A Focused Partnership: Targeting Inservice and Teacher Candidate Efficacy in Middle Level Education to Improve Student Outcomes

Abstract

Australian teacher candidate education students undertake 80 days of clinically based practice as a mandatory requirement for teacher registration. Recently, an initiative named Junior Secondary has been introduced in state schools in Queensland. It has been designed to improve learning experiences for young adolescent students in Years 7, 8 and 9, which is the equivalent of the middle years of schooling. Six guiding principles underpin the reform and provided the opportunity for a reform agenda in the shape of a university/school partnership, which is outlined in this chapter. Stakeholders in the partnership benefitted in a range of ways, but the most powerful evidence of improvement were in the data collected about the school students themselves, with measures reflecting attendance and achievement increases for the young adolescent learners. The partnership benefits to the university are most strongly felt in the confidence that preservice students are engaged in a theory/practice nexus that features good practice in middle years education.