The Alphacrucis College clinical teaching model: An evaluation

Abstract

Alphacrucis College, Australia, has developed a Clinical Teaching Model (CTM) as an option within the initial teacher-training awards. The Alphacrucis College model intentionally combines the pre-service teachers’ spiritual formation with their professional development. This article reports on an evaluation of the CTM students’ experience compared with that of students under the traditional approach. The key findings confirm an increased sense of self-discipline and confidence, and an overwhelming appreciation for the practical application without assessment. The students appreciated that in the CTM process, faith was being coupled with their calling to teach.

Keywords

confidence initial teacher training pre-service teacher professional experience placement (PEX)spiritual formation and discipleship

Introduction

What if we assumed that learning is as much a part of our human nature as eating or sleeping, that it is both life-sustaining and inevitable, and that – given a chance – we are quite good at it? And, what if, in addition, we assumed that learning is, in essence, a fundamentally social phenomenon, reflecting our own deeply social nature as human beings capable of knowing? (Wenger, 1998: 4)

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) coined the notion of ‘communities of practice’, reflecting on how people learn most effectively. Generations of teachers have assumed that their students learn best in community, and have designed places of learning around facilities and programs conducive to grouping people with a shared concern or passion. But what about the teachers; how do they learn best?

This article explores an approach to teacher education in Christian contexts, the Clinical Teaching Model (CTM), being developed by Alphacrucis College (AC), Sydney, Australia, for training teachers at bachelor and masters levels. The mode of learning and teaching for these existing programs that has already been championed is ‘blended learning’ – a combination of week-long intensive face-to-face classes with online distance learning (Twelves and Arasaratnam, 2012–2013). The CTM is a complement to blended learning. The CTM design is effectively a community of practice for pre-service teachers that emphasizes learning as a fundamentally social phenomenon shared by people with a common concern and passion and a desire to develop and learn.

The CTM concept

Alphacrucis College was established in 1948 as the national training college of the Australian Christian Churches (formerly known as the Assemblies of God). Initially it was purely a Pentecostal theological college, but it has since grown to include Education, Social Science, Chaplaincy, Business and Leadership and more. It is now a multi-faith institution with open enrolment to students of all faiths or none. The College has been preparing teachers for both Christian and state schools since 2011. However, all the students described in this article are from a range of Christian denominations and engaged in their CTMs purely in Christian schools.

Mackay Christian College, a Christian school in an isolated, remote part of Australia, was struggling to attract or retain gifted Christian teachers as it grew in just a few years to over 900 students by 2014. Dr Craig Murison, the principal of the school at the time, approached Alphacrucis College with his dream to develop an apprenticeship style of teacher education for his own Year 12 graduates and gifted adults in the community. The concept was to train participants to become teachers within their own school’s culture and ethos, perpetuating their vision and values for future generations (personal communication, 8 April 2014).

The central feature of this community idea was the desire to combine the spiritual formation of the pre-service teacher with their professional development. Craig’s passion for Christian education was that it must be extended beyond Year 12 and encompass the student’s calling for a life of ministry that had been identified while at school. So, the concept grew of pairing students with trusted Christian teachers from their own community that could model and apply the principles of the Christian school directly into the hearts and minds of the pre-service teachers. Craig was frustrated by the need to untangle secular thinking from his new appointees, and he longed for the time he could build on the values, principles and understanding of his new teachers, who were already steeped in the Christian culture of his school.

This is the heart of the Alphacrucis CTM model. The coach–pre-service-teacher relationship is reminiscent of the one Beare recounts when he was ‘bonded’ to one of his teachers with whom he had a relationship since his last year in secondary school (Beare, 2010: 3). Workplace-based professional experience for pre-service teachers has been common for generations, arguably since university-based teacher training started in the nineteenth century (Labaree, 2008: 290).

Further, Driessen and Scheele (2013: 573) propose a change in perspective in the workplace-based component from the summative assessment of the learner’s competence to effective formative learning. They applaud redirecting the focus onto the supervisor’s decisions based on their gut feeling rather than a focus on the so-called objective assessment and testability of the trainee. Also, one of the old issues with workplace-based assessment has been the low priority placed on the observation of trainees and the lack of constructive feedback based on such observations as tools for the trainee’s learning. Driessen and Scheele argue that there needs to be a change in practice from a perception of a negative stance to one of a positive formative feedback given during the learning journey that takes place within a trusted relationship. This cannot be expected to just happen; faculty will need time allocation and specific training for this change in focus to be effective (Driessen and Scheele, 2013: 573). This shift in the centre of gravity from a summative, final hurdle approach in a training program to the formative, developmental approach spanning the whole program resonates with our concept of a CTM, especially the spiritual formation aspect.

The clinical teaching concept has been tried and tested over many decades and in many continents. For example, in 1992, twelve colleges and universities in North Carolina received state funds to support a 3-year pilot program related to clinical teaching in teacher education. The University of North Carolina published descriptions of these twelve programs, known as the Model Clinical Teaching Network. Features of the programs include the use of summer periods to provide teacher education students with paid supervised teaching activities, strong supervised teaching experience during the first year or two of full-time teaching, and cooperative development of 1- and 2-year clinical teaching programs for beginning teachers. Their approach also reflects Driessen and Scheele’s call for a stronger focus on the work of the supervisors, incorporation of experienced school teachers as clinical faculty with major responsibility for method courses, and the supervision of the pre-service teachers (University of North Carolina, 1992).

