Ready, or not? Graduate teachers’ perceptions of their classroom readiness through a capstone assessment task

ABSTRACT Since the TEMAG Review we, as teacher educators in initial teacher education (ITE), have seen a gradual yet perceptible shift in the way pre-service teachers demonstrate their “classroom readiness.” In the past readiness was connected to preparing evidence for a job interview. Now, classroom readiness is determined by a pre-service teacher’s ability to meet the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers at the Graduate level through a capstone assessment task – the Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA). We take a phenomenographic approach to explore variations in the ways pre-service teachers viewed the authenticity of the TPA as an assessment of their classroom readiness. We draw data from three points in time: TPA, SETU responses, and interviews, to examine pre-service teachers' perceptions of readiness. Our question is: How do graduate teachers perceive themselves as ready to make the transition to teaching? As a result of our analysis we posit that teacher readiness takes time, and requires a state of metaxis in a liminal phase. We reposition point-in-time notions of classroom readiness such as “Action Now!” as liminal phases of transformation, in which authentic and mutually beneficial working relationships between ITE, PSTs and schools create the space and time needed to prepare “quality” graduate teachers.