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    PRODUCTIVE PEDAGOGIES: SEEKING A COMMON VOCABULARY AND FRAMEWORK FOR TALKING ABOUT PEDAGOGY WITH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS
    
    INTRODUCTION
    
    We need to have curriculum conversations, … get them talking in staff meetings about how they adjust their pedagogies to get better results – showing and mentoring the rest of us about how it can be done. To do so we need to have a common vocabulary and framework for looking at and talking about pedagogy. … We need … curriculum conversations about what we did differently. (Luke, 2002, pp. 9–10 emphasis added) The centrality of teaching, the explication of what good teaching involves, and the valuing of teachers’ knowledge are recurrent themes at teacher education conferences. Gore et al. (2001) argue that preparing teachers who can produce high quality outcomes for all of their students requires teacher educators to give greater importance to what they do and say about good classroom practices; that is, what teachers do, matters. Australian teacher educators and teachers are become increasingly familiar with the notion of Productive Pedagogies, itself the product of longitudinal research on school reform recently undertaken in Queensland, Australia. More generally, Government Departments of Education have begun to acknowledge the importance if not its centrality, of good pedagogy for successful teaching. In this chapter, the value of Productive Pedagogies as a meta-language for developing pre-service teachers’ knowledge and understanding of teaching is examined; whether it is a language that is not only intelligible but also efficacious for beginning pre-service teachers or whether its dimensions and elements merely constitute another isolated vocabulary. The chapter first provides the background to the development of Productive Pedagogies and reviews the research focussing on Productive Pedagogies in the training of pre-service teachers. It outlines how the first year pre-service teachers were introduced to the concepts of the pedagogical language of Productive Pedagogies, while reflecting on the cultural capital of pre-service teachers and the implications of a critical language for pre-service teachers with which they might be equipped to read education, pedagogy and schooling. It concludes by analysing the students’ observations of teaching practice to ascertain if Productive Pedagogies’ language is 205
    T. Townsend and R. Bates (eds.), Teacher Education in Times of Change, 205–218. © 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
    
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    not just useful in the development of pre-service teachers’ understanding of teaching, but whether this reconceptualisation of pedagogy can be efficaciously introduced to first year students as Gore et al. (2001) conclude is necessary.
    PRODUCTIVE PEDAGOGIES
    
    Productive Pedagogies is derived from the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS) (Lingard et al., 2001a, b); a 3-year intensive observation of 24 representative state primary and secondary schools, representing the largest and most detailed school reform study in Australia, containing almost 500 pages of perhaps the most exhaustive and important education research undertaken. The study was concerned with how student learning, both academic and social, could be enhanced. Its original contribution was to specify which aspects of teaching require schools’ urgent attention; the higher the level of intellectual demand expected of students by teachers the greater the improved productive performance and, hence, improved student outcomes (Lingard et al., 2001a, pp. x-xv). The base assumption of the research was that this enhancement required quality classroom teaching. The QSRLS defines quality student outcomes in terms of a sustained and disciplined inquiry focused on powerful, important ideas and concepts which are connected to students’ experiences and the world in which they live. Quality learning experiences, what the QSRLS has termed productive pedagogies is then crucial to improved student outcomes for all students, but in particular those most ‘at-risk’ of failure; those from socially, culturally and economically disadvantaged conditions, who were the least likely to be exposed to intellectually challenging and relevant material (Lingard et al., 2001b, pp. 103–5). Productive Pedagogies in various forms has gained national recognition in Australia as a framework for teacher professional development. Since 2001 there have been limited but significant contributions to this discussion focussing on Productive Pedagogies in the education and training of pre-service teachers (Wilson and Klein, 2000; Gore et al., 2001; Sorin and Klein, 2002). Gore et al. (2001, p. 8), conclude that: Productive Pedagogy needs to come early in the teacher education program in order to be more fully integrated into students’ knowledge base for teaching. If it is just another framework, just another theory, just another list, then students are likely to draw on it as they might any other approach. Instead, if students are to treat Productive Pedagogies as foundational to all of their efforts in teaching, it needs to be: (1) clearly positioned in that way from the beginning of the teacher education program; (2) used as a device to guide all aspects of the teacher education curriculum; and (3) modeled in the pedagogy of teacher educators. Luke adds that Productive Pedagogies is: an approach to creating a place, space and vocabulary for us to get talking about classroom instruction again. It isn’t a magic formula (e.g., just
    