Here in Australia, Grant’s 1993 article reported on the pre-service intern-teaching model for Bachelor students in the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The report describes the pre-service teacher’s extended ‘school experience’ (rather than their ‘practice teaching’), in which the pre-service teacher undertakes a diverse array of activities in addition to direct teaching. For example, they are offered opportunities for extensive periods of observation across the whole school, ideally in integrated primary and secondary settings, so that they can begin to measure the impact of the teaching given in primary on older students in secondary in a collegial context where they can ask the staff about what they are observing.

The University of Melbourne model highlights selectivity, and by implication the pre-service teacher’s potential, or otherwise, to thrive under the model, as every student is not automatically accepted. To be eligible to participate in the program, students first have to be judged competent to teach without supervision, and they have to be schooled in the methods of educational research within a schooling context. To manage this process, a relationship is established with specific schools, called partnerships. Schools were invited to volunteer to be accepted into the program as partners with Melbourne University. This relationship encourages mutual professional respect between each institution involved. It is within this partnership context that the concept of ‘internships’ was developed where the assigned assessment tasks for the pre-service teacher were integrated into their experience in schools (Grant, 1993).

This model has continued to develop, and from 2008 the University of Melbourne’s Master of Teaching has claimed to be a genuine ‘clinical masters’. Their aim is to graduate ‘interventionist classroom practitioners, capable of using data, discrete evidence to determine the diverse learning needs of individual students’ (Anderson and Scamporlino, 2013: 33). This is an intentional shift from a ‘teacher-centric’ education where the ‘information’ is provided to the teacher who in turn transmits it to the student. This ‘student-centric’ model makes a dynamic assessment of the individual needs of students and then develops individualized programs, resulting in a far more effective learning and teaching environment. This is all made possible within their new partnership model with selected schools. They also encourage pre-service teachers to seek some of their teaching practice in international settings to enhance their cultural diversity awareness and broaden their understanding of global education (Anderson and Scamporlino, 2013).

In the United States, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE, 2010) strongly argues for a radical change away from an emphasis on academic preparation with coursework loosely connected to the pre-service teacher’s school experiences, to programs rooted in clinical practice fully integrating academic content and professional practice. They believe this approach creates opportunities for the pre-service teacher to connect what they learn about the theories of pedagogy with the challenges of using them, while under the expert coaching of experienced clinical practitioners. This approach also supports the development of complex teaching skills and ensures that the pre-service teacher knows how to operate in a community of practice with fellow teachers, students, and the parent community. The report identifies 10 design principles for clinically based programs that AC also seeks to implement in its CTM (NCATE, 2010: 5–6; Twelves, 2016), namely:

Student learning focus

Clinical preparation integrated in all of teacher education

Data-driven judgements

Content, innovation, collaboration and problem solving paramount

Pre-service teachers learn in an interactive professional community

Clinical educators drawn from both higher education and the P-12 sector

Specific sites designated and funded to support embedded clinical preparation

Technology applications foster high-impact preparation

Systematic use of data supports continuous improvement in teacher preparation

Strategic partnerships imperative for powerful clinical preparation.

Finally, in considering the clinical teaching concept in the light of the experiences of others, it is instructive to review some of the findings from Cole and Jane’s (2010) ‘School Centres for Teaching Excellence: Literature Review’. What emerges is that for up to three decades all English-speaking governments have been very concerned with the effectiveness of university-based teacher education and have been looking for models that enable the pre-service teacher to integrate their educational theory and research components with substantial in-school experience (Cole and Jane, 2010: 3).

In the UK, it was shown that the balance has shifted between university-based to the school-located teacher training co-ordinated by the Employment-based Initial Teacher Training (EBITT) and the School-centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) programs. In 2007, there were over 100 such school-centred initial teacher-training (SCITT) and employment-based initial teacher-training (EBITT) providers (Cole and Jane, 2010: 5). Moreover, earlier in 2003, the UK school accreditation authority, Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), advised that in December 1999, the then Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) had invited schools to submit bids to become Training Schools. As a result, the first 54 Training Schools were accredited, with each school receiving up to £100,000 a year for an initial period of 3 years to support their initiatives (Cole and Jane, 2010: 32).

In Australia, the results of a 2007 survey completed by 1351 secondary teachers (Cole and Jane, 2010: 36), all with less than 3 years of teaching experience, revealed that schools were considered significantly more effective than universities in teacher education. Although the survey was built on volunteer responses and as such cannot claim any definitive validity, it did convey a strength of feeling for a more school-based and practical approach to teacher education programs. In response to this overwhelming call for a clinical teacher-training design, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, undertook in 2010 a pilot teacher residency program ‘unique’ to their state based on a medical model that pairs university coursework with extended periods of school placement or ‘clinical experience’. This initiative was supported by $930,000 in funding from the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) (Cole and Jane, 2010: 36–37).

