Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Manuscript 3679

Reforming Initial Teacher Education: A Call for

Innovation
Tony Yeigh

David Lynch

This Journal Article is posted at Research Online.

 Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Reforming Initial Teacher Education: A Call for Innovation

Tony Yeigh
David Lynch
South Cross University

Abstract: A variety of public critiques, reports and government

reviews into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia and globally
have called for a rethink on teacher education. Similarly, key
researchers such as Hattie (2011), Smith and Lynch (2010) and
Ingvarson et al. (2014) have argued for new, innovative approaches to
ITE that are able to provide alternative pathways to the training of
teachers. From this perspective the current article examines several
models and features of ITE in terms of innovation. This examination
provides clarification concerning the nature and role of ITE reform,
as well as a series of arguments highlighting the need for ITE
innovation, in order to illustrate and suggest how initial teacher
education might move forward in a way that best supports the aims
and goals of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

Introduction

We begin this article by asking the question, what might an “innovative” approach to
initial teacher education (ITE) look like? This question is necessary in light of historical and
ongoing comments by Berry (2011), Darling-Hammond (2013), Furlong and Maynard
(1995), Fullan (2007), Hagger and McIntyre (2000), Hartsuyker (2007), Hattie (2011),
Ingvarson et al. (2014), Kennedy (2016), Lyndaker (1990), Ramsey (2000), Tom (1997), and
Walls, Nardi, Minden, and Hoffman (2002), all of whom have called for ITE reform and
argued that ITE needs to develop more innovative and outcomes-based approaches to the
preparation of teaching graduates. In this article we respond to this question by reviewing the
broad history of ITE, and by investigating its characteristics and the specific issues which
have been identified as necessary to the creation of a more modern and responsive ITE
approach. We also explore examples of ITE which are considered innovative, or that contain
innovative elements, in order to highlight particular aspects of applied innovation. We then
synthesise the elements of these various analyses, to identify what the core characteristics of
an “innovative” approach might entail more broadly, and suggest some future directions.
Before proceeding with these analyses, however, it is necessary to define the nature and role
of ITE as a model for teacher training, including its background and development over time.

Defining ITE and Innovation

Initial teacher education (ITE), or undergraduate teacher education as it is also known

in universities, is defined as the entry level qualification that is completed prior to entering
service as a teacher. In most countries this qualification is a requirement for teacher
registration or the gaining of a license to teach in schools (Solbrekke and Sugrue, 2014;
Mussett, 2010; Adey, 1998). In countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the USA and

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England, the undergraduate qualification is a Bachelor’s degree which, while there are
variations, generally comprises three to four years of study in education and teaching,
together with a specialist teaching content area and a fieldwork component in an assigned
school. These training programs require State accreditation to operate, which in most cases is
granted by demonstration of adherence to stipulated standards (Darling-Hammond, 2012;
Zeichner, 2014; Lynch, 2012; Ellis et al, 2012). In the United Kingdom a common pathway is
the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) which is available to university graduates
and generally occurs in an intensive/apprenticeship type arrangement in a school over 12 to
18 months (Ellis, et al 2012; Lynch, 2012). The Cambridge Partnership, which features in this
article, is an exemplar of this pathway.
In describing what is meant by innovation in teacher education we are assisted by
Berry (2011), Hargreaves (2003) and Smith and Lynch (2010). Each cites the catalyst for
innovation as the emergence of the Knowledge Economy (Rooney, et al. 2005; OECD,
1996), where a capacity to use knowledge in new and inter-connected ways is now
paramount. In effect they argue that because society has now changed, and that teachers
prepare young people for work and life in such a society, the work of the teacher and how
they are prepared must also change accordingly. This requires a rethink on the knowledge
base that informs teacher education, how technology will be used in the process of teaching
and learning and how the generation and transmission of new knowledge will be embedded
within the inter-play between ITE, schooling and education more generally.

