Abstract:
For teacher educators the post-Teacher Education Ministerial Review (TEMAG) era in Australia shares many characteristics with the state of teacher education in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK). Government criticism of teacher education and intensified accountability measures are features of the scene, with authorities’ scepticism about the value of contemporary teacher education leading to a valorisation of schools’ rather than universities’ work in the process of educating teachers. In other ways, however, Australia’s educational landscape is different from that in the US or UK in that it has shown itself, with its relatively small population, small number of jurisdictions, and history of government intervention, capable of quickly enacting pervasive educational change. Yet TEMAG’s proposal of addressing teacher education through greater regulation is unlikely to be effective in improving teacher education. Without a clear understanding of what needs to be regulated for, such measures will be merely bureaucratic in impact. As the TEMAG report also acknowledges this is where research is needed. The Australian Council of Deans of Education’s (ACDE) proposes that Australia needs a teacher education research institute to coordinate research about what features of teacher education lead to improved outcomes for school students. Leaving aside the (seemingly unanswerable) question of the funding of such a body, the ADCE is right to frame its proposal in this way; the nature of the impact of teacher education on school students is the question that governments around the world want addressed. This paper will argue that the best place to start with answering this question is to establish inter-institutional studies which research the value of the school-university partnerships which are proliferating in the current, unstable teacher education context. Teacher educators agree that close school- university links are central to high quality teacher education. Research with this focus must be jointly planned between schools and universities if it is not to add to the view that universities are not interested in practice. An examination of the gaps in current international research on partnerships indicates that Australia, with its capacity to organise a national effort, might be well-placed to advance this research.