Stepping up: what works in pre-service teacher education

The What Works materials and programs were developed from a set of Strategic Results Projects (SRPs) conducted throughout Australia in the late 1990s. There were two types of projects funded by the Commonwealth Government: capital projects, to upgrade the educational infrastructure of non-government providers; and ‘non-capital’ projects. The What Works project was about non-capital projects. The SRPs were about many things but, significantly, they were about ordinary people working together to achieve something new and exciting. The question that was asked initially and one that people submitting needed to address was: What changes to education and student support delivery practices will result in improved Indigenous learning outcomes within a relatively short period of time? The projects ranged in scale from small single-site operations to large systemic initiatives. Thirty-one projects operated at various sites and these sites ranged from inner urban areas of capital cities to remote outback areas. Basically, the SRPs were a series of experiments. The work was not conducted in exceptional circumstances; it was carried out in ordinary preschools, schools and training institutions, under conventional conditions. The process of discovery within the SRPs was not innovative; not different; not radical. The reason the SRPs worked was because people were choosing to make them do so, and these were mainly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members, and teachers in schools, all of whom held a firm belief in the prospect of success and had the will to make it occur. They were effective school–community partnerships. It is almost certain that, sometime in their teaching careers, Australian teachers will have one or more Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander students in their classes. The full report of these projects could be read as a lengthy description of cases of good teaching practice; not especially exceptional, but applied with commitment and a determination to achieve success for all involved. Good relationships, trust, flexibility, individual concern, problem-solving, perseverance, thoughtful observation and careful investigation of good teaching strategies and possibilities, and knowledge of students’ backgrounds: that is what good teaching is. This is what teachers can do. The Report of the SRPs What Works: Improving outcomes for Indigenous students led to an Australian Government Program that has operated as training and development for schools for the past eight years, a program hosted by National Curriculum Services (NCS) and the Australian Curriculum Studies Association(ACSA).