Educating Pre-Service Teachers: Towards a Critical Inquiry Workforce

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers identify a range of supposedly demonstrable capabilities for graduate teachers. Elaborations privilege the realization of Standards through mentoring, and feedback from senior colleagues. As manifestations of the logic of neo-liberalism they operate as audit technologies for pre-service teachers and their learning. In this paper, we argue for the preparation of graduate teachers who can engage in critical inquiry as means for expanding professional learning, developing pedagogical practices and improving student learning. We report on the preparation of 4th year pre-service teachers to undertake critical inquiry into an aspect of pedagogic practice during their final practicum placement. We first address instrumental framings of teacher preparation. A case is then made for critical practitioner inquiry as an alternative. Empirical data is drawn from the 'practice architectures' of an Australian teacher education program as these relate to developing pre-service teacher inquiry designs. We present inquiry questions, abstracts and reflections developed by pre-service teachers over a seven-year period in two discipline groupings, Health and Physical Education and Mathematics and Science, as evidence of possibilities for preparing graduates for a critical inquiry workforce. We conclude in arguing that these possibilities are vital in times framed by a narrowing technical and standardized educational environment.