Conference Agenda

Teaching has been recognised as a stressful profession and is plagued by significant turnover (Flook et al., 2013). International research has shown that many teachers, especially in their early career years, feel underprepared to handle academic and behavioural issues among their students (e.g., Aflakseir & Nemati, 2018; Dias-Lacy & Guirguis, 2017; Whitaker et al., 2015). This may lead to teachers suffering from anxiety, depression, burnout, and deciding to leave the profession (Buchanan et al., 2013). Preparing classroom-ready teachers has become a persistent theme around the world (Mansfield et al., 2016). For example, the apprenticeship-style teacher preparation program, Teach For All, requires graduating teachers to complete a six to eight week training course prior to teaching “in a disadvantaged setting” (Rice et al., 2015, p. 498). The Teach For All program has expanded significantly since 1990 and recognised 46 countries as network partners, including China, India, New Zealand, and Australia (Rowe & Skourdoumbis, 2019).

However, there is little agreement about what might a classroom-ready teacher look like across the profession. Early career teachers believe that a classroom-ready teacher should be prepared for understanding the curriculum, assessing students, engaging in professional dialogue with colleagues and parents, as well as managing classroom behaviours. Experienced teachers perceive that a classroom-ready teacher should be able to control their classes, communicate explicitly to their students, and deliver well-structured and student-focused lessons (Hickey, 2015). School principals point out that teaching is a demanding and complex profession so a classroom-ready teacher should be someone who experienced full responsibility for student wellbeing issues, class loads, parent communication and complaints management (Hickey, 2015).

Recent studies suggested that classroom readiness refers to a process of becoming, committing, and re-committing throughout a teaching career, rather than a simple standard to be achieved upon graduation (Buchanan & Schuck, 2016; Mockler, 2017). In this sense, a classroom-ready teacher cannot be identified as a product of a teacher education program (Buchanan & Schuck, 2016). Ingersoll (2007) compared the preparation of elementary and secondary teachers in seven education jurisdictions (i.e., China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and the United Stated). Prior to entering the profession, all the education jurisdictions required both content knowledge (i.e., knowing what to teach), pedagogical knowledge (i.e., knowing how to teach), and supervised practice (Ingersoll, 2007). Schuck et al. (2012) claimed that teaching is a multifaced enterprise, including communicating with colleagues, parents, communities, and students, demonstrating sound content and pedagogical knowledges, as well as keeping deep reserves of professional and personal resilience.

This paper explores the concept of 'preparedness' through the voices of pre-service teachers in Sydney, New South Wales (Australia), and Glasgow, Scotland. Preparedness and class-ready have been concepts posed by differing reviews of pre-service teacher education in New South Wales and Scotland; little information is provided in these reports about how preparedness is defined or operationalised. This paper will report initial findings from interviews with pre-service teachers about their understandings of 'preparedness'.

Amidst the broad range of teacher competencies, professional beliefs and professional identity are two important domains of personal orientations (Metsäpelto et al., 2022). These domains “represent distinct facets of individual differences and universal dimensions of human behavior” (Metsäpelto et al., 2020, p. 156). This study examines qualitative data from a cohort of pre-service students at a Finnish university to explore the following research question:

How do pre-service teachers negotiate their professional identity as teachers after their first year of teacher education studies?

ITE is a time when pre-service teachers are confronted with real-life teaching situations and encouraged to reexamine their philosophies, life-course experiences, and beliefs about teaching and classrooms (Friesen & Besley, 2013). Because of long observation and evaluation of educational settings as students, pre-service teachers enter ITE with implicit beliefs about being a teacher that are intuitive and imitative in nature, and that remain largely unchallenged by external evidence prior to critical reflection in ITE (Harford, & Gray, 2017). Beliefs may be understood as “closely held principles about teaching and learning and how teachers get better,” serving as “a durable but permeable filter” in teachers’ sense-making that reflects and refracts teachers’ identities (Noonan, 2018, p. 2). Beliefs further serve as general patterns of adaptation to work environments (Metsäpelto et al., 2022). A such, beliefs bear on how pre-service teachers interpret and respond to their professional roles, responsibilities, and challenges.

Despite the discrepancies in conceptualizing teacher identity because of different paradigms prevailing in various periods, teacher identity is commonly understood as a fluid concept, which cannot simply be perceived directly (Hanna et al., 2019). One of the early definitions of teacher identity posits that it is “the person’s self-knowledge in teaching-related situations and relationships that manifest themselves in practical professional activities, feelings of belonging and learning experiences” (Timostsuk & Ugaste, 2010, p. 1564). This definition underscores social contexts at work, teachers’ agency, affective orientation towards work, and professional learning. Furthermore, teacher identity is a subjective meaning-making processes “situated within, and therefore co-constructed by, broader cultural, social, and historical contexts” (Buchanan & Olsen, 2018, p. 197). The iteration taking place within context-bound social activity results in not only the transmission of tacit knowledge and skills, but also in new understandings and a changed version of oneself.

To come to terms with the multidimensional nature of identity as a phenomenon in teaching and teacher education, Ruohotie-Lyhty (2018) proposed the concept of identity-agency. Identity-agency has a mediatory role between pre-service teachers’ conditions at work and pre-service teachers’ individual interpretations of their experiences therein as they negotiate their professional identity. This negotiation is an ongoing, dynamic process of defining the self in relation to the profession (e.g., tasks, influences), and may take the form of additive development, transformative development, or defense. According to Ruohotie-Lyhty (2018), additive development occurs when pre-service teachers’ original ideas, expectations, values, and self-concept match their work environment in such a way that pre-service teachers accept new aspects to their work, without necessarily experiencing significant changes in how they perceive themselves as professionals. Transformative development occurs when the mismatch between pre-service teachers’ original identity and expectations at work is considerable, causing tension, emotional load, and uncertainty about one’s competence, thus rendering identity (re)negotiation more demanding. Defending occurs when pre-service teachers actively refuse (re)negotiating their identity when they perceive a mismatch between their original identity and expectations at work.

Despite the focus on Finnish teacher education, the study examines a topic of international interest, as teacher identity, i.e. how one understands themselves as educational professionals, is essential to pedagogical decision-making, agency at work, resilience, and job satisfaction irrespective of teaching context.