Learning and exploring teacher identity: Preparing for teaching in the Partners in Literacy and Numeracy (PLaN) programme

Pre-service teachers in Australian Initial Teacher Education programmes gain classroom experience through supervised, formally assessed professional experience placements and internships. This in-situ experience is recognized as important in the development of professional identities, knowledge and skills. However, many pre-service teachers lament the limited amount of classroom time encountered prior to beginning teaching. This paper reports on a university-schools partnership programme that affords pre-service teachers opportunities for non-assessed school-based experience in addition to, but not part of, their formal Initial Teacher Education programme requirements. Preliminary findings from a questionnaire completed by programme participants suggest that participants particularly value in-situ professional experiences unencumbered by time pressures and assessment regimes, and that these experiences are significant to developing notions of self and emerging professional identities in ways that differ from formally assessed classroom placements.