The Alphacrucis College CTM

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2016), 71 percent of the Australian population live in cities of more than 100,000 people, while most of the continent is sparsely populated with small communities separated by large distances. Key institutions in these small settlements are often the Christian schools and their supporting churches of a range of denominations, notably Presbyterian, Baptist and Pentecostal. The size and separation of these communities present major challenges in attracting leaders and teachers to rural and remote areas and in providing adequate support for students in these isolated schools, as evidenced by the experience of Mackay Christian College (personal communication, 8 April 2014).

From the AC perspective, the classroom walls of Higher Education are dissolving and the barriers to communication presented by distance are being dissolved digitally – so much so that AC Education, through its online learning support capabilities and network of experienced Christian teaching personnel, has designed our CTM so that the pre-service teacher can complete their formal study through an engagement with online learning while simultaneously engaging in their local communities of practice and applying their formal study directly in local school(s).

However, AC is also concerned about the development of the person who is the pre-service teacher in training. Does the CTM speak to the person or is it merely a great tool for confidence and skill development? Philpott (2015: 8) reviews existing academic literature on student teacher stress, anxiety and emotions in relation to their school placements, and suggests appropriate principles for planning a pastoral care system for pre-service teachers in school-based initial teacher education programs. This is precisely the goal of our CTM. She argues (Philpott, 2015: 16) that while pastoral systems do exist for the student in university-based training, they tend to be reactive rather than formative. With the move to the concept of school-based training, faculty now have the opportunity to be intentional and developmental in designing pastoral care systems for the pre-service teacher.

In The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (Palmer, 2007) (which has been foundational to our initial teacher education since the beginning in 2011), Palmer writes:

There are no formulas for good teaching, and the advice of experts has but marginal utility. If we want to grow in our practice, we have two primary places to go: to the inner ground from which good teaching comes and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft. (Palmer, 2007: 146)

Palmer’s call for teachers to connect with their ‘inner ground’ suggests an acknowledgement of their ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’, which in its early meaning carried with it an expectation of personal self-sacrifice. Indeed, Emmet (1958: 245) suggested that the idea of having a calling might hark back to the Rich Young Ruler’s encounter with Jesus, where Jesus said to him, ‘Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth and come follow me’ (Mark 10:21). The implication that can be drawn is that, in order to follow one’s calling, one must first count the cost. This crosscheck is a central tenet of our initial teacher training, as we are concerned to discourage anyone from embarking on teaching as a career if they are not going to succeed.

However, that does not imply that pre-service teachers need to expect minimal earthly reward for their service for the greater good. Rather, unless they first count the cost of their intended calling, they may well suffer shipwreck along the way. Emmet suggests that to mitigate the potential for failure, pre-service teachers must find a way to connect their inner faith to their outward service in a tangible way that they can articulate, measure and understand. She acknowledged that in the old sense, the term ‘vocation’ would be confined to only ‘specific spheres of work (such as those of priests, monks, nuns, missionaries, and perhaps doctors, nurses and teachers), and that today the list might be extended to include some in the creative arts, science and exploration; but the elements of total immersion and personal sacrifice are still paramount (Emmet, 1958: 247).

Bringing this all together, AC has an initial teacher-training model based on world’s best practice that includes intentional spiritual formation. AC’s values include ‘Christ-centred: Committed to the teachings and example of Jesus Christ’ (AC, n.d.), our mandate for intentionality. At the heart of the design of the CTM is the relationship between the host coach and the pre-service teacher, which we believe develops Christian character and sharpens the pre-service teacher’s calling. In fact, our approach affords the pre-service teacher opportunity to demonstrate their growing spirituality in a safe context under the pastoral oversight of their host coach in demonstration of Coe’s call for ‘making space for the spirit in the university’ (Coe, 2000: 85, 105). Moreover, AC recognizes the necessity of the student teacher’s calling into a lifetime of service as being a critical and essential element in the development of the teacher’s resilience, sense of fulfilment and hence potential for longevity in service. AC first selects students into one of its programs, and then we consider applications for CTM as a secondary component alongside but contributing to their continuing study rather than being fully integrated with their study. This means that we have CTM students and non-CTM students studying side by side in the same cohort. This provides an ideal setting to establish our ongoing research base to compare the effectiveness of the awards alone and the awards plus the CTM.

Table 1 is designed to help the reader place the different components of a student’s award. The underpinning for the pre-service teacher is the AC Education who guide them throughout the journey from acceptance through to graduation. From this base, the AC Education co-ordinate every student’s compulsory Professional Experience Placement (PEX), and administer the CTM for those accepted into a host school. The CTM host school appoints a Host Coach to supervise the big picture features of the CTM and (a) Class Teacher(s) for the detailed oversight of the pre-service teacher’s time in the school community. This host school support is never one of judgement and assessment but rather that of providing the setting for active learning and formation.

Table 1.

Pre-service teacher’s support structure

Layers of operation	Support level 1	Support level 2	Support level 3
3. CTM – host school	Host coach	Class teacher
2. PEX – school	School supervisor	Mentor teacher
1. AC – education	Tertiary supervisor	PEX coordinator	CTM regional director

The PEX Coordinator oversees the student’s PEX, a prescribed number of days of classroom experiences in a variety of schools with the emphasis on assessment laid down by the Graduate Teacher Standards (AITSL, n.d.) necessary for the pre-service teacher’s ultimate accreditation as a teacher. AC Education’s primary support is through the Tertiary Supervisor and, for CTM students, in association with their host school, AC Education can appoint a CTM Regional Director who can regularly meet with the student(s), either one-on-one or in a tutorial setting in their host school or in a neighbouring school. Therefore, the pre-service teacher is no longer simply sent out into schools to show how they can perform, the traditional PEX; rather, they are supported on all sides throughout their journey with the intention that, in due time, they will take their required PEX placements in their stride in a less stressful atmosphere.

