The Teaching school : a new paradigm in teacher education and catalyst for building capability in the current teaching workforce

The fundamental proposition underlying our paper is that pre-service teacher education is no longer sensible unless it is undertaken in partnership with the teaching profession. The second proposition is that rapid and irreversible social changes that affect student behaviours and workplace conditions, accompanied by increasing evidence based knowledge related to the profession, require a reassessment of teaching and ultimately, the ways schooling itself operates. It follows that preparing teachers for these changes entails a different kind of curriculum and a decidedly different professional workplace. This paper explores these propositions with particular emphasis on the concept of a Teaching School as exemplified in our Bachelor of Learning Management program (BLM): a degree program designed through collaboration with academics, teachers and school authorities. The BLM requires a different kind of university experience to accomplish its ‘workplace ready yet futures oriented’ vision and the Teaching School notion is a central component. The Teaching School arrangement depends entirely on collaboration between professional partners with different but equal expertise. The agreed goal is to graduate ‘industry-ready’ teachers with a demonstrated capability to achieve learning outcomes in students and who have a ‘futures-disposition’ equipping them to play a leadership role in taking the education sector 5-10 years into the future. Current research indicates the ‘Teaching School arrangement’ is positively impacting on teachers involved as it supports their capacity to respond effectively to changes affecting teaching and schooling.