Education Commons^™

Early Career Teachers’ Knowledge And Practice In Spelling Instruction: Insights For Teacher Educators, Grace Oakley

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Children who cannot spell fluently are likely to encounter difficulty in writing texts across the curriculum. Furthermore, spelling is often a component in high stakes tests, the results of which have significant implications for students and schools. In the context of debates on teacher quality, it is pertinent to examine the views of early career teachers on their preparedness to teach spelling. This article reports on a small scale study on the views, knowledge and practices of early career teachers in relation to the teaching of spelling, and their views on their pre-service teacher preparation. Participants were early career teachers …

Knowing And Teaching: The Impact Of Teachers’ Knowledge On Students’ Early Literacy Achievement, Janet Hunter

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Children in rural and remote schools typically underperform in measures of literacy achievement (e.g., NAPLAN) from as early as year three. Data collected over time indicate that as children get older, the gap increases between those students who meet the national benchmarks and those who do not. Additionally, Indigenous children are overrepresented in this group of students who are underperforming in measures of literacy achievement. This study seeks to explore the conditions surrounding this phenomenon and to tease out the complexities present in rural and remote contexts that might contribute to this underachievement.

One remote and six remote‐rural schools in …

Early Career Teachers’ Self-Efficacy For Balanced Reading Instruction, Petra Hastings

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

According to Bandura (1986; 1997), perceptions of efficacy are based on four sources: enactive attainment; vicarious experience; physiological and emotional states; and verbal persuasion. The factors affecting Early Career Teachers' self-efficacy for reading instruction are closely related to these four sources. It is not difficult to imagine an Early Career Teacher practicing within a ‘source vacuum’ as he or she attempts to grapple with the methodologies and strategies necessary for a balanced reading program. How, then, do they rate their teaching efficacy for this area of the curriculum? And which types of professional learning opportunities do they believe have heightened …