Criticisms of ITE

The need for new and innovative approaches to ITE has a long history of point and
counterpoint in terms of the ideas coming from various academics, politicians, researchers
and school leaders who have investigated the perceived need to reform and re-invigorate
teacher training. In this respect Tom (1997) cites four criticisms of ITE programs common
throughout the western world in terms of their being “…vapid, impractical, segmented and
directionless” (p. 48). He also contends that these programs are often superficial and fail to
embody the more practical knowledge and skills needed by beginning teachers, tending
instead to cover pedagogical material that would be better learned in an apprentice situation.
Furthermore, many programs have little relationship to each other because they have been
developed and delivered in separate areas within an ITE faculty, and are often delivered by
specialists in comparative isolation.
From a similar perspective, Fullan (2007) outlines numerous reviews into ITE in the
United States that seem to support Tom’s more global concerns. Fullan argues that “society
does not treat teacher training as a serious endeavour” (p.267) precisely because “there does
not seem to be a real belief or confidence that the training will yield results” (p.268). We note
these criticisms because their positioning of ITE as poorly organised, irrelevant and insular
seems to find support in more current reviews (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2011; Darling-
Hammond, 2013; Education Queensland, 2000; Ingvarson et al., 2014), and because they beg
the question as to how teacher training might have come to be regarded in this way.

Background and Development of ITE

We can gain some insight into how ITE came to be viewed as less relevant and insular
by looking at its origins and history. The idea of initial, pre-service training for teachers
developed from teacher training programs that began during the early 19th century as on-the-

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job training regimes, where pre-service training focused on teaching skills that were mastered
primarily through practical experience and did not include pedagogical concepts. The “new
teacher” learned their trade after a study of subject matter and while acting as an apprentice
teacher (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Korthagen, 2001). Pedagogical knowledge began to
develop during the late 19th and early 20th century, leading to a “professionalising” of
teaching and the consequent formalising of teacher training programs through early teacher
training colleges. Importantly, a lot of the ideas about teaching at this time were derived from
the field of psychology, which influenced our early understanding of learning and behaviour
(Smith, 2000). During the second half of the 20th century a growing professional knowledge
base, spurred on by the political desire to educate students of all abilities, created “knowledge
domains” which became central components of more formal programs of teacher preparation;
firstly within specialised teacher training colleges, and later as education faculties in
universities (Furlong, Barton, Miles, Whiting, & Whitty, 2000).
By the 1990’s the majority of initial teacher education programs comprised two key
organisational components: a program of formal university study over four years (course
work) and in-school practicums known as “fieldwork” (involving teacher-supervised
development of practical skills, cf., Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Furlong et al., 2000). Others
experimented with alternative programing approaches, and we discuss examples of these, as
well as examine why some of them have not become more mainstream, in our section on the
goals and purpose of innovation, later in this article. Overall, however, it is to be noted that
course work has been the main component of most ITE programs and is typically prepared by
faculty-based specialists and then presented to students, on-campus or via distance education,
through a combination of lectures, tutorials and online activities (Hagger & McIntyre, 2000;
Ingvarson et al., 2014). Of import to this discussion, current ITE programs are often
organised around the same professional knowledge domains attributed to the 20th century
programs.

Calls for Reform and Innovation

More recent reviews of ITE argue there is a strong case for a fresh approach to the
preparation of teachers, citing teachers as key participants in the renewal of education and
training systems (AITSL, 2015; Darling-Hammond, 2013; Ingvarson et al., 2014). In
addition, several reports (e.g., Hartsuyker [Top of the Class], 2007; Committee for the
Review of Teaching and Teacher Education; 2003; Skilbeck & Connell, 2003; Darling-
Hammond, 2000; Education Queensland, 2000; Ramsey, 2000) chronicle the need for a
substantial overhaul of ITE to keep pace with the new interplay between social cohesion,
individual identities, citizenship, work and training. This echoes earlier findings by Zeichner
and Gore (1990), who cite research suggesting that extended experiences in schools
contribute not only to the professional and skill-related aspects of teaching, but also to the
overall socialization processes involved in the reproduction of these skills. Thus the idea that
teacher training needs to be modernised continues to be a theme in most ITE reviews, and the
multi-dimensional nature of this process - incorporating social, professional and individual
elements - underscores calls for reform and innovation which seek to address multiple layers
of professional and practical knowledge. To this end, there appear to be particular issues
requiring reform and/or innovation that also necessitate discussion.

