This paper reviews the literature surrounding initiatives to reconceive teaching as a clinical practice profession. It considers the key characteristics of these international initiatives, and the ways in which teachers, students and teacher educators are positioned in this discourse (Carnegie Corporation, 2001; Darling-Hammond & Baratz-Snowdon 2005; Crocker & Dibbon, 2008; NCATE 2010). Following this, the presenters will discusses the Master of Teaching, which commenced at the University of Melbourne in 2008, in the context of these international moves towards the re-conception of teaching as a clinical practice profession. Key themes to emerge in the initial literature review will be considered in light of the experience of the Master of Teaching, now in its fifth year, and a comparative analysis undertaken.
Attention will be given to the way in which a developing understanding of clinical praxis has served as the impetus for the 're-formation' of the curriculum of the pre-service program at the University of Melbourne. The presenters will discuss the need to appropriate the language of clinical teaching for a large-scale program in an Australian context, which spans metropolitan and rural sites and incorporates a great range of stakeholders, and report on the ways that this appropriation has occurred.