Improving Teacher Quality
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The Training Schools Teacher Residency Internship Program forms part of Western Australia’s Implementation Plan for the Smarter Schools National Partnership Agreement on improving teacher quality, and is a cross sectorial initiative. The program improves pre-service teacher training for final year university students to study and practice, as an intern in an authentic school setting. The Kingston Primary School model is the focus of this presentation. Other models, including the Majella Primary School model, draw on understandings and learnings emanating from this highly successful work.
Edith Cowan’s role is to develop a renewed approach to teacher education, and to bring the best of research to teacher education. That is, to bring together both the practice of teaching with the knowledge of and about teaching. In doing that we have developed, for our four year undergraduate program, a final year that is embedded in schools. The benefits to student teachers is that they understand the nature of students in the classroom, they understand what motivates their learning. They understand how the curriculum needs to be adjusted to meet their needs, and they understand more about their own professional responsibilities.
Oh does it, oh awesome.
This is a more holistic approach to teacher education. So I think this program is bringing with it much, much better quality professional preparation for teachers of the future.
We have contracted with a school, a university, and the Department, to put together a pre-service graduate program that allows us to develop fourth year students for a whole year, in a school, so that they’re more than work ready. They’re actually well developed, vibrant and exciting teachers.
Instead of completing a ten week prac at a school in Perth, I actually relocated down to Bunbury from Perth to complete a year long internship at Kingston Primary School. I was placed in a Year 1 classroom with a fantastic mentor teacher, and I spent the whole year working and planning with her.
The Department’s had a very exciting role in developing this program. We’ve been able to sponsor, through a scholarship program, up to 12 students per year into the Kingston Primary School program. That’s allowed us to hand pick some very talented young people.
The outcome for Kingston Primary School for this internship model has been exceptional. The development of the teachers, the mentor teachers and the intern teachers, in our first year. The networks and mentoring that has continued with the first 10 as they enter into their first teaching appointments all around Western Australia. The feedback we’ve had about their readiness for teaching has been quite outstanding. The feedback we’ve had from their Principals has been quite outstanding. The program in itself has benefited our community, our staff, and our students, and we would love to see it continue into other schools in Western Australia.
For us here at Majella, with the particular cohort of students we have, having more hands on deck just allows us to implement our educational program more fully. It helps the students to get more individualised assistance, if you like. Our teachers are highly skilled and highly trained professionals, so the program has allowed us to give back to the profession, and to do what we can to improve the quality of teachers and the quality of teaching and practice in the classrooms.
The internship was the most helpful thing that I could imagine to do in my last year of study. It was just an amazing experience. I got to work with an excellent mentor teacher, and she taught me so much, and I can see a lot of her practices in the way that I teach now. I’m able to modify them to suit the way that I teach.
This is an exciting program and it’s a precursor to the National Partnership Teacher Quality Program. We’re in partnership with the Federal Government and we’re very keen to see this expanded so that we can use it as an [attraction 0:04:18] retention program as well as developing our teachers to be the very best they can.
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