Emily Hills

This conclusion synthesises emerging themes from the collected research about the Australian Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA), viewed through the lens of the Assessment for Graduate Teaching (A f GT). The themes are: TPAs can be authentic professional learning tools when focused on the intellectual work of teachers and the demonstration of integrated and authentic teaching practices; building collaborative ecosystems offers a framework for accountability that genuinely serves professional growth, co-innovation, and long-term sustainability; the reconceptualisation of “classroom readiness” as contextual and developmental rather than a fixed and standards-delimited concept; addressing generative AI challenges to safeguard assessment integrity while also helping prepare AI-literate teachers; and evidence-based design principles for sustainable TPA implementation. Collectively, the chapters reveal that TPAs will generate greatest value when embedded within collaborative professional ecosystems that harness distributed expertise, encourage stakeholder engagement, and balance accountability with the educative purpose of preparing adaptive, context-responsive beginning teachers.

This edited volume critically examines Australia’s Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) through the lens of a widely used TPA, the Assessment for Graduate Teaching (AfGT). With research and scholarship contributions by over 30 researchers from ten Australian universities, the book examines the TPA and its role in providing assurance that initial teacher education (ITE) graduates are “classroom ready.” Organised in three sections: Context and Foundations, Impacts of the TPA, and Future Directions, the collection offers evidence-based insights for policymakers, teacher educators, teachers, and researchers. It addresses the problematic notion of classroom ready, highlights the intellectual work of teaching, and examines tensions between authentic practice and compliance. The research reveals that TPAs are more likely to add value when embedded in collaborative ecosystems that harnesses distributed expertise within the teaching profession. Finally, 15 design principles are provided to guide the evolution of TPAs as transformative professional learning processes that contribute meaningfully to developing teaching quality.

Taking a future-facing approach, this book provides a timely evaluation of the Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA), which utilises the Assessment for Graduate

This article explores how school-based clinics are situated within a large scale school-university partnership and what role they play in pre-service teachers’ professional development. Using large text data from open-ended survey responses from 60 practicing teachers and 540 pre-service teachers (PSTs) over four years (2018 to 2022), alongside quantitative surveys completed by 259 PSTs, we sought to examine how school-based clinics enhance PST professional development and what factors contribute to partnership sustainability. Findings from the qualitative data analysis show that PSTs appreciated the quality and value of their participation in school-based clinics. A majority of the PSTs viewed school-based clinics as a learning community where they benefited in the areas of lesson planning and student assessment with the support and feedback from classroom teachers. Moreover, most PSTs reported that their self-efficacy in teaching skills had been bolstered through their participation in clinics. Quantitative analysis confirmed these findings by demonstrating a positive association between the number of clinics in which the PSTs participated, and their perception of professional development. Implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed in the context of initial teacher education in Australia.