Conference Agenda

Currently education providers are facing unprecedented staffing shortage where schools are struggling to employ qualified teachers to teach across early childhood, primary and secondary school sectors. A teacher shortage is being felt worldwide because of increasing population, declining initial teacher education (ITE) enrolments, an ageing teacher workforce, the competitive global teaching market, and the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022).

This shortage has reached crisis point for Regional, Rural and Remote (RRR) schools. In one jurisdiction in Australia 83.7% of teaching vacancies (https://smartjobs.qld.gov.au) are in locations outside of the capital city. It is well known that teaching in a RRR context can be fraught with complications and challenges unique to the RRR context, for example isolation, access to goods and services and professional development. For some time, RRR schools across all Australian states and territories have struggled to attract and retain qualified teachers (Hudson & Hudson, 2019; Kline & Walker-Gibbs, 2015). The staffing crisis in schools that is exacerbated in our RRR communities is an area of need that should be addressed by ethical and inclusive ITE providers working in partnership with RRR schools to ensure qualified teachers are employed in schools, with particular attention to those schools and communities in RRR locations.

One of the initiatives adopted across Australia to address the teacher employment problem is providing teacher registration prior to preservice teachers (PSTs) graduating from their ITE program. These positions are often filled by PSTs who undertake a teaching position while studying. While some schools address the teacher shortage in this way, this has implications for the quality of education being provided. Ensuring not only an adequate supply of teachers, but skilled teachers is essential to continue improving teaching and learning outcomes.

Anecdotally, PSTs have varying experiences whilst on an early teaching contract. Some preservice teachers have their school timetable reduced to allow additional time to complete their university coursework. Other PSTs have reported that they cannot be released for online classes. It can be assumed that this is due to the dire teacher shortage and these PSTs are needed to cover classes. Other PSTs have experienced mental health issues as the pressures of studying and teaching before being fully qualified became too much. This resulted in them withdrawing from either or both their studies and the early teaching contract.

Australia has engaged in a National School Reform to promote equity and excellence with the aim for all young Australians to become “successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens” (Australian Government Department of Education, 2018, p. 3). Australia’s stability and economic prosperity is reliant on quality education of young Australians who will become Australia’s future. It is acknowledged that teachers have the greatest impact on improving student learning (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022). Ensuring not only an adequate supply of teachers, but skilled teachers is essential to continue improving teaching and learning outcomes.

With an absence of research, it is unclear how well-prepared PSTs are to begin their teaching career prior to graduation, or what supports there are to ensure quality education is maintained for school students, and that PSTs are nurtured and inducted into the profession. This is this study’s aims.

The research questions are:

What are the experiences of preservice teachers undertaking an early teaching contract?

What enablers and constraints have preservice teachers on an early teaching contract experienced in relation to practice architectures surrounding the early teaching contract?

What opportunities can be explored or currently exist that might enhance work/study practices for the diverse needs of preservice teachers on an early teaching contract?

Addressing the gap between theory and practice has been the foundation of many research projects regarding teacher education over the years (e.g. Korthagen, 2007; McGarr, O’Grady & Guilfoyle, 2017), and subsumed under the concept of work-integrated learning (WIL) is an international repositioning focusing on an integration between theory and practice and thereby bridging the gap (e.g. McRae & Johnston, 2016; Zegwaard et al., 2019). During later decades, student teachers are spending more time on practice within Teacher Education (TE) in general and an increased numbers of TE programmes are promoting WIL (Reid, 2011). In this ‘practice turn’ of higher education (Raelin, 2007), the value of experience as a basis for knowledge, increasing work-readiness for the students, has been elevated (McManus & Rook, 2021). This recognition of workplace experiences has drawn attention to the relation between off-campus and on-campus learning and how these can be integrated, Caspersen & Smeby, 2021). Basically, students have difficulties in transforming subject-academic knowledge into subject-didactic knowledge (Nilsson, 2008). Thus an ongoing discussion in higher education concerns how students can be assisted in constructing successful transitions between university and work. This discussion has its foundation in the awareness of differences between the two contexts, especially in view of the gap between university studies and work requirements (Biemans et al., 2004; Finch et al., 2007).

In previous studies, it is indicated from two players within teacher education - students and mentors - that a reorganization of teacher education entails implications for student teachers´ opportunities for learning (Jederud, 2021; Jederud, 2022; Jederud, Rytzler & Lindqvist, 2022). Thus, it was of interest to target this study towards another manifestation of the ‘practice turn’, a WIL-teacher programme, and shed light on how a third player within teacher education - teacher educators - perceive students´ opportunities for learning when they move between the two contexts of work and university. Student teachers within this specific WIL-teacher programme are employed and work three days a week and conduct campus studies two days a week.

Inspired by Akkerman and Bakker (2011), I make use of the theoretical perspective of boundary crossing and the four identified learning potentials identification, coordination, reflection and transformation to conceptualize what WIL students´ boundary crossing entails regarding their learning at university. A boundary crossing perspective opens up for a precise understanding of what new contextual relationships are required, as it is targeted at evaluating opportunities for learning where it is essential that different institutions cooperate (Akkerman & Bruining, 2016). This is especially essential within professional education where apprenticeships are acknowledged as valued paths for inaugurating successful transitions between university and workplaces. This as it is perceived that it is the differences between the two educational contexts that is seen as a source for development (Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003). Therefore, instead of dismissing boundaries between contexts, they can be made use of in exercises to assist students to contextualise their knowledge in relation to the requirements of collaborative work (Andersson, 2016). Wenger (1998) makes use of the concept of ‘broker’ when describing how individuals (brokers) are capable of making new correlations between communities of practices to enable coordination. From this point of view, brokers hold an important position, as they can bring together contemporary elements from one community of practice to another. Students are in a distinctive position to undertake the role of broker, taking along new tools and understandings from their work experiences into their universities and from their universities into their workplaces. However, students face challenges here: boundaries are significant in working and learning processes (Engeström, Engeström, & Kärkkäinen, 1995), and students may have to deal with contradictory perspectives (Christiansen & Rump, 2008).