Research design

Though the CTM has been under development since 2014, we began to roll out CTM contracts for individual students from Semester 1 of 2017. This research project evaluates the effectiveness of the CTM experience for our first cohort of students compared with the experience of a sample of non-CTM pre-service teachers, with a view to justify, modify and improve our model.

AC has admitted students into the Master of Teaching (Primary) program since 2011, with student surveys being conducted on a semi-regular basis since then, notably in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 and again in 2017. The motivation for the survey focuses on the desire for the continuous improvement of our program by an analysis of the enquiry data, student satisfaction surveys and focus groups.

The questions have varied slightly over the years, but the regular core questions are:

How would you describe yourself and your stage of life?

What brought you to the point of decision to become a teacher?

How did you find out about AC?

What could be improved in AC’s promotion of the Education awards?

How have you changed since starting your studies with us?

The non-CTM student data, 2011–2016, were reviewed and treated as an aggregated data set as there were no significant changes to the delivery of the program or the student intake characteristics during this time. These data were then compared with non-CTM student data from the 2017 data set. This was treated as a standardization procedure, as theoretically the variations within the data 2011–2016 should be of the same order of magnitude as the variance between the aggregated data 2011–2016 and the 2017 standalone data. Finally, the 2017, non-CTM, data were compared with the 2017 CTM data. The objective was to tease out any variations in any of these three data sets, with the primary focus on the comparisons between the non-CTM and the CTM experiences in 2017, and to assess how these data compared with comparable meta-data from some of the literature.

The five 2011–2016 questions listed above were applied to both the non-CTM and the CTM students in 2017. Two additional questions were included for the CTM students, namely:

What elements of your CTM experience have been most beneficial or rewarding?

What aspects of your CTM experience, or your program in general, do you believe need improvement?

These data were collected from a focus group sample for the non-CTM students and from individually scheduled semi-structured interviews for a sample of the CTM students. In 2017, our overall student body in the three awards comprised roughly 56 percent Bachelor of Education (Primary), 23 percent Master of Teaching (Primary) and 21 percent Master of Teaching (Secondary). Students participating in CTMs comprised 14 percent of total enrolments, distributed 50 percent from Bachelor of Education (Primary), 38 percent Master of Teaching (Primary) and 12 percent from Master of Teaching (Secondary).

The methodology comprised mixed methods, quantitative in the form of anonymous surveys and qualitative in terms of the focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews. However, because of the small numbers (six in 2017) and the short time span of this study, no transferability of the findings could be expected or delivered. In fact, the data collected better resemble a single case study, the findings being primarily of value to our own organization; however, others may be interested in our experience should they be analysing their own initial teacher education courses.

Data analysis

The quantitative data from the longitudinal study, 2011–2016, offers an insight into the characteristics of our student demographic. These data from our Master of Teaching (Primary) students were designed to provide a base line for this study into the effects and effectiveness of the CTM.

The students’ motivation for studying with us is presented in Table 2. Thirty-two percent joined us out of ‘personal interest’, compared with 39 percent joining us with a ‘job in mind’ (‘get a job’ and ‘different career’ were combined). The proportion claiming personal interest seems very large, given the cost and commitment of the study, suggesting that the survey may have flaws. The responses around careers seem much more compelling, bearing in mind the students were of average age 37, of whom 60 percent were female, suggesting we had a preponderance of women returning to work having had children and wishing to build on their earlier undergraduate studies.

Table 2.

Master of teaching (Primary) 2013: Reasons for study (average age 37 years, 60 percent female)

Reasons for study?	%
Personal interest	32
Get a job	22
Different career	17
More skills	10
Better job	7
A job requirement	7
More study	5

Overall, the student body, at postgraduate level, reflects a settled community, well connected and ready to make their lives count, having discovered their strengths and weaknesses and having counted the cost. This demographic was not selecting teaching as a ‘try it and see’ option of self-selection; generally, they seemed very ‘goal focused’.

The analysis of the data followed a process of abstraction, until the essential ideas began to emerge, namely that there were three broad categories in the data:

Students’ entry into our programs

Students’ experience of their program

Students’ recommendation for improvement.

Each of these three broad categories was further subdivided according to the nature of the student’s responses. The aggregate data were used throughout, but illustrated, where appropriate, by direct quotations from the participants, using pseudonyms to preserve their anonymity.

Non-CTM 2011–2016 findings

Students’ entry into one of our programs

The initial expectations for the Master of Teaching (Primary), that was launched in 2011, was that our first cohort would be made up of ‘young folks following their first degree’, ‘career changers’ and ‘current teachers needing professional development’. From the start, it was understood that there would be an eclectic gathering of students from diverse denominational backgrounds and stages of life.

