Exposure to the various presentations and discussions on that workshop day in 2014 highlighted the largely uncritical way in which I had previously understood the complexity of rurality and its educational and social implications. This suite of papers makes a valuable contribution to better understanding the issues confronting the current state of…

In 2012, early career teachers in Queensland and Victoria (Australia) were invited to complete the Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education graduate survey. The survey included a "Preparation for Teaching Scale" that provided opportunities to selfreport on how well their teacher education program prepared them for 46 areas of…

Currently pre-service teachers (PSTs) practise teaching by interacting in real-life situations naturally occurring within variable school-based practicums. These are not ideal contexts for beginning teachers because they put novices in situations with real students before demonstrating capability, feedback is often not at point of need and they do…

Cooperative learning (CL) has a strong research base, but it is underutilised. This can be explained by teachers' reluctance to experiment with pedagogies in an environment increasingly focused on high-stakes testing. Early career teachers (ECTs) need support to be innovative practitioners, particularly with such a complex one as CL. The teacher's…

Teacher attrition is a current issue in Australia and other economically developed countries, with up to 50 per cent of teachers resigning from teaching within the first five years. Teacher attrition is widely considered to impact negatively on student achievement and the school. The present study of 160 Australian primary and secondary teachers…

This is a co-constructed narrative between both Marie, an early career teacher, Stephen an artist and colleague in the school's creative arts faculty and Colin, an Aboriginal teacher and researcher. They met throughout 2012 and discussed issues that related to their discursive interactions that occurred in this small rural school between its…

This paper presents an international comparison of Australian and Spanish secondary teachers' perceptions about the effectiveness of their pre-service education and their learning as in-service teachers. It aims to identify, firstly, the extent to which beginning teachers believe they are prepared for their careers through their teacher training…

Tutor development is an essential part of academic staff development, yet is comparatively under-researched. This article examines what tutors value as most and least important in a program. Using data from more than 300 participants in three years, and using the dimensions or worth, merit and success as an analytical framework, the article…

"Early career" in academia is typically defined in terms of research capability in the five years following PhD completion, with career progression from post-doctoral appointment to tenure, promotion and beyond. This ideal path assumes steady employment and continuous research development. With academic work increasingly casualised,…

The purpose of this study was to explore the career development process of three experienced string instrument teachers and how they understood their career development. The following questions guided this interpretative phenomenological case study: (a) How do the string teachers in this study learn to teach? (b) What sort of phases are involved…

This paper stems from research in Australia examining pre-service teacher and mentor teacher experiences on the practicum. The paper focuses on findings from the research, highlighting the tendency among the pre-service teachers to either valorise or demonise their mentor teachers, reflective of what we describe, following Kristeva and Britzman,…

It is the norm for the casual teaching precariat to experience insecure labour conditions requiring an additional skill set to teachers with stable employment. As more beginning teachers than ever before commence work in casual employment--often a tenuous and unsupported transition into the profession--it is beholden on teacher educators to…

This study explored the lived experiences of 20 Australian early childhood preservice teachers while on practical experience placement and examined the factors that informed their pedagogical experiences when working across both prior-to-school and school settings. Transcripts from interviews were analysed using grounded theory-informed…

Children who cannot spell fluently are likely to encounter difficulty in writing texts across the curriculum. Furthermore, spelling is often a component in high stakes tests, the results of which have significant implications for students and schools. In the context of debates on teacher quality, it is pertinent to examine the views of early…

Australia has delineated a new direction for teacher education by embedding mentoring programs for teachers who support early-careers teachers as a system approach. This case study investigated how mentors after involvement in a mentoring professional learning program focused on goal setting with beginning teachers in their schools. Data were…