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    teach this way and it will solve all the kids problems), but rather it’s a framework and vocabulary for staffroom, inservice, pre-service training, for us to describe the various things we can do in classrooms – the various options in our teaching ‘repertoires’ that we have – and how we can adjust these, … to get different outcomes. This isn’t a “one approach fits all model of pedagogy”. It has the possibility of providing a common ground and dialogue between teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, student-teachers and others … about which aspects of our teaching repertoires work best for improved intellectual and social outcomes for distinctive groups of kids. (Luke, 2002, p. 4 emphasis added)
    SETTING THE SCENE
    
    In 2002, the first year primary pre-service teaching foundation studies at Monash University (Peninsula Campus) included for the first time an introduction of the concepts of Productive Pedagogies while students were experiencing first-hand the incumbent pedagogies of in-service teachers during the fieldwork component of the course. Two hundred students, including early childhood and primary bachelor of education degree students, were exposed to this new conceptualisation of pedagogy that suggests that there is no one correct pedagogy that will meet the needs of all students in all sites of education. As teacher educators, we wanted to know whether Productive Pedagogies is an intelligible language for pre-service teachers in the context where its origins are in the observations by experienced teachers of experienced practitioners. We wanted to establish whether it is really possible for first year pre-service teachers – many coming directly from their final year of secondary school – to make any sense of this new language about professional practice. Significant for us was the issue of “literacies” of pre-service teacher education students raised by Zipin and Brennan (2001) in particular with reference to dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). The pre service teachers at Peninsula Campus are increasingly often first generation students. Many are mature age, converting from other jobs or upgrading qualifications to degree status, some with children and part time jobs needed to provide for the family and/or themselves. A significant proportion of our students may not have the required cultural capital brought from their backgrounds (both home and school) which enable them with the kinds of dominant knowledge practices on which university study generally relies (Zipin and Brennan, 2001). About two thirds of the students are primary B.Ed. while the rest are early childhood B.Ed. Most are of Anglo background, with a small number of older first wave NESB students, as well as an increasing but even smaller number of full-fee paying international students (most of Asian origin). Our task was to introduce these students to a critical language of teaching (Zipin and Brennan, 2001). We also found that many of our students lacked habits and capacities to read the world in terms of a dominant and empowering cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) where
    
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    ‘people’s primary habitus or dispositions for being in the world are created through engagement in practices seen as a normal part of their societal location in family and early childhood’ (Zipin and Brennan, 2001, p. 6). Like most other tertiary students, pre-service teachers will not usually have been exposed to ideas that challenge a dominant hegemony. With more teaching positions becoming available, it is likely that these new teachers will be appointed to the most educationally disadvantaged areas. Zipin and Brennan (2001) conclude that these new teachers will (unwittingly) be placed in those areas where school pupils themselves do not come with strong backgrounds and expectations of success and without intervention we continue a cycle of reproducing critical illiteracy among pre-service teachers and in turn their future pupils. Our task, through the critical language of Productive Pedagogies was to develop in our students a consciousness that systemically, without overt acknowledgment, schools reproduce social-positional inequality through all sorts of mechanisms that encode the privilege of dominant cultural capital (Apple and Beane 1999). This new language has: the potential to interrupt schools’ automatic privileging of some cultural dispositions as high cultural capital, by broadening what counts as valuable and also providing access to those for whom different literacies are not automatically available. (Zipin and Brennan, 2001, p. 8) While our primary focus was on the issue of pedagogy where the pre-service teachers considered and critically reflected on repertoires of practice, we also were compelled to critically reflect on our own pedagogy at a tertiary level as a modeled paradigm for practice. Recent research in pre-service teacher education (Gore et al., 2001, p. 7) reinforces our view that the current priorities on generic teaching methods and strategies, together with an emphasis on class and student behaviour management and lesson planning is derived from a view of education as the transmission of relatively unproblematic and fixed content’ to our pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers, the research suggests (Wilson and Klein, 2000; Gore et al., 2001; Cherednichenko and Kruger, 2002; Sorin and Klein, 2002), want practical activities, lesson ideas and resources that they can use in the classroom and spend much of their time at the level of “just tell me how … !”. We set out to challenge the notion that learning to teach is a lock-step process, addressing the ‘preconceptions and dominant discourses in teacher education’ (Gore et al., 2001, p. 7) in order to restore theory or belief as central. Gore et al. (2001) conclude that there is strong evidence that pre-service teachers highly value the concept of Productive Pedagogies as a framework to guide teaching and as the basis for their future work. We wanted to know whether this too would be the case for our students, whether they would conclude ‘that pedagogy matters; not only regarding what is learned but perhaps more importantly how’ it is learned (Wilson and Klein, 2000, p. 1). Engaging our first year students in a substantive conversation, about the how of pedagogy in the classroom through intellectually challenging material, was based on the assumption that they can learn this even before they’ve learnt the most basic tricks of the trade.
    