The reality was a little different. The overriding descriptor was that the students were overwhelmingly career changers, with only a very small number following on directly from their first degree. In addition, there was a significant minority of other faiths represented, notably Muslims and Hindus. The biggest shift from expectations was that consistently 50 percent of graduates were seeking places in Christian schools and 50 percent in state schools, in contrast to our original expectation that we would be simply supplying Christian school needs. Also of note was the fact that some pre-service teachers changed their preference each way, in the light of their studies, while retaining the 50:50 split.

What brought you to the decision to become a teacher?

Related to the question about demography was the question of why our students have been drawn into teaching. This question led into the next two broad categories, namely the student’s experience of their program and the student’s recommendation for improvement. To put it another way, the answer to this question has had a direct impact on how our pre-service teachers have responded to the program and their experience of the reality of teaching – indeed, how they have tested their intrinsic motivation to teach.

Our students fell into one of two groups when considering their motivation to teach. There were many who had always wanted to teach, they had always had a heart for the disadvantaged, they liked kids, had taught their teddies and had volunteered overseas with children’s work, for example. Their temperament seemed to focus on serving others and to put their own needs second to this calling, suggesting perhaps an innate resilience and positive demeanour. This arguably made them naturally flexible and forgiving towards inconsistency and inadequacy in this program, making it harder to extract constructive feedback for program development and improvement.

Conversely, there were a number of students who only came to teaching from the recommendation of others, their church pastors’ suggestion, family and friends’ encouragement and following the lead of my daughter who is also training to teach with Alphacrucis. Others realized the spiritual dimension of teaching when they had started and how they were discovering the gift within them. This category of pre-service teacher, apparently, could not see the gift within them; rather they were reliant on a significant other to show them their way forward. I suggest again that this demonstrates their selflessness, their servant heart, their desire to put others first ahead of themselves – again, a remarkable and admirable trait for teaching that arguably builds an inner resilience to the pressures of the role, making them ideally suited to succeed, whereas more self-centred people might be more prone to react or crumple under pressure. Again, I suggest that this group was also forgiving and tolerant of shortcomings in the program, making it harder to extract constructive criticism of the CTM, as evidenced by the small number of their comments compared with their enthusiastic appreciation of all the benefits, thus giving the impression that their exemplary character may be masking their ability to be objective.

Perhaps the nature of our students, with arguably high inbuilt resilience, is better placed to withstand the pressures of the teaching profession, compared with 48 percent of educators who feel stressed either most of the time or fairly often in a typical week, according to the ASG-ACE (2017) Teachers Report Card.

Students’ experience of their program

The students were asked to comment on their reasons for selecting AC Education. Naturally, these observations were filtered by what the pre-service teachers knew ahead of time – a reflection of the marketing penetration and impact. However, as these responses were given while they were current students, their responses could not help but be influenced by their current experience. In addition, reflecting on the previous section, the respondents generally tended to accentuate the positive in their programs, making it hard to be objective about necessary improvements.

For the first 4 years of our award, the only mode of delivery was the intensive format complemented by the balance of the semester being delivered online, that is, blended learning (Twelves and Arasaratnam, 2012–2013). Since then we have added the option of online only. This has accommodated a wider intake of students from Australian states and territories other than New South Wales. Comments from these students are less consistent with comments made by others in previous years as they were reflecting on widely different experiences. Consequently, in order to focus on the standout aggregated themes from the data set, the following discussion focuses on the first 4 years of the study, ignoring the impact of the online-only students.

By far the most consistent feedback we had is related to the intensive mode of delivery. There was overwhelming appreciation for the five full days per subject at our Sydney campus. Each day is run more like a tutorial than a series of lectures. There is ample opportunity for peer support as the lecturers seek to model as wide a variety of pedagogies as possible. Students are given opportunities to teach small groups of their peers and to submit some of their assignments during the intensives. Frequently, the students described their experience of the intensive as a retreat, a spiritual retreat, totally exhausting but most rewarding. Frequently, the intensives give an opportunity for the students to share their own testimonies of how they came to their calling to teach. These sessions often prove to be the highlight of the week as they bring the group together on account of their personal vulnerability, so much so that that deep personal friendships have been forged on the intensives that outlast the duration of their studies. They could not find this style of study anywhere else, and it particularly resonated with their career change demographic, studying part- or full-time and continuing to hold down their previous career. Each of the intensives are video recorded using the Echo360 system, which means that the students could review the sessions after the intensive and the digital material was ready, waiting for the online delivery mode when that became an option.

In the context of these comments about the intensives, the pre-service teachers regularly made repeated reference to the program’s integration of faith with their profession. Overwhelmingly, they felt this was integral to the success of the program and that they felt that the intensives confirmed their sense of calling to teach. They described their program as the closest thing to full time ministry, the units looked very practical and, above all, they found that they could rediscover their sense of purpose while studying with us.

Students’ recommendation for improvement

The data were not specifically designed to elicit suggestions for improvement, but the surveys and focus groups did collect some themes that have been helpful for continuous improvement, despite the students’ predilection for flexibility and forgiveness.

The students generally disliked the assessment style; in fact, this was the standout comment in balance to their overwhelming appreciation of the intensives. The students generally found the questions in assessments sought to cram too much content together, to the extent that their creativity was hampered as they were being pressured to tick all the boxes rather than being given the opportunity to demonstrate deeper understanding and application of the theory in unique real-life situations. The most frequent plea has been for the assessment to be re-worded. AC Education has resisted this in most cases, not out of any lack of will to meet the student’s needs and to respond in a timely fashion to their feedback, but rather because of the understanding that these questions have been crafted to meet the needs of accreditation and they do have to tick the boxes of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) (AITSL, n.d.).