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ITE Issues
School-University Partnerships

One area of reform that appears consistent across most reviews involves the nature of
university and school partnerships. A recent report by the Australian Council for Educational
Research (Ingvarson et al., 2014; cf. also TEMAG1, 2014) advocates urgent changes to the
design, delivery and assessment of effective teacher education programs, emphasising in
particular the need for extensive and connected in-school experiences that support strong
school-university partnerships. Likewise, the Australian Professional Teaching Standards
(AITSL, 2011) stipulate the need for sharing responsibilities and obligations among teacher
education providers, schools, teachers, employers, and teacher regulatory authorities as a core
principle for quality ITE, and in a 2013 report to the Asia Society, Darling-Hammond (2013)
stresses the need to adopt partnership approaches to ITE as a global necessity, linking local
and more global concerns relating to the delivery of ITE.
These reviews suggest that a crucial forward direction involves renewed focus on
schools and universities working together, to connect in-school or practicum learning more
equally to the input from one another. This is similar to the findings of earlier reviewers such
as the Holmes Group (1995), who advocated for fieldwork activities that encourage clear
connections between the content and processes of ITE programs and actual research on
curriculum, teaching, and learning. An assumption of these reviews seems to be that
developing quality ITE requires schools and universities working together in a way that
privileges neither, with both valuing and being receptive to input from the other. We will
examine a couple of approaches that specifically focus on the nature of in-school experiences
later in this article, but for now we simply note that there seems to be a fairly broad call for
this type of reform in terms of modernising ITE programs, and this appears to reflect a global
awareness.

The Knowing/Doing Gap

The variety of partnerships available, and only briefly covered within the scope of this
article, indicates flexibility and context to be characteristic elements of any partnership
agreement. However one issue stemming from partnership models that include both schools
and universities is that universities tend to promote a clear understanding of theory as the
basis for what teachers do, whereas schools tend to emphasise the demonstration of practical
skills in their own right, creating what has been identified as a knowing/doing gap in relation
to ITE (Allen, 2008; McTighe, 1997; Kennedy, 2010). This “gap” can be seen most clearly
when universities manage the practicum placement of ITE students, and require students to
complete practical assessment tasks that do not incorporate theory in a manner considered
authentic to the school placement context.
Within Australia, addressing this gap has become a priority for many ITE programs,
as evidenced by the University of Melbourne’s Clinical Practice Exam and Deakin
University’s Authentic Teacher Assessment. This issue is also noted by TEMAG (2014),
which states, “Professional experience placements must provide real opportunities for pre-
service teachers to integrate theory and practice” (p. x). The use of performance tasks is one
step in the direction of addressing this gap, but it would seem that the systematic application
of professional standards is required to close it at a national level. As suggested elsewhere in

1
TEMAG is an advisory group established by the Australia Government to monitor the performance of
teacher education in Australia and to provide guidance and advice to the minister on changes required to
teacher education policy.

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this article, although the Australian Professional Standards are able to provide the general
descriptions for performance needed to identify the types of skills that represent quality
teaching – in essence providing a foundation for closing this gap – further development of
operationally defined behavioural indicators are required to collect specific data for each of
the Standards. Benchmarking this information against student learning outcomes, similar to
the approach taken by Hattie (2009; 2011), may then be able to shed more light on the precise
relationship between what teachers do and how this affects student achievement outcomes in
a nationally consistent manner.
In order to accomplish this level of analysis and evaluation, there needs to be greater
consensus concerning the nature and role of partnerships, especially how any given
partnership should address issues such as the knowing/doing gap and what form of evidence
the partnership will produce. Ancillary issues such as the use of performance tasks, authentic
assessment and how to best support the theory/practice nexus all seem to derive from, and be
moderated by, the nature and role of the underlying partnership. For this reason the nature of
partnerships appears to be a fundamental aspect of ITE requiring innovative reform moving
forward. A proposed school/university partnership model that seems capable of addressing
these issues is the residency model (State Government Victoria, 2011), which specifically
aims to heighten knowledge of the practical dimensions of teaching among pre-service
teachers, improve the integration of practical experience into ITE programs and model
effective teaching during ITE. Aspects of this model can be seen in both the BLM and
Cambridge Partnership models of ITE, which we examine later in this article, and there also
appear to be overlaps with other Australian and international programs. Of importance is that
the nature of this partnership is crucial to the success, or otherwise, of most ITE outcomes,
and thus must be an important consideration when it comes to conceptualising ITE from a
reform perspective.