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    What was taught – what was learned? As part of their foundation studies, we introduced the students to the four dimensions of Productive Pedagogies and the elements within each of those. The four dimensions of productive pedagogies are: ● intellectual quality ● connectedness ● supportive classroom environment ● recognition of difference. In presenting this material to the students, we became aware that for some students the connections between the dimensions, between the elements within these dimensions and across dimensions was not made explicit by the productive pedagogies course material, the various reports, the Education Queensland website and other available material on productive pedagogies. This became an issue for us when students asked us ‘if I’m teaching a lesson, should all dimensions of productive pedagogies be evident in my lesson?’ We decided as a group that this was probably unreasonable to expect of any one lesson. However, over a period of lessons they might expect to see each of those dimensions evident. The QSRLS states that productive pedagogies is not a formula to follow and one would not expect these elements to be seen every time, all the time in every lesson, nor would they be used in the same way in different settings with different students (Lingard et al., 2001b, pp. 113–4). The QSRLS suggests that not every dimension is equally required for success for all socio-cultural groups. In other words, it is quite tenable that only one, two or three dimensions would be sufficient for some groups of students, but not all (Lingard et al., 2001b, p. 3). It states categorically: … that whilst a number of the elements within each dimension should be present in classrooms at all times, there are instances in certain contexts and stages within a sequence of lessons that some elements might be more appropriate than others. (Lingard et al., 2001b, p. 135) While each of the dimensions is readily defined on ideal grounds, there is no research basis for believing that school systems (anywhere) have been overly successful in consistently providing high levels of all four dimensions to large proportions of school students (Zyngier and Gale, 2003). The research literature demonstrates that where teachers have mechanistically applied Productive Pedagogies, it has become a ‘shiny object which teachers desire to utilise in classroom practice [only to] lose its lustre as a new and more desirable method comes along’ (Loughland and Reid, 2002, p. 1). The four dimensions problematised We sought to convey to our pre-service teachers that our interpretation of Productive Pedagogies certainly does not try to replace one hegemony with another. Rather, our understanding of productive pedagogies is that it offers a counter-hegemony
    
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    (Giroux, 1990), which is cognisant and inclusive of the viewpoints of the most marginalized learners. At the same time, we suggested that all students must acquire the requisite abstract and analytical knowledge if they are to have access to the dominant cultural capital of society [typified by the instructional video Good Morning Miss Toliver (1992)] (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Giroux, 1990; Shor, 1996; Apple and Beane, 1999; Teese and Polesel, 2003). The assignment task All students in the unit were required to observe in-service teachers taking at least four lessons. In these observations, students were asked to use the dimensions of Productive Pedagogies to describe and analyse what they observed in the lesson, and critique their observations detailing the extent to which those dimensions and elements were evident (or absent) through annotated examples describing the situations how they were employed by the observed teacher and enacted by the student(s). Finally they were to conclude what their analysis might mean for teachers in general and for their own future as a teacher in particular. Most of the students were able to complete the set tasks to a high level in academic terms. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the written responses of the students, (fictitiously named Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice from the 2002 cohort and Anna, Simon, Mary and Jasmine from 2003 in order to differentiate between the 8 students’ work) and selected to see how appropriately they were able to use the concepts of Productive Pedagogies to discuss their observations of teaching practice. We weren’t so much interested in whether they were accurate representations of the teachers’ practices because we don’t know actually what transpired in the classroom but to get their views of what happened.
    PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ VIEWS ON PRODUCTIVE PEDAGOGIES
    