Comparison of non-CTM 2011–2016 with 2017

The data from 2017 added the Bachelor of Education (Primary) (56 percent) and Master of Teaching (Secondary) (21 percent) to the Master of Teaching (Primary). Naturally, this has influenced the data substantially, but in reality the emerging themes have not changed significantly (see Table 3).

Table 3.

Demographics comparison, non-CTM 2011–2016 and 2017

	Average age	Gender	Life stage	Marital status
2011–2016	37y	60% female	Career changers	22% married
2017	29y	86% female	75% career changers	25% married

When reviewing the three broad categories – students’ entry into our programs, students’ experience of their program and students’ recommendation for improvement – while considering the shift to include online delivery, the 2017 data did not show any significant differences from the 2011–2016 set. However, one additional theme did emerge, namely a reference to home schooling. It appears that home schooling may be a little more mainstream than it used to be; some of our students have had firsthand experience and, interestingly, they saw pre-service teacher training as a way to equip them for teaching home schooling.

Comparison of 2017 non-CTM with CTM

The sample of CTM students interviewed comprised 43 percent Bachelor of Education (Primary), 43 percent Master of Teaching (Primary) and 14 percent Master of Teaching (Secondary). The data were analysed in the same way as all the non-CTM data, but it should be noted that, at the time of the interviews, the CTM had only been in operation for 7 months. Moreover, the sample included those who had been on CTM all year (7 months) and those who had only just joined the program. The data analysis used the same three broad categories as before – namely, students’ entry into our programs, students’ experience of their program and students’ recommendation for improvement.

CTM students’ entry into one of our programs

The students’ desire to teach reflected exactly the themes discussed earlier, for example their missionary aspirations; they had always wanted to and their husband had suggested it. There were, however, a few additional descriptors of interest: one had come through cross-cultural education and thought that this would be most relevant pathway for teaching today, especially in metropolitan schools; one saw the operation of the teaching craft while at senior secondary college and felt that that was a worthy calling; and one loved their earlier passion as a martial arts teacher and saw that operating with their teaching gift could give them a wider influence, especially now that they had become a Christian. Overall, there were no substantial differences, rather a confirmation of the same trends noted over the previous 6 years. It would be hard to suggest any common themes from these additional perspectives other than to recognize a confirmation of the personal calling that naturally takes on unique qualities with each individual’s response.

CTM students’ experience of their program

This was the most exciting and central objective of this research. It was the first opportunity to gather detailed feedback on our new model for pre-service teachers, and was most rewarding and affirming of our CTM model. The students’ responses fell into three broad themes, described here using the respondents’ own words, self-discipline, confidence and practical application. The students were quick to reflect that the CTM had allowed them to live in the present; that is, they were less focused on their future and worrying about it; rather, they were forced by their commitment to the host school to focus continuously on the here and now, giving them less time to worry or reflect on what if and what maybe, and when. They became more self-disciplined, they had to improve their time management and, overall, they had to be more responsible. As Coe (2000: 105) found when analysing intentional spiritual formation of tertiary training, the benefits to the pre-service teacher of an apprentice model are that they now have an opportunity to develop spiritually as well as professionally. Alphacrucis College believes that its students on CTM mature more quickly than the non-CTM students, and as a consequence are much more work-ready when they graduate.

The CTM’s success is beautifully described by Nicki, who integrates her sense of calling to teach with her feeling of being happy and her experience of beauty:

I was a teacher’s aide for a year, on Year 11 and 12 at a school in Port Macquarie. I had finished Year 12 and I had wanted a gap year but had no idea … I got to my first day as teacher’s aide and just smiled all day, and then all year! So when I finished my first degree, I thought, what was something in my past that has made me smile and made me so beautiful? I thought about working in that school; it’s funny how God lines things up! (Nicki)

She goes on to demonstrate the strong relationship between her faith and her calling:

Under my CTM I think I have grown more rapidly in the last 6 months. You begin to see that your studies are your way to honour God, it’s not separate from church, and it’s all a part of your journey … I think I have changed by stripping away things that I thought were important, things I thought I was called to do or I thought I needed to do. (Nicki)

As an outworking of this, Nicki was so appreciative of the support and acceptance she encountered on her CTM. She began to appreciate a deep understanding of the host school’s philosophy. It is so encouraging to see this level of maturity from another student who had only been a matter of weeks into her CTM.

Lawrence was reticent about the idea of teaching when his pastor broached the idea to him, after seeing him in action with the children in their church. He counted the cost seriously, and to most observers he tested God:

I said to God, you have to invite me into this, otherwise I am running – I am not doing this! When I prayed that prayer, shortly after it I got a phone call from you (the author), ‘am I still interested?’ You said you are a prime candidate for this course. I said to God, you have invited me from Dr Jim personally, so that settles it! (Lawrence)

Lawrence, being a youth worker prior to his studies, was naturally relational:

It has helped me to have a great relationship with the teachers and also a relationship and rapport with the students. This has made it easier for me to start teaching … to have the teachers there to help me to be more confident in the classroom, just to have them alongside and meeting with them. (Lawrence)

His host coach in the school was a career changer herself and has only recently gone into teaching. She gave testimony to the efficacy of the CTM, through Lawrence’s interview.