Schooling as a Progressive Learning Effect

Expanding the influence of in-school learning somewhat, Berry (2011) asserts the
teaching profession has created “a false sense of teaching expertise about the work that
teachers do” (p.22), precisely because “teachers are way too familiar and too visible and what
they know seems to be all too common”, coupled with students having “observed twelve
years of classroom teaching” (p.22; cf. Walls, Nardi, Minden, & Hoffman, 2002). In this
respect Berry has extended the work of Fuller (1969) and Fuller and Bown (1975), to suggest
that everyone serves an ipso facto teaching apprenticeship by observing teaching practice
during the program of their own schooling, thus encouraging ITE students to think they
already know how to teach.
Earlier work by Pajares (1992) also reinforces this view, by noting that students “have
experienced thousands of hours of their teachers’ classroom behaviour before entering a
teacher preparation program” (p.95), and research conducted by Furlong and Maynard (1995)
similarly highlights “…the diversity of understandings and ideals which student teachers
(brought) to their professional education, the power and persistence of these preconceptions,
and the ways in which they influence learning from teacher education programmes” (p. 79).
Taken together, these observations suggest what might be termed a vicarious
apprenticeship issue that can impact ITE, wherein students who train to become teachers may
seek to block a vision for teaching that is substantially different from their preconceptions
and beliefs concerning classroom practice. In light of such influences, Pendry (1997) notes
that a major task for teacher educators is to find ways in which student engagement to course
work can be established and maintained throughout their training program, because “the

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distinctiveness and idiosyncrasies of beginning teachers persisted throughout their program of

study” (p.95). The notion of vicarious apprenticeship is important to the current discussion
because it focuses our attention on the pre-conceived ideas about teaching that can affect the
attitudes of ITE students, highlighting the need for a re-think about the way prior student
knowledge is addressed and re-directed.

The Role of Evidence

According to Smith (2000), an important characteristic of ITE is that much of the

content of ITE course work is aligned to the research interests of university academics who
design and deliver the relevant educational degrees. He suggests this occurs because
academic promotion is tied to a “publish or perish” imperative in universities, requiring
academics to frame much of what takes place within ITE programs according to the research
areas in which they need to publish. In turn, this creates a degree of disconnect between the
program-school connections required to link fieldwork to specific teacher training strategies
during ITE, and the ability of ITE programs to maintain a sufficient focus on these
connections. Smith and Lynch (2010) suggest that, given this segmentation, many ITE
programs have failed to present a common set of educational purposes, themes or
assumptions, and are instead based upon a collection of poorly connected theoretical/practical
components, making it difficult to revise ITE programs along evidential lines. Thus the role
of evidence, as the basis for deciding ITE programing, appears to be another issue that
requires innovative reconceptualisation.
In this respect the consensus of many recent investigations into ITE has been that
schools, universities and other education providers need to develop clear measures of
teaching ability, and use the data from these measures to then guide the training, as well as
the ongoing performance of teachers (e.g., AITSL, 2015; Ingvarson et al., 2014; TEMAG,
2014). This imperative - to measure teaching ability – stems in part from the fact that there
has been a steady reduction in student achievement at both the secondary and tertiary levels
of education in most advanced economies, including Australia (Ainley, Kos, & Nicholas,
2008; American Psychological Association, 2012; Lyons & Quinn, 2015; The Royal Society,
2014). For this and other reasons the current imperative for ITE in Australia (AITSL, 2012;
2015) highlights teacher quality in the form of specific teaching standards (AITSL, 2011),
which seek to articulate quality teaching practices as the basis for improved student learning
outcomes (cf. Education Queensland, 2000; Ramsey, 2000).
These Standards provide broad direction for specific teacher quality, and we might
well expect them to yield the sorts of evidence required to revise ITE programs along
evidential lines. A problem yet exists for these standards however, in that they are couched in
quite broad, generalised terms that do not afford a certain means of measuring each standard
in terms of specific teacher behaviours. Innovation in this respect might thus involve
developing behavioural descriptors by which to operationalise each standard, but this would
require a very large and collaborative approach, as well as the funding to support it, and the
authors are not aware of any such initiative taking place to date – perhaps a PhD or grant
application for the appropriate-minded individual?
Hattie (2009; 2011; 2012) has provided significant insight into the role of evidence in
terms of effective teaching, and his work might be translatable into ITE programming at
some level by designing clear program foci that target clearly effective teaching strategies.
However, Hattie’s “main effect” approach (2009) is based on a synthesis of over 800 meta-
analyses of student achievement outcomes, and as such is not designed to capture the broader
nuances of quality teaching. Nor does it examine the various attributes of the different

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research analysed, in order to distinguish variations in the quality of analysed data. His use of
evidence therefore appears somewhat problematic in terms of being translatable into specific
ITE program elements, able to provide clear certainty concerning the cause and effect
relationships that might exist between program elements and the AITSL standards. The role
of standards-based evidence as a feedback mechanism for ITE remains critical however, and
we suggest represents “unfinished business” in terms of ongoing ITE development.