    The questions that guided our analysis of the students’ assignments included: ● what were the things that were paramount in their minds when they went looking? ● (what kind of things did students identify as either being present or absent? ● how did pre-service teachers understand the relationships between dimensions and elements of productive pedagogies and ● how might this compare with Gore et al.’s (2001) conclusions (see above) about their research with their fourth year pre-service teachers? This analysis of the very rich material presented by the pre-service teachers only looks at the language and vocabulary used. No attempt has been made to further deconstruct what they are saying about their understandings of Productive Pedagogies as a basis for pre-service teacher education. Clearly this remains to be done. What were the things that were paramount in their minds when they went looking? Jasmine writes that ‘despite initial doubt about whether [Productive Pedagogies] would be apparent [in the Early Childhood Centre] I see that there are ample examples. … I have also realised that no amount of theory can compare with looking for and
    
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    analysing … on placement.’ Further she observed that ‘children can demonstrate that they realize there are underlying principles behind the activities they do when they explicitly take the concept from one activity and try to apply it to a different situation.’ Rejecting the “just tell me how” approach Simon states that: … as a teacher I needed to recognise the importance of always providing an atmosphere of “real” learning. For a student, learning should not just be absorbing information delivered to them, but rather teaching should facilitate the student’s own abilities to create their own real and relevant understandings. Mary agreed that ‘not all Productive Pedagogies dimensions will necessarily be included in each lesson, but should be seen as integral aspects of an overall philosophy towards the classroom discourse.’ Agreeing that recognition and engagement with difference is the most significant explanation both theoretically and practically for academic achievement of at risk students, Mary states that ‘Productive Pedagogies has proved vital to my understanding of an inclusive school environment – that fairness is not necessarily achieved by treating everyone in the same way.’ Anna suggests that Productive Pedagogies ‘allowed children to challenge their personal ideologies, while exploring others’ and that ‘rather than checking a list teachers will use it as an implementation of their beliefs.’ What elements and relationships did students identify as being present? Clearly the students readily and successfully identified the dimensions and the relevant elements as being present. Commenting on her observations on the dimension of Intellectual Quality, Carol commented about the lesson she observed that: … students display deep knowledge regarding when they establish and form relatively complex connections between the central topic and tasks at hand … where students are required to … discover the relationship … , to display their understanding and required students to manipulate information and ideas in ways that transform their meanings. … allow them to be able to construct explanations for their procedures and draw conclusions on what they have done and why. While Ted found that ‘encouraging students to make links … and divergent thinking to take place developed higher order thinking’. He also points out the links between dimensions as ‘complex interactions, incorporating knowledge and understandings from previous topics, … from books they had read and television programs they watch, contributed substantial and valuable knowledge to the discussion’ as not just deep knowledge and deep understandings but connected to the lives of the children outside of the school. Further, Carol commented that: … substantive conversation occurred when the teacher and students interacted to develop a brainstormed list of relevant … words … and when the students discussed words with the neighbouring person and
    