Within the last two years, a shortage of teachers has become increasingly apparent in European countries (Rudnika, 2022; Scheidig & Holmeier, 2021) and beyond (U.S. Department of Education, 2023). Various measures have been proposed as solutions to this problem, including making all teachers full-time, encouraging career changers, or even employing students before the end of their studies (see, for example, the recent statement of The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, 2023). In case of Austria, schools increasingly count on undergraduate students who are willing to enter the professional life as fully responsible teachers before completing their bachelor's degree. Being thrown into practice without sufficient education and preparation, this way of dealing with teacher shortage raises concerns about teaching quality, the novice’s professional development and retention, the students' wellbeing, and not least the reputation of the teaching profession.

This empirical research paper examines the experience of students who enter the teaching profession in secondary schools in the Austrian region of Salzburg-Upper Austria before completing their bachelor's degree. Of particular interest were the framework conditions and relevant support options that the early entrants to the profession found and how they found their way in their new everyday working life.

In Austria, the regular teacher education curriculum comprises a state-supported induction phase in which the recently graduated novices work in schools with a limited teaching load and are provided with a mentor, who supports them in practice. Students who start working as teachers before completing their bachelor’s degree do not have the opportunity to participate in the state-supported induction program. This means that they have to find their way into the profession entirely on their own and without any structurally planned professional support, which exposes them to the risks of overload, failure, and early drop out from their jobs (Ingersoll & Smith, 2004). In addition, they lack the practice of instructed and accompanied reflection with professional mentors, in which they develop their scientific-reflective habitus in terms of Helsper’s concept of double professionalisation (Helsper 2001). Professional support during the pivotal phase of induction helps the novices to go beyond mere copying and learning from others by finding their voice and way of being a teacher and, in so doing, contribute to the advancement and further development of the profession (see e.g. DeBolt, 1992; Dammerer, 2019; Keller-Schneider, 2020).

From this perspective, structure-related problems at their career entry seemed predictable for the undergraduate students and ultimately led to the research interest of the study: the experience of career entry between (lack of) support and experience of stress. In addition, we intend to compare our results with the experience of those students who did not decide to start teaching at an early stage, but rather follow the regular curriculum with the induction phase. Their experience has been investigated by a nationwide, large-scale study in 2021 (Prenzel et al., 2021; Huber et al., 2022). The purpose of our qualitative-empirical study is to find factors for the experience of early career entry for undergraduates which can be used for a large-scale survey at a later point of time.

When teachers teach classes for which they are not licensed, they are teaching out of field (TOOF) (du Plessis, 2015; Ingersoll, 1998; 2019). Out of field teaching is not a characteristic of the teacher but a description of the misalignment of a teacher’s qualifications and the subject they teach. Thus, it should be noted that out-of-field teaching is not due to a lack of basic education (ie bachelor’s degree) or training on the part of teachers but instead represents a mismatch between teachers’ fields of training and their teaching assignments.

When students take classes from teachers TOOF, they show less academic growth and are less successful (Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2010; Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002). The likelihood of being taught by a teacher teaching out of field is higher for students of color and Emergent Bilinguals as well as students in urban and rural schools (Beswick, Fraser, & Crowley, 2016; Nixon et al, 2017). In the USA, TOOF has been a concern for decades, but rates have increased dramatically since the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) became law in 2015 (Author, 2020). While one goal of ESSA was to provide schools with greater local control by providing more flexibility on teacher qualifications, the result has been more teachers teaching outside of their areas of expertise. TOOF matters because when students take classes from teachers who are not licensed and trained to teach that subject matter, there is a growing body of evidence that students are less successful and show less academic growth (Author, 2022; Chaney, 1995; Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000; Ingersoll, 1998).

This phenomena of teaching out of field is not new and impacts a wide range of students and subjects. In a report from 1998, Ingersoll (1998) found that one-fifth of all students in English, grades 7-12 were taught by a teacher who did not have at least a minor in English or English related field and one-quarter of all students had teachers out of field in Mathematics. In addition, while many think Math and Science are the fields primarily impacted by teachers who teach out of field, more English classes in Texas are taught by teachers TOOF than other subjects (Author, 2020), indicating the issue is more widespread than sometimes recognized.

Most prior studies of the impact of TOOF on student academic growth have been limited because they used either national assessment data that are not linked directly to the curriculum teachers were teaching, or state assessment data with small samples. Author (2022) overcame this limitation by using statewide Math assessment data that were linked directly to the curricula that teachers were required to teach. They found significantly lower academic growth in all Math grades/subjects examined for students taught out-of-field compared to students taught by teachers who were fully-trained and licensed to teach Math. This study builds on this prior work in Math by analyzing English Language Arts assessment data and teaching out of field to determine the effect on student learning. We asked the research question, do students who are taught in Grade 9 English I in field versus out of field experience similar levels of growth accounting for differences among students, teachers and schools?