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In this paper the written feedback provided by mentor teachers using a new assessment model for preservice teacher professional experience deployed in the Australian Capital Territory and based on the Australian National Standards for Teachers is analysed. The analysis reveals mentor teachers hold a pervasive theory-in-use in regards to the needs of beginning teachers that may restrict the developmental ambition of the assessment model. The restricted vision of what is important for beginning teachers held by mentor teachers is possibly a reaction to continual change within school education. The analysis is preceded by a description of the ‘Professional Conversations’ model for mentoring preservice and early career teachers. The National Professional Standards for Teachers (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2011b) were adopted by the Australian Ministers for Education in 2011 as the basis for registration of all teachers, and as a key component of the approval of Initial Teacher Education Programs within Australia. Promoted as a key benefit of the new standards was the notion that it would ‘provide an ongoing basis for teacher reflection and development and... a guide to professional learning’ (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2011a). That is, the new National Standards were and are promoted as a tool to assist teacher professional development over and above a mechanism for regulating teaching practice or teacher behaviour. The first Australian jurisdiction to move to using the new National Standards in a substantial way was the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) where the two local initial teacher education providers and the new registration authority, the ACT Teacher Quality Institute (TQI) worked closely together to develop a Professional Conversations Model for using the National Standards within preservice school-based professional experience. The ambition of this model is to use the National Standards as developmental standards rather than regulatory standards. An analysis of the feedback provided to preservice teachers by mentor teachers, however, suggests that there is still work to do in realising this ambition that will require a deeper inclusion of mentor teachers in the professional conversation. Within the Australian federal system, school education is a state or territory responsibility with national approaches being achieved only through the agreement of the governments of the six state and two self-governing territories, as well as the Federal Government (‘the Commonwealth’) who have the major responsibility for funding. At the time of adopting a national standards framework, the ACT was the only Australian jurisdiction to have no existing teacher registration system. In establishing a teacher registration system it simply adopted the new National Framework and, without need for transition, become the first jurisdiction to do so. For teachers in the ACT the adoption of these standards is just one of a number of national initiatives being implemented concurrently with a capacity to fundamentally change their practice. For example, a long held tradition of school-based curriculum development, only quite recently focussed by a jurisdiction Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 37, 12, December 2012 47 curriculum framework, is now being pushed firmly aside by the Australian Curriculum. Similarly, the recent adoption of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been a bigger transition for ACT teachers than in jurisdictions such as the surrounding New South Wales that had similar assessment programs already in place already at a state level. An early achievement for the new registration authority, the TQI, was to gain the cooperation of the two Initial Teacher Education providers in the ACT, the University of Canberra and the Australian Catholic University, to develop a common approach to using the National Standards within their respective school-based professional experience programs. This was initially achieved through a joint pilot project conducted with funding support from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), and involving the two universities and the teachers at five local schools. Building on this project, the two universities continued to work with the TQI to develop a common approach to professional experience that was named the Professional Conversations Model. Before moving to an analysis of the major work product of teachers within the professional experience program, the next section will be used to outline the major features and rationale of the model. The Professional Conversations Model The Professional Conversations Model promotes the use of the National Professional Standards for Teachers as developmental standards. Mahony and Hextall (2000) discriminate between ‘developmental’ and ‘regulatory’ standards noting that standards can be used as regulatory tools to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of systems, institutions and individuals; or they can provide approaches for teachers’ further professional learning aimed at improving the quality of their teaching throughout their career. International and domestic experience has shown that within the prevailing audit culture (Power, 2009), teacher standards have often been implemented in the regulatory sense (Sachs, 2003b). However there is little evidence to support a claim that a regulatory approach actually improves student learning, while there is significant evidence that a regulatory implementation of standards can have de-professionalising effects on teachers (Ball, 2003; Connell, 2009; Sachs, 2003b), and that these effects can be linked to teacher dissatisfaction and workforce attrition (Clandinin, Downey, & Huber, 2009). In contrast, a developmental approach to standards is consistent with strong evidence on the types of teacher behaviour and practice that lead to high student performance. The Professional Conversations Model draws on this evidence base. It addresses the findings from the Productive Pedagogies research (Hayes, Lingard, Mills, & Christie, 2006), the most extensive Australian study linking teacher practices with student learning, that the ‘purpose and structure of field experiences’ in teacher education ‘centre too often on practising teaching techniques with relatively little concern for what is being taught and the quality of learning produced’ (Gore, Griffiths, & Ladwig, 2004). Professional experience within this model is understood as an opportunity for professional learning by all involved, and not simply an opportunity for university students to ‘practice’ teaching techniques, with the National Standards providing a starting point for that learning. This approach is consistent with Shulman & Shulman’s (2004, 2008) frame for conceptualising teacher learning and development within communities and contexts, and takes account of their findings that the ability to ‘adapt and learn from experience’ is of paramount importance in the everyday practice of teaching (Shulman & Shulman, 2004, p. 263). The model also draws on evidence of the powerful impact ‘problem-based teaching’ has on student learning (Hattie, 2009) as has been seen in projects such as the New South Wales Priority Action Schools Program (Beveridge, Groundwater-Smith, Kemmis, & Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 37, 12, December 2012 48 Watson, 2005). A central learning goal within the Professional Conversations Model is to develop skills in the critical analysis of practice, vision and beliefs, and in the ongoing formative evaluation of teaching and learning. Within this conceptual framework, the National Standards are used as a set of cues for critical investigation and evaluation, and not simply as a set of competencies to be displayed and observed. As such it adopts Sachs’ (2003a) notion of an activist teaching profession that is collaborative and future oriented. Framing professional experience in this way places the mentor teacher in the program in an unusual educative role. While they are clearly school-based teacher educators and supervisors of the preservice teacher, in a sense they are also teaching peers and coinvestigators in the problem-based teaching asked for in the model. Mentor teachers have a key role in providing feedback to preservice teachers during professional experience, but as teacher-practitioners the feedback they provide can frequently be characterised as feedback from a more experienced peer. Here the Professional Conversations Model leans heavily on Hattie’s (2011) work on effective feedback and his argument that feedback should address three important questions: ‘Where am I going?’; ‘How am I going?’; and ‘Where to next?’ (pg. 116). The model also relies on the associated work of Gan (2011) demonstrating the power that explicit prompts from teachers have in helping peers to provide effective feedback. In this setting, Gan’s ‘teachers’ are the teacher educators, while the ‘peers’ are the mentor and preservice teachers. Two key documents were produced to scaffold the feedback process during school-based professional experience: A Guide to Preservice Teacher’s Professional Practice and a set of Professional Conversations Prompts. Both documents were based on the National Professional Standards for Teachers. The Guide to Preservice Teachers’ Professional Practice is intended to provide mentor teachers with a basis for providing feedback addressing the question of ‘Where am I going?’ It was developed with the findings from the pilot project in mind that the thirtyseven ‘Focus Areas’ contained within the seven ‘Standards’ of the National Standards were too numerous for everyday use. The Guide seeks to provide teachers in schools with a sense of how the professional capabilities of preservice teachers could be expected to develop over the length of their initial teacher education course, using the thr

Professional Conversations: Mentor Teachers’ Theories-in-Use Using the Australian National Professional Standards for Teachers