The Relationship between Theory and Fieldwork

Taking a closer look at “fieldwork”, we note that this component of ITE programming
is generally timetabled according to state mandated minimum contact periods, ranging from
day visits to extended periods of three to eight weeks, and is normally staged in schools
(Ingvarson et al., 2014; Korthagen, 2001). In contradistinction to this, Fenstermacher (1992)
suggested that “extended” field experience makes for teacher candidates who are more
confident, reflective, and demanding of their instructors than their counterparts who have not
had extended field experience. In her review of teacher education, Kennedy (2016) argues
that ITE programs need to pay more attention to the purposes that are served by fieldwork
practices, focussing more on substance and less on form (cf. Kennedy, 1998). She claims that
the primary purpose of these practices is to provide coherent connections between theory and
practice for the developing ITE student. This seems largely in accordance with other recent
ITE reviews, which consistently identify the importance of fieldwork experience as a factor
that needs to better connect content and process, as well as to promote confidence and skill-
related socialisation (Darling-Hammond, 2010; 2013; Ingvarson et al., 2014).
A concern often associated with fieldwork is that it relies upon the assumption that
student teachers will be able to automatically translate their theoretical course work
underpinnings into practical classroom activities (Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Ingvarson et al.,
2014; Kennedy, 2016; Korthagen, 2001). To this end, Lave (1988; 1991) notes the need for
students and university faculties to work more closely with school teachers, in order for
learning to occur through an apprenticeship model of learning and enculturation that
specifically supports the translation of theory into practice. Similarly, both Kennedy (2016)
and Ingvarson et al. (2014) argue that the nature and focus of fieldwork activities need to be
at the heart of partnership models of ITE in a way that brings together the theoretical and
practical elements of ITE.

Performance Tasks

Addressing the issue of a theory/practice nexus, Darling-Hammond, Ancess, and Falk

(1995), as well as Smith and Lynch (2010), argue the need for using performance tasks to
demonstrate theoretical understanding during fieldwork. These are tasks designed to
demonstrate the application and production of theoretical knowledge, rather than the mere
reproduction of factual information, during classroom teaching activities. Performance tasks
require ITE students to perform a range of learning tasks from their course work as part of
their fieldwork, making the tasks more authentic in terms of their applied outcomes (Darling-
Hammond, 2010). According to Unwin (2000), when students perceive activities as authentic
- having personal and real-world relevance - they are more likely to feel positive about those
activities and put greater effort into them. The use of performance tasks in this manner,
perhaps linked clearly to individual Professional Standards for Teachers and measured in

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terms of something like Hattie’s effect-size approach, would offer one way of generating the
type of data needed to inform ITE programing from a more objective POV.
Summarising these issues, it seems that more traditional ITE approaches comprised a
combination of course work and fieldwork, organised around 20th century knowledge
domains designed to meet the needs of the academic institutions providing certified teacher
training. Such approaches were often depicted as superficial and failing to embody the
theory/practice nexus needed by beginning teachers, which requires more of an apprentice
situation that takes place within an equipoised partnership model. Because of this, traditional
ITE approaches tend to produce fieldwork that is disconnected from course work, and the
school/university partnership remains under-developed. Likewise, in spite of the development
of professional standards for teachers, efforts to measure the behaviours that might be
associated with these standards at an operational level, and analysis of this information with
respect to student achievement data, requires substantial ongoing development.
We will now explore different approaches to ITE that have sought to address some of
these elements in innovative ways, looking more closely at the Bachelor of Learning
Management (BLM) program (developed in 2000 by the Central Queensland University) and
the Cambridge Partnership (a work-based route into initial teacher education that was
originally developed in partnership with Cambridge University in the United Kingdom).