Overall, it was clear that the students’ self-discipline had led to a growth in their confidence in their chosen roles. All participants spoke about this; it was the standout theme. They found that they were forced to grow rapidly. One said they had to step up and, in doing so, they were forced to refocus on their vision, confirming their calling. They saw that the CTM was a huge help; their experience was gold! The students’ understanding deepened and they were able to connect the theory with the practice in ways they had not thought possible. From the program’s perspective, it became clear that the CTM was a natural addition to our department’s teaching and learning strategy.

Hannah grew the most in her confidence of all the participants, thriving in the community of practice of the CTM. Her sense of integrity, personality, calling and vision for her life all came together in the experience:

Confidence has been a big factor … being in the school with the CTM program, getting the first-hand interaction with kids, seeing what education is like in an Australian school, as well as building my confidence, it has encouraged me that I can actually do this! I am now doing it! I am also confident with my calling, it’s not a faraway concept. The mentor/class teacher relationship was just the most amazing thing, she was so willing to share and make herself available to talk. It’s really good to get this experience before the pracs, before you are left with a class. One day a week is perfect. (Hannah)

Hannah also recognized the benefit of the CTM for her mandatory professional experience placements, but also sensed that the experience had fast-tracked her calling into teaching by bringing up her level of confidence. The spin off from this should enable her to gain more from her studies as the program progresses.

Yvette was focused on her goals; she was mechanistic and highly pragmatic, but in her recommendation she seemed to have missed one of the key ingredients of the CTM, namely that students are encouraged to modify prescribed assessments to maximize their CTM experience. They are given credit for their work in CTM. The objective here is to minimize the extra work a CTM student will do, while maximizing their practical experience:

I would love credit in the CTM! Credit within subjects, there should be something in the subject outlines for just CTM students … The CTM is in a way the research/homework/prep work that prepares you for the assessment that is the PE that you get graded on. So, in a sense, all of the lesson plans and actual teaching I get to do in the CTM prepares me for when I will be assessed and graded when I go into PE. It's kind of like a practice exam without the pressure of being graded. (Yvette)

Again, one of the design features of the CTM is to provide opportunity for growth in the development of teaching skills and application without the stresses of the mandatory professional experience placement. As a result, I anticipated that Yvette would now go into her future placements far better prepared, intellectually, physically and emotionally, to demonstrate a much higher level of achievement without the handicap of excessive stress and apprehension.

These two themes naturally build into the final one, practical benefits. The students talk spontaneously about how they have been able to apply their study assignments to their CTM setting. This is one of the key design features that is gratifying to see reflected in this research, with the possible exception of Yvette’s experience. The students had been able to see their Host Class teachers’ lesson plans and apply their understanding of these documents to their assignments. A further application of their theory was their opportunities to interact with the children and the students. They could see the imperative of building strong relationships from the start. The students very quickly began to appreciate the wisdom of the teachers and what an important job they performed.

In contrast to Yvette, Hillary pressed into her host coach for support with her assignments. This was legitimate support from the philosophy of the CTM, as the host coach was there to see the student’s response and to see her put her learning into practice. If the assignment support was out of context and from a setting that was not part of the CTM, yes, it would be ‘not all my own work’, but in the context of the relationship between pre-service teacher and host coach there was an added element of teaching and learning that Hillary could not have sourced elsewhere:

I don’t know how people could study and not be in a school; I feel like all the assignments I did in Semester 1, my host coach helped me a lot. I don’t know who they would have asked if they were not in a school. It has boosted my confidence a lot … being in a school, I love doing it, I am not worried. (Hillary)

Elena also focused on the assignments and the opportunities within the CTM. In her situation, it was so rewarding that she could side-step into the needs of inclusive education within the English curriculum specifically. If she had not been on CTM, this may not have happened:

I am planning mini lessons, planning small group activities … The greatest benefit for me has been when it comes to assignments, where I have been able to make them even more relevant to my setting. My last subject was English B, and I could do my assignment more about inclusive education because of my CTM experience … (Elena)

It is wonderful to hear so much feedback on how the CTM has built confidence and confirmed the pre-service teachers’ calling to teach. The underlying theme here is the vital relationship between the teachers’ faith and their practice, which is primarily evidenced in rewarding relationship development, between them and their host coach and their students. It was also great to see that many of the participants were making great headway with the modification of assignments to reflect their CTM needs and experiences, with the exception of Yvette.

CTM students’ recommendation for improvement

The students interviewed apparently found it hard to make recommendations for improvement, one simply responding with, ‘sorry nothing needs to be improved!’ While that is gratifying, it does suggest we have certainly developed a model that meets the needs. However, there is a range of practical comments that they made for positive refinement of the program. These will be considered here against the setting that our CTM appears to be working well.

