Purpose: This conceptual paper explores the complex, and neglected, area of mentor development in initial teacher education (ITE) in Australia. It focuses on the emotionality of mentoring, drawing on concepts of emotional labour and emotional intelligence to develop a framework of effective mentoring that helps explain the essence of a mentor's…

This scoping review examines the literature on teaching Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes. The study explores how these programmes integrate Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into their curriculum and pedagogy to prepare teachers to work with Indigenous students and communities. The review…

The teaching profession and initial teacher education face ongoing pressures which challenge how teachers' work with curriculum is positioned. Within Australia, recent reviews into initial teacher education have emphasised the need for 'classroom ready' graduates with knowledge of 'proven' pedagogical approaches. Parallel to this has been…

In 2022, an ASTA working group researched the career life cycle of a science teacher from preservice to retirement in order to better support professional learning programs for its members. The project resulted in the production of a framework showing the relationships between individual teacher contexts in their personal and workplace life and…

Professional experience is crucial in initial teacher education, enabling pre-service teachers to develop their skills in authentic classroom settings. However, with most Australian initial teacher education institutions located in metropolitan areas, few pre-service teachers undertake experiences in regional, rural or remote (RRR) schools,…

In this article, a team of teacher educators collectively think through the many possibilities of how concepts such as decolonization, abolition, and fugitivity intersect with and are taken up by teacher education programs. To do so, we undertook a critical interpretive synthesis of scholarly literature spanning 2000 to 2020 to locate, examine,…

Preparing school teachers goes beyond equipping them with instrumental knowledge of curriculum, pedagogy, and experiences of how this can be enacted in practice. They must be prepared to understand and encompass compelling social issues of justice, equity, and sustainability. To do this they need to understand pressing environmental issues as a…

The expectations placed on teachers and teacher educators have increased particularly in relation to education topics such as relationships and sex education. One group of four pre-service teachers and a teacher educator based in an Australian university studying a Bachelor of Education (primary) share their experiences of teaching and learning in…

This study, which is a replication of three previous studies, explored the perceptions of pre-service primary and early childhood teachers who undertook a service-learning course as part of their Bachelor of Education degree at an Australian university. The practical component of the service-learning entailed 13 hours of community engagement where…

"Child Development and Learning" integrates concepts of learning and development into one comprehensive text for understanding child development. At its core is the belief that learning and development are intertwined. As children learn, they also develop. As children develop, they also learn. With an understanding of how children…

Encouraging pre-service teachers to perceive early childhood teaching as an inherently attractive career option remains an issue in the early childhood profession in Australia. Following a Research by Design methodology with iterative modifications, this paper uses a professional identity theoretical lens to analyse survey and interview data from…

In this article we report on the monitoring of pre-service teachers' experiences of their course at a regional university in NSW, Australia. The intention of this research project was to engage with pre-service teachers to gauge their perceptions and their awareness of their developing teacher knowledge and skills. Our aim was to gather more…

Background: The imperative for social justice in education means that pre-service teachers should learn how to teach for and about social justice, including pedagogical and content knowledge. Understanding how physical education (PE) pre-service teachers and teacher educators construct and develop their knowledge of social justice pedagogies and…

Throughout 2020, the world was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of higher education, the pandemic critically affected professional experience, a core component of teacher education. This paper shares data from a large-scale survey about teachers' sense of self-efficacy and the impact of COVID-19 on professional…

In this article, I examine the potential of social media to meaningfully connect students and educators with First Nations popular musicians. Utilising yarning-as-method under the theoretical frame of storying, I present accounts of attempts to embed the practice in high school classes before exploring how the process was refined for an initial…