The Bachelor of Learning Management Program

The Bachelor of Learning Management (BLM) is an Australian ITE program that was
initiated by Central Queensland University (CQU) in 2000, for the specific purpose of
providing an alternative preparation curriculum to that of more traditional ITE programs
(Smith, Lynch, & Mienczakowski, 2003; Lynch, 2012).
The main intent of the BLM is to explicitly connect the theory and practice of
“Learning Management” as a key training element designed to encourage students to achieve
highly intentional outcomes, in order to prepare for teaching in specific pedagogical
environments (Lynch, 2012). This concept makes explicit the pedagogical focus for the
program by mandating that all study units be closely tied to a clearly defined set of
professional performance standards (Smith & Lynch, 2010), as also called for in relation to
ITE by the AITSL (2015).
The BLM departs from standard ITE fare as associated with most BEd programs, such
as psychology, sociology and the like, by anchoring its focus in four concepts drawn from the
New Economy namely: Futures; Networks and Partnerships; Pedagogy; and Essential
Professional Knowledge (Smith & Lynch, 2010). These concepts are used to structure the
BLM’s delivery, in which students attend an allocated school or learning site for embedded
practice from day 1 of the degree. This arrangement is designed to develop a strong
partnership between the university and the teaching community, and as such includes
assessment tasks that are centred on what the student does during their placement (as also
suggested by Hargreaves, 2003; Marzano, Gaddy, & Dean, 2000). In this way the BLM
model of ITE promotes the type of partnership model suggested by much of the current ITE
literature with respect to developing coherent connections between theory and practice.
In terms of evidence, a key feature of the BLM is the linking of theory and
practice through meaningful and authentic professional learning tasks. To achieve this
goal, “Portal Tasks” (structured learning experiences with well-defined requirements), are
used to link classroom practice and on-campus learning (Ingvarson, Beavis, Danielson, Ellis,
& Elliott, 2005). These tasks thus serve the purpose of performance tasks, in that they require

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ITE students to apply a range of authentic learning tasks from their program course work as
part of their fieldwork.
To date there have been four published studies into the BLM program. The first two
by Ingvarson et al (2005) [n= 892], and Lynch (2004) [n= 459], compared the work readiness
of BLM students with those of the BEd in Queensland, while Allen (2008) and Doe (2011)
examined the partnership arrangement that embodied the BLM program. An examination of
all four studies reveals two key themes.
1. Cohorts of BLM graduates were considered better prepared than cohorts of BEd by
mentor teachers, school principals and respective students (Ingvarson et al, 2005, pp.
21-22; Lynch, 2004, p.114).
2. Findings by Lynch (2004), Allen (2008) and Doe (2011) all suggest that the biggest
impediment when developing ‘new’ programs, such as the BLM, is the establishment
and maintenance of the school-university partnership. Each study reported an “us and
them” mentality existing between the conventional school and the university faculty,
but also reported that these partnerships tend to be exceedingly resilient, despite
efforts by some university and school staff to initiate a different relationship and
program-related practices.

The Cambridge Partnership Model

ITE in the United Kingdom places a strong emphasis on experience-based learning as

integral to initial teacher training. In the UK, this emphasis is clearly articulated in the
Cambridge Partnership (CP) model, a graduate entry teacher training program similar to a
Diploma of Education in the Australian system (N. Olley, personal communication, May,
2014). In both cases the design is to provide alternative routes to qualified teacher status
based primarily on in-school experience and mentoring, coupled to professional supervision
and training by qualified experts. The original partnership was established in 2001 as a
collaborative venture between the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University and local
education authorities in Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and Norfolk. This has since changed
in both structure and process however, with the current partnership having moved away from
university-based training, to a model in which school-based mentoring drives teacher training
in conjunction with specialised knowledge workshops delivered at the Partnership Centre, a
community college that houses educational experts and oversees the program (The
Cambridge Partnership, 2014). This relationship appears stable, is regularly evaluated and has
received continuing support from the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services
and Skills (Ofsted), the UK authority responsible for inspecting and regulating services that
provide education and skills for learners of all ages (Ofsted, 2012).
The Cambridge Partnership (CP) program offers a teacher training approach that is
innovative in that it takes an immersive approach to the training process and is controlled by
schools, rather than utilising a school-university partnership model. For most training
teachers, this takes the form of being given a full training and salary grant (usually given to
trainees already instructing, but without qualified teacher status), while for some it involves
being employed by a partnership school during their training (N. Olley, personal
communication, May, 2014). In both cases the training teacher spends the majority of her or
his time in a partnership school, being mentored into the appropriate Ofsted teaching and
learning processes and outcomes, as these apply to the local school situation. For teachers
employed in a partnership school during training, the immersion model is referred to as the
80:20 model, meaning that the teacher is in-school four days per week, while the fifth day is