There is a call for ‘credit for CTM’. Currently, the CTM, positioned parallel to the pre-service teaching programs, is designed to ‘support the student’s engagement’ but it has no direct input on the program’s grades. It was established this way as the CTM was a voluntary program that students could apply for once they had been accepted onto a program. We have given the opportunity for students on CTM to seek to modify their assignments for CTM in conjunction with host coach and subject lecturer. In this way there is implicit credit for CTM; the student can do a particular task in the host school that, in turn, can be submitted for grading in their program, but because the onus is on the student to initiate the modification of an assignment, it might be seen as an additional impost on them, and sometimes the extra effort required mitigates against the benefits that might accrue. We will certainly review how these procedures are applied.

Finally, there was a suggestion that the host coach needs more support and/or training. They are currently given a manual and they are assumed to be supported by the host school principal, who signs off their CTM contract. The contract does seek to cover basics, but there is no assurance that the host coach appreciates the intent and presuppositions involved. The model has a place for a regional director who can visit the host school from time to time. So far, this has not been actioned across the board; some schools have had visits from program directors, but this has been rather ad hoc. It seems imperative that the question of suitable support and/or training be given to the host coaches, both before the start of a CTM and during delivery. A related comment from some CTM students referenced their perception that the CTM administration lacked efficiency in parts. It became clear that the preparation of or the support for the host coaches was the single biggest need for improvement. In response to this, AC instituted a host coach’s survey at the end of Semester 1 2018. Being given the opportunity to provide and receive feedback was immensely valuable in itself. The key finding was that the host coaches felt they lacked guidance as to what was expected from them – how much initiative they were expected to take or whether they were simply required to be responsive to the pre-service teacher’s questions. This exercise proved to be invaluable, perhaps AC’s first step in refining its CTM.

Summative reflections

Bulunuz et al. (2014: 1831) bemoaned the dearth of studies on clinical models of teacher training. It is hoped that this small-scale study can go a little way to address this gap. Their study in Turkey found that students who used their clinical model consistently gained higher scores than in their control group. We are not at the stage when a similar comparison can be done with our data, but perhaps, as our CTM develops, we can schedule to measure the effectiveness of our CTM graduates against those on a non-CTM trajectory.

Levine’s study of 1,206 education schools in the United States (Levine, 2006: 8) and the teacher education program characteristics of more than 2,000 teachers and the achievement of their students (Levine, 2006: 19) highlighted the wide diversity of programs and the challenges facing the preparation of future teachers. Two of the report’s five recommendations resonate remarkably closely with our motivation to develop our CTM:

Recommendation One: Transform education schools from ivory towers into professional schools focussed on classroom practice. Medical schools are rooted in hospitals; law schools look to the courts; journalism schools see their home as the media; and business schools focus on corporations. The work of education schools needs to be grounded in P-12 schools. (Levine, 2006: 104–105)

Our CTM has sought to do this. It takes the focus away from the academy and firmly builds the relationship with the schools where our graduates hope to teach. The CTM elevates the school practitioners in the eyes of the pre-service teachers as more than assessors of competence but as colleagues in their community of practice (Wenger, 1998).

Recommendation Two: Focus on student achievement as the primary measure of teacher education program success. Every state will need to develop a P-12 longitudinal database. It will offer a much needed opportunity to refocus teacher education on student achievement (Levine, 2006: 106).

On the other side of the coin, Levine also calls for teacher competence to be measured by the students being taught in schools rather than simply by the academic discipline in the university of essay writing. Our design that college-based assignments should be modified by those on CTM, endorsed by NESA and evidenced by most of the participants in this study is our claim to meet this recommendation.

Further, our students endorsed our desire to see their faith connect with their calling to teach as effective (Emmet, 1958). This is evidenced by their emphasis on deepening relationships with their students and their host coaches while building their confidence for their future professional experience placements. Mattsson et al. (2011: 4) explore the term praxis, in the context of the training of teachers. They emphasize the essential qualities of communication, acting and relating in a specific context where certain ways of doing are enshrined in the culture of the place. This also resonates with the call for a genuine emphasis on the practical, as opposed to the academic, in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE, 2010) in the United States (Zeichner, 2010: 91). This language is an ideal description of what we are seeking to create in the formative fervour of our CTM in the host school with pre-service teachers who know, understand and can operate effectively within their selected culture (Grant, 1993). It is my contention that the AC CTM intentionally bridges the ‘divorce between the bustle of course work, lectures, and assignments’ spoken about by Coe and the internalization of spiritual growth made possible in the apprenticeship approach (Coe, 2000: 95). The CTM never prescribed a recipe for spiritual formation, but rather has sought to position the necessary ingredients in close enough proximity for the Holy Spirit to act.

In fact, AC’s rationale to see the pre-service teacher’s faith firmly integrated with their professional practice as teachers has seen adoption of the Korthagen and Vasalos (2005: 49) ALACT (Action, Looking back, Awareness of essentials, Creative alternative and Trial) model. This approach seeks to systematize deeper and deeper levels of reflection on practice, with the focus of attention on formative learning as opposed to summative testing (Driessen and Scheele, 2013). This has been made possible by AC’s desire for genuine collaboration rather than complementary partnerships with host schools (Burn and Mutton, 2013: 3; University of North Carolina, 1992).

It is clear from the research that our emphasis on the practical application of assignments to the CTM context is at the heart of the pre-service teacher’s experience. Indeed, this is the most tangible expression of the connection between the host school and AC. While the CTM student was being afforded their accredited award and permission to teach from the college, the culture and ethos of the host school was evidently being formed in the teacher they were becoming.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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