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    finally when the students had to speak to the person correcting their work. Meta-language [was] evident when the teacher explores how language can be used in different circumstances … and for different purposes, … cover[ing] meaning structures … , how sentences work, … [all] are solid indications of meta-language within the lesson. Jasmine observed ‘a boy who grouped the building blocks by colour. … [while other] children bit pieces out of their bread so they represented people and cars.’ She observes that ‘these children have discovered that blocks and bread can have more than one meaning.’ Although observing for intellectual quality, Alice noted that she ‘included the other three dimensions where I could see an outstanding inclusion or exclusion of … teaching’. Alice observed that ‘for many children being able to share ideas and discuss their thinking and how they think with their peers is not as threatening as checking with the teacher’, noting that ‘how important interaction between peers is to the learning process.’ She observed that the types of ‘discussion that occurred encouraged and pretty much required the children to think below the surface level … pushing to a deeper level, … deepening their knowledge and understanding.’ Commenting on recognition and engagement with difference Alice notes the links to Supportive Learning Environment such that: … the lessons were structured in such a way that the students were pretty much in control of their own learning development … exhibiting student direction because they had some control over what they were learning, … providing the examples (even if the teachers were fishing for them). This, she suggests, exemplifies academic engagement because the: … children were attentive, they showed genuine enthusiasm … asked questions, contributed to the discussion, helped out their peers … to try and do things that they may not have had to consider before. Adopting a critical and reflexive language, Alice relates that some students noted that ‘knowledge is constructed and that there can be multiple view points which can contrast and potentially conflict … [but] the fact that the children could directly connect the examples and improvements to their own work demonstrated that they understood the task, that there was a connection to the children’s world.’ Similarly, Mary writes that: … the teacher used the occasion of a Maori boy’s birthday to discuss counting in another language … I saw this as evidence of the teacher acknowledging the value of diverse cultures within the group as the student was happy to demonstrate his knowledge of Maori. Ted notes as an example of knowledge being problematic that ‘the teacher explained that there could be many ideas and points of view, each with merit and as a class we need to listen to everyone and understand that there is “no one view or right
    
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    answer” ‘. Reflecting on his own ideas, Ted writes that: I [now] recognize that a supportive classroom environment is more than a place where the walls are brightly coloured, and students’ work is prominently displayed, [but] … a classroom where children’s learning was encouraged in a supportive non-threatening environment, … when students looked confused the teacher re-read a page to emphasise words or concepts and then asked open-ended questions … foster[ing] an atmosphere of mutual respect, trust and support between the teacher and the students.’ What was missing? Not only could the pre-service teachers identify and talk about elements of Productive Pedagogies that they observed, they were also able to discuss the implications of missing elements. Carol writes that: Knowledge as problematic … was an element that was hard to detect. [It] involves an understanding that knowledge is something constructed and developed by learners and is fixed around a body of information. [Although] the actual lesson was based around a central body of information supporting knowledge as problematic, it wasn’t constructed or developed by the learners. The teacher was the source of the development … Demonstrating a clear understanding, Carol goes on to suggest how she might have used the same exercise but: … let the children choose the words and the tasks they must perform with those words … and depending on the words selected could also cover the knowledge being subjected to political, social and cultural implications … I would give the students the opportunity to construct their own learning and base [this] around their ideas. Ted also noted that although ‘the element of metalanguage was missing [in the lesson he observed] it could easily have been incorporated by the teacher … drawing attention to the words, ideas and actions … when they were using higher order thinking. All the students were able to suggest how they might have modified the lessons to incorporate the various elements so that the ‘missing element could have enriched and empowered the children’s … understanding.’
    CONCLUSION
    
    What can we conclude about the value of Productive Pedagogies as a meta-language for developing pre-service teachers’ knowledge and understanding of teaching? Is it an intelligible and efficacious language for first year pre-service teachers who have not been exposed to any prior teacher knowledge or do its dimensions and elements
    