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reserved for professional instruction at the Partnership Centre (The Cambridge Partnership,
2014).
It is this unique blend of school and centre-based training that distinguishes the
partnership model from other approaches to teacher training, and in this respect the
partnership route to becoming a qualified teacher includes several aspects that may be
identified as innovative. One of these is that the more immersive partnership approach allows
individual schools control over the practical training of teachers, meeting the needs of the
school and also increasing the credibility of the training teacher in terms of practical skills
(Jack Hunt School, 2014). At the same time, the centralised instruction aspect of the
partnership specifically addresses national priority areas for education such as behaviour
management, basic literacy and special needs, as well as content knowledge delivered by
qualified experts in each area of curriculum specialisation (Olley, 2014). Another
characteristic of the partnership approach is that the teacher can expect a high level of
individual support from the school as she or he journeys through the training program, due to
the mentoring system involved. These processes utilise target-setting, self-and-mentor
monitoring, and systematic review to promote positive mentoring at the school level of
training (The Cambridge Partnership, 2014).
Another important element in the training of teachers under the CP program is the use
of electronic “Standards logs” to encourage critical self-reflection on the part of the teachers
(Ofsted, 2012). These logs involve the teacher reflecting on the relevant learning and
assessment provisions of their training, and tracking these against online standards and
outcomes, forming a type of evidential support for the program. These logs ensure that the
teacher, their school-based mentor and trainers, and the Partnership tutors and program
managers all share a common understanding of the progress being made by each individual.
Evaluation of the program has shown consistent effectiveness in relation to teacher
preparation (Ofsted 2009; 2012).
While there are no published studies into the Cambridge Partnership, interviews were
conducted with people involved, inclusive of mentor teachers, lecturers and school principals.
Findings mirrored those as of the BLM. Essentially people involved in the CP, as with those
in the BLM, consider their graduates to be better prepared than other ‘traditional’ programs.
Importantly, each person cited the challenging and problematic nature of establishing and
maintaining a mutually reciprocal school-university partnership. Overall findings for the CP
and the BLM programs suggest that where the partnership arrangement is not robust, the
BLM and CP models would collapse.
It is to be noted that the Cambridge Partnership is similar in many respects to the
Teach for Australia Pathway (TFA; cf. Weldon, McKenzie, Kleinhenz, & Reid, 2013). Both
are graduate entry programs, both involve employment-based training supported by in-school
mentoring (for TFA this was originally guided by the Melbourne Graduate School of
Education, and is now being directed by Deakin University) and both include the use of
specialist trainers who meet with program participants on a regular basis. However there are
also differences between these two programs, including that the TFA targets high-achieving
university graduates whereas the CP model has open entry, that the TFA places its students in
disadvantaged schools and prepares them for secondary placements only, and that the TFA
includes specialist training in the area of School Leadership as an intrinsic part of the
program. We include this brief comparison in order to emphasise that innovative ITE reform
neither requires nor encourages a “one-size-fits-all” approach to teacher preparation, but
rather allows for a variety of approaches and elements that accord with a particular context or
situational set of needs. Table 1 provides an overview and comparison of how the BLM and
CP relate to the ITE issues we have discussed.

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ITE School Knowing- Vicarious Role of Relationship Use of

Issues University Doing Gap Apprenticeship Evidence between Performance
Partnership (Progressive Theory & Tasks
Learning) Fieldwork
BLM Embedded Focus on N/A Focus on Learning Assessment
practice from “new Portal tasks to Management linked to
day 1 of ITE economy” promote used to professional
training concepts to authentic connect standards &
structure learning theory & centred on
knowing- practice school
doing placement
aspects of
the
partnership
CP N/A Controlled N/A Focus on Partnership 80:20 model
by in-school accreditation college used links in-
mentoring, tasks: to connect school
in • Log books fieldwork to immersion
conjunction • Systematic expert tasks to
with centre- review knowledge professional
based • Ofsted instruction
training to evaluation
meet
professional
standards
Table 1: Overview and comparison of BLM & CP in relation to ITE issues

Goals and Purposes of Innovation

Probably the most important challenge facing innovative ITE reform involves how to
construct the partnership between schools, universities and other education providers. This is
a complex relationship, and one that can be approached from a variety of pathways. It is also
the “space” at which many ITE issues meet, including research, the development of practical
skills and knowledge, connecting theory and practice and the provision of program evidence.
In Australia we note that the BLM maintains a strong school-university partnership model,
while the TFA pathway does not. American models also seem to emphasise strong school-
university partnerships, but with a greater focus on the socialising effects of these
partnerships (Kennedy, 2010; 2016), while in the UK, the Cambridge Partnership has
developed a model in which the partnership does not include a university at all. Such variety
begs the question as to why some of the more alternative ITE programs, or their elements,
have not been scaled-up as much as more traditional programs. Looking back to the historical
development of ITE as an educational enterprise, we suggest this may be due to the
reproductive nature of more traditional ITE approaches, which are likely designed to gate-
keep the model of teaching held by a particular institution or teacher trainer. As noted in the
BLM evaluations summarised earlier, successful implementation of an alternative preparation
program depends on the nature of the school/university partnership, and thus focussing on the
reciprocating features of a partnership appears crucial for all partnership stakeholders.

