST in these contexts, did not feel their teacher educators and supervising teachers, who were also new to working with the APST, applied it cohesively, leaving preservice teachers frustrated with its application. This group of preservice teachers desired explicit support to understand the APST and increase their autonomy with it from the start of their preservice teacher journey.

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