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    merely constitute an isolated vocabulary, another framework, theory or just a shiny object? (Loughland and Reid, 2002, p. 1) Carol understands the difficulties in and the requirement to not necessarily include each dimension and its related elements in every lesson and stated that however: … it is easy to see that incorporating every element of each dimension requires a long, researched plan when constructing lessons. Much more than I previously imagined. [By] taking your time to think about the purpose and aim of your lesson, you can include each element even if it is only for a short time or minimal level. [But] by doing so you are providing the students in your class with the best opportunity to develop each of the elements. On the other hand does Anna only see Productive Pedagogies as another (important) strategy that can easily be incorporated into every lesson? It is important for teachers to have access to tools such as Productive Pedagogies to understand that effective learning can take place … Productive Pedagogies would be an inherent and natural part of good teachers lessons – an essential tool which can be largely integrated into any lesson. Bob comments that his analysis positively affected himself ‘as a teacher … giv[ing me] a perspective on the qualitative practices in the classroom.’ Perspicuously, he adds that: … some teachers may not live by the “Productive Pedagogies bible”, but their ways of teaching and enthusiasm towards teaching bring out the element of good teaching from the Productive Pedagogies set regardless. I have realized why some or most children don’t like to or can’t handle mathematics … it doesn’t have any connection in their daily lives … unless the knowledge can be used in their world outside of [the world of] school. The observation and analysis task of productive pedagogies gave our students the opportunity to engage in substantive conversation about their own learning and the teaching of their supervising teachers. It provided them with deep knowledge, deep understanding and with a meta-language ‘to stand back and reflect on the things that we do’ (Loughland and Reid, 2002, p. 1). It allowed the pre-service teachers to construct and deconstruct classroom learning situations while promoting higher order thinking. For example Mary writes that [this] … analysis of a classroom discourse heightened my awareness of the value of Productive Pedagogies for me as a pre-service teacher and life long learner … I was able to see the importance of how the teacher conducts the lesson as just as important as the content. … The importance of continually questioning and reflecting upon the motivation underlying
    
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    my pedagogy. … . Have I created a challenging, inclusive, relevant supportive and engaging environment? Without the meta-language of productive pedagogies our pre-service teachers may have been confined to mere observation of what was obvious to them in the classrooms they visited, without being able to critically read what it was that actually was taking place between the teacher and the learner(s). Without the language of Productive Pedagogies, the pre-service teachers perhaps would never have been able to articulate so clearly what in fact was missing from their observed lessons. Quoting Gore et al. (2001) Simon explains that their results showed that: … pre-service teachers believed [certain elements] were restricted in their use by the age of the children and subject content and that Productive Pedagogies as a whole was linked to teaching strategies … it is important to recognise that Productive Pedagogies as a whole should be encompassed in all areas of teaching and learning. Productive Pedagogies should not be viewed as a pick and choose smorgasbord of teaching content and strategies. The evidence of Productive Pedagogies within a classroom is evidence of good teaching and learning. Some of our students’ response to Productive Pedagogies was on the level of a shiny new object or formula for good teaching (“just tell us how do we do this”) and is mirrored in the misconception among practicing teachers and many teacher educators that Productive Pedagogies is merely another instrument or framework to be applied as writ (Loughland and Reid, 2002). Hence Bob concludes that ‘I see Productive Pedagogies as an important teaching aid that enriches student learning and makes teaching a more satisfying and fulfilling profession (emphasis added). Moreover, there remained a view, at least among some of the pre-service teachers studied, that it is in fact necessary to include all the dimensions and all of the elements of each dimension in every learning experience. Ted writes in conclusion that: … all the elements of Productive Pedagogies … were not evident in this lesson, possibly because the teacher was unaware of Productive Pedagogies and the elements they contain … I believe with some planning and reflection it is possible to apply all the elements. Alice comes to a similar view that: … when Productive Pedagogies are taken into consideration at the planning stage, the likelihood of a more effective learning experience for students is greatly increased … [and] that by structuring lessons in accordance with the Productive Pedagogies it enables teachers to be very much in tune with their students. Ted reflecting on pedagogy as problematic concludes that: I am still coming to terms with the theory of Productive Pedagogies – [although] it has taken me thirteen weeks to fully appreciate them, I find
    