The Need to focus on Evidence

Irrespective of such influences, the relationship between how a partnership is formed

and the role of evidence appears particularly important as a driver for change within ITE

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programs, and in this respect many reviews and research reports have identified the use of
professional standards as key to the informed analysis of teaching. We have suggested that
standards alone do not specify the specific behaviours that teachers do, however, instead
indicating areas of teaching ability more broadly. For this reason we propose that further
discussions concerning how to operationalise the Australian Professional Standards for
Teachers are in order, in an effort to develop more precise measures of teaching behaviour
that will allow the profession to drill down into these standards at a more fine-grain level.
This will no doubt provoke contention from some elements of the education community, but
we feel this sort of approach is essential if we are to move beyond - or at least extend – the
current emphasis on constructivism that seems to hold sway over much educational
curriculum. This approach is also supported by the TEMAG report (2014), which calls upon
ITE developers to provide evidence concerning the ability of their programs to produce
teachers who make a positive difference to the outcomes of their students. We therefore
propose that devolving the professional standards into operational terms is imperative if we
expect to connect teacher training to student achievement at a concrete and measurable level.

What to do with Progressive Learning?

Another issue that requires particular consideration is that of vicarious apprenticeship.

This involves how to elicit and make use of student prior knowledge concerning what might
constitute good teaching. The authors are not aware of any ITE program that currently
collects data on this element of student understanding in relation to teacher training, but this
also seems worth considering as part of ITE innovation, especially in terms of helping to
contextualise the theoretical concepts and principles that need to be emphasised. The use of
focus groups, including perhaps some brainstorming activities, would be one way of
collecting information about the underlying areas of knowledge and teacher qualities as
perceived by ITE students. This could be followed by the use of a survey method to
document more specific prior knowledge for these areas. Even employing something like
Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/), once sufficient data had been collected, could also help
identify the important concepts and principles relating to student prior knowledge, as this
emerged from the word frequencies involved. Whatever the method, we support the
identification of student prior knowledge as a means of investigating the notion of vicarious
apprenticeship more closely. Attempts in this direction would certainly provide innovative
information in the sense that it could be applied to ITE reform in ways not yet imagined in
existing programs.

Conclusion

There have been numerous reviews conducted into ITE in Australia and globally
calling for a renewal of the teacher-training process. The variety of approaches identified in
these reviews, involving multiple partnership models, testify to the inherently diverse nature
of ITE as an enterprise, and suggest that diversity seems to be the norm when it comes to
ITE. Thus the presence of innovation at some level is more likely than not in relation to ITE
generally. However, for this very reason we have also sought to identify elements of
innovation that might allow greater unity within the ITE approaches, and suggested how to
use these elements to develop a more coherent way forward for ITE as a priority for
improvement. We propose an evidence-driven partnership model designed to better reflect

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the practical skills needed by teachers, one in which the respective inputs from schools and
teacher training institutions (such as universities) are more balanced and immersive.
Important questions for the ongoing innovation of ITE include how to provide
evidence concerning the impact of any given ITE program, and how to ensure that the
program authentically reflects the practical skills needed by teachers in relation to this
evidence. In this respect we have suggested that the nature of the school/university
partnership lies at the heart of ITE innovation, and either increases or decreases its ability to
provide meaningful evidence concerning impact. Important evidential elements of this
partnership are that it focuses on the practical dimensions of teaching as the purpose of
theoretical/conceptual understanding, consistently integrates practical experience into the ITE
program and models effective teaching as an inherent part of ITE. As per Kennedy (2016),
these elements are important because they provide opportunity to garner evidence at several
different levels of meaning, including the program’s ability to address the “knowledge/doing”
gap via the use of performance tasks and authentic assessments, and the assessment of theory
in relation to fieldwork. Of interest is that we can initially measure these elements
individually and in relation to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, and then
evaluate these measures with respect to student achievement over time.
Most important, applying further innovation to the use of the Professional Standards
is suggested as a means for developing more precise evaluation of the relationship between
teaching and learning. This would provide more isomorphic feedback overall, capable of
informing the design of ongoing ITE programs in a flexible and sustainable manner. This
might mean that the “shape” of future teacher training would be more contested by some, but
it would also mean that the applied outcomes of the training could be consistently fed-back
into ITE programing in a beneficial - and measurable - manner.

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