Teacher education is high on the political agenda in Australia, with several parliamentary inquiries on the topic underway at federal and state levels. These inquiries reflect, in part, dissatisfaction among many school principals with the preparedness of graduates.

University faculties of education, for their part, are clearly stretched in terms of resources, particularly in terms of providing strong links between course components and school experiences. Most universities are having difficulty in finding schools and teachers who are able and willing to provide quality practicum experiences for their students and in ensuring that those experiences link productively with the theoretical components of their courses.

ACER conducted a survey in March 2004 for the Victorian Institute of Teaching of all teachers who had graduated from teacher education programs in 2002. The teachers were just beginning their second year of teaching. This meant they had the experience of their first year of teaching on which to make a judgment about how well their teacher education program had prepared them for the demands of teaching.

Major differences were found in the effectiveness of different teacher education courses on a range of measures. The measures were based on the VIT standards for teacher registration.

On a four point scale (1 = not at all, 2 = to a minor extent, 3 = to a moderate extent and 4 = to a major extent) teachers generally rated their courses slightly below a 3, except for working with and reporting to parents and guardians, which scored near 2 on average. Teachers who completed a four-year undergraduate course generally reported more favourably on their course than teachers who completed a post-graduate degree.

School experience was rated higher than other elements of teacher education programs, but teachers from most courses made frequent mention of unsatisfactory arrangements, including the selection and preparation of teachers supervising the practicum experience in schools.

The feature of teacher education programs that had the strongest and most consistent effect on reported outcomes was the extent to which the course had a strong focus on the 'content to be taught'. Courses with a strong content focus enabled future teachers to:

a) gain a deep understanding of the content knowledge they were expected to teach

b) make clear links between content or subject matter units and units about how to teach the content

c) make clear links between theoretical and practical aspects of teaching

d) develop a sound understanding of how students learn the specific content that they were expected to teach

e) learn how to probe students' prior understandings of content they were about to teach

f) learn how to present content in ways that built on students' existing understanding

g) learn methods of teaching specific to the content they were expected to teach

Opportunity to learn 'how to assess student learning and plan curriculum units' was also strongly associated with preparedness in the areas of professional knowledge and knowledge of students in the first year of teaching. However, less that 20 per cent of teachers said their courses had prepared them, to a major extent, in this area.

Opportunity to receive feedback was also significantly related to the reported effectiveness of courses. Students in the most highly rated courses were much more likely to mention the opportunities they had for gaining timely and useful feedback from lecturers and practising teachers as helpful features. Feedback on practice has long been recognised as a vital requirement for professional learning but teachers reported receiving little feedback from university staff as they were learning to teach.

It is understood that current levels of funding for teacher education do not make it easy for university staff to provide feedback to students about their developing practice. However, the low level of feedback about practice may point to a significant weakness in current approaches to teacher education.

Given the context of initial teacher education, which is preparation for professional practice, it is surprising that feedback is not at a much higher level. One of the key elements in linking theory to practice is feedback.

Differences in practicum arrangements were not related to the reported effectiveness of teacher education programs. This is not to say that the practicum is unimportant - rather it appears that links are generally poor between the practicum and what students are learning in the university component of the course. It is hard for universities to find supervising teachers with the training to be an effective student-teacher supervisor in a school.

Teachers who reported that they felt well prepared had completed courses that gave them deep knowledge of what they were expected to help students learn, and how students learned it, as well as skill in diagnosing students' existing levels of understanding of the content to be taught, planning activities that would promote further development and assessing the extent to which development had taken place.

These professional capabilities appear to remain the necessary, though not sufficient, foundations in preparing teachers to meet the wider demands of the job, from establishing a productive learning environment to working effectively with parents.

The findings of this study do not provide support for those who think that making teacher education "practical" and "school-based" is the answer, absent efforts to ensure substantive content related professional knowledge. The kind of content knowledge identified in this study has pervasive and generative effects on teachers' capacity to manage the complex demands that teaching presents. Pedagogical skill, classroom management, and the capacity to provide a challenging and supportive learning environment depend fundamentally on possession of this kind of professional knowledge. The reverse does not apply. Teacher education programs that might be highly "practical", in the sense of giving heavy emphasis to skills in classroom management for example, will not make up for a deficiency in the aspects of content knowledge identified in this study.

The results of this study, though perhaps unsurprising, do say that teacher education matters. In a field where some have questioned the impact of, or need for, professional preparation programs, this is a significant finding. While we found wide variation in the reported quality of teacher education programs, we did not found that teacher education is unnecessary; quite the opposite.

by Dr Lawrence Ingvarson, Research Director, Teaching and Leadership, ACER

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