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    myself on unfamiliar ground. … The challenge is how to apply them … At present they are like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and … I find it difficult to make the “big picture”. As a first year student teacher I acknowledge my limited understanding and knowledge of teaching, I am now beginning to understand that the elements of Productive Pedagogies just don’t magically appear in a lesson. … The responsibility lies squarely with the teacher to make a difference to student learning. This introduction to Productive Pedagogies did produce results that seemed to be quite outstanding compared to our previous experiences of trying to introduce first year teachers to pedagogy. The pre-service teachers studied here confirm the conclusions of the QSRLS, that Productive Pedagogies is not something new or groundbreaking, but the identification and expression through the use of a vocabulary and language to describe what good teachers have always been doing in their classes with their students. Productive Pedagogies is we believe ‘more than just a vernacular knowledge of teaching made formal … but a language for reflecting on their practice’ (Loughland and Reid, 2002, p. 1). These pre-service teachers were able to utilize the vocabulary of Productive Pedagogies to successfully describe their observations in the discursive language of Productive Pedagogies, as a powerfully reflexive and generative language that provided them ways to talk about what was and wasn’t there in the classrooms observed. In our view, these students were engaged themselves in a powerful, and empowering substantive conversation about pedagogy. Productive Pedagogies was perceived by them as compatible with all levels, teaching styles and content, even in the early childhood centre. These pre-service teachers may indeed as Gore et al. (2001) conclude, be better equipped to make learning and teaching more connected to the real world than teachers with years of experience.
    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge the support, assistance and advice of Ass Prof. Trevor Gale Faculty of Education, Monash University in the writing of this paper. Dr. Gale began the teaching of this course in 2002 and I was privileged to work with him on the course in 2003. This chapter is based on our paper presented to the ICET Conference 2003.
    
    REFERENCES Apple, M. and Beane, J. (1999) Democratic Schools: Lessons from the Chalk Face. Buckingham: Open University Press. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (2nd edition) London: Routledge. Cherednichenko, B. and Kruger, T. (2002) Those Who Can, Do! Teacher Education as an Act of Personal and Institutional Reflexivity. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education, Brisbane. Giroux, H. A. (1990) Curriculum Discourse as Postmodernist Critical Practice. Geelong, Vic.: Deakin University.
    
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    Gore, J. M., Griffiths, T., and Ladwig, J. G. (2001) Productive Pedagogy as a Framework for Teacher Education: Towards Better Teaching. Paper presented at the AARE, Perth. Lingard, B., Ladwig, J., Mills, M., Bahr, M., Chant, D, Warry, M, Ailwood, J, Capeness, R, Christie, P, Gore, J, Hayes, D & Luke, A. (2001a) Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study: Final report, vol.1, Report prepared for Education Queensland by the School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane. Lingard, B, Ladwig, J, Mills, M, Bahr, M, Chant, D, Warry, M, Ailwood, J, Capeness, R, Christie, P, Gore, J, Hayes, D & Luke, A. (2001b) Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study: Supplementary Materials, Report prepared for Education Queensland by the School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane. Loughland, T. and Reid, J. (2002) A Language for Practice: Becoming Explicit About Teaching and Learning. Paper presented at the Australian Teaching Education Association, Sydney. Luke, A. (2002) Education 2010 and New Times: Why Equity and Social Justice Still Matter, But Differently, Education Queensland, viewed July 12 2003, http://vision.cangoul.catholic.edu.au/ teaching/tf/readings/ed2010.pdf . Shor, I. (1996) When Students have Power: Negotiating Authority in a Critical Pedagogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sorin, R. and Klein, M. (2002) ‘Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk: Adequate Teacher Preparation in these Uncertain Times?’ Paper presented to AARE, Brisbane, Australia. Teese, R. V. and Polesel, J. (2003) Undemocratic Schooling: Equity and Quality in mass secondary education in Australia. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Publishing. Wilson, E. and Klein, M. (2000) Promoting Productive Pedagogies: Preservice Teacher Education for New Times in Queensland State Schools. Paper presented at the AARE Annual Conference, Perth. Zipin, L. and Brennan, M. (2001) ‘Cultural Capital and the Literacy Needs of a New Generation of pre-service Teachers’. Paper presented to Australian Curriculum Studies Association National Biennial Conference, Canberra. Zyngier, D. and Gale, T. (2003) Non-Systemic and Non-Traditional Educational Programs in FMP Secondary Schools: Final Report. Frankston: Frankston Mornington Peninsula Local Learning Employment Network.
    
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