Professional Capacity Building through a 1+2 Model of Teacher Development

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In Australia, an increasing proportion of people are entering teaching after experience in other careers. These people have the potential to value-add to the profession with their rich reservoirs of knowledge and experiences along with added maturity and a variety of life experiences. Many of these career change teachers choose to enter the profession via one-year teacher education programs. While these programs are designed to enable people who already hold a university degree to acquire the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to successfully enter the teaching profession, one-year teacher education programs have been criticized for their lack of opportunities for extended development of pedagogical skills and understanding of contemporary educational contexts (Skillbeck & Connell, 2005). This paper reports on the design and implementation of a new model of teacher education and ongoing professional learning for beginning teachers designed to facilitate the development of high quality teaching professionals. This 1 + 2 model consists of a one-year teacher education course, the Graduate Diploma in Education, followed by a comprehensive two year program of workplace induction and ongoing professional learning for graduates of the course facilitated by the teacher education institution in collaboration with schools, employing authorities and other professional bodies.

Stream: Teacher Training and Professional Development

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Dr Denise Beutel is a lecturer in education at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Her research interests are teacher education, mentoring, teacher induction and middle years of schooling. Prior to commencing at QUT, Denise was a teacher with over twenty years experience teaching in secondary schools. Her doctoral studies were completed in 2006 and her thesis, “Teachers Understandings of Pedagogic Connectedness” interrogated the nature of teacher-student engagements in the middle years of schooling.

Dr Jennifer Duncan-Howell is a lecturer in Information and Communication Technologies and Education in the School of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education at Queensland University of Technology. She is an experienced Secondary Teacher and has worked in schools and universities in Australia, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. She is currently involved in International Projects concerned with ICT policy development and elearning in developing countries. Her current research focuses on online learning communities, online PD for teachers, pre-service teacher education, ICT policy development in developing countries, electronic research methodologies and emerging technologies.