IIER logo 4
Issues in Educational Research, 2024, Vol 34(4), 1638-1658.
[ Contents Vol 34 ] [ IIER Home ]

Pathways towards equity: Achievements by online initial teacher education graduates across Australia

Rebecca Walker, Valerie Morey, Madeleine Dobson and Astrid Green
Curtin University, Australia

The proliferation and growth of online initial teacher education (ITE) has provided emerging evidence that access to this pathway provides life-changing opportunities for students who may have previously been marginalised from higher education. However, there is limited research that examines achievement of groups known to have been under-represented in higher education. To begin to discern the impact of the demographic composition of ITE courses on their achievements across key components of the course, more research is needed. Our article reports on the case of a large undergraduate Australian online ITE program with diverse student cohorts. Graduates' course achievement is examined according to socio-economic status (SES), residing location, and entry pathway. The data reported demonstrate that overall achievement levels are high, with findings revealing that in providing access to these online ITE programs, barriers to participation and achievement arising from students' SES, residing location, or formal academic background, can be ameliorated without impacting negatively on graduate achievements. Thus, we assert that the availability of quality online ITE is crucial in enabling participation and achievement of more diverse students, thus broadening accessible education.
[ PDF full text for this article ]

Authors: Dr Rebecca Walker is an Associate Professor at Curtin University, Western Australia. She has had extensive teaching experience both in the metropolitan and rural areas of Western Australia and overseas. Her research projects focus on online initial teacher education, work integrated learning, assessment and social justice in education. She is keenly involved in activities to promote needs based approaches to education. Recently she was co-editor of a nationally applicable text, Powers of curriculum: Sociological aspects of education [https://www.oup.com.au/books/higher-education/education/9780190333843-powers-of-curriculum], which focused on sociological perspectives on education and the curriculum.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2063-9683
Email: rebecca.m.walker@curtin.edu.au

Dr Val Morey is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Western Australia. She has had a long association with the school, including the introduction of fully online initial teacher education courses. Val's research interests and activity include enhancing access to initial teacher education for disadvantaged groups and ascertaining the impact of increased access for identified groups. Val is Deputy Chair of the national consortium which designed and manages the AfGT [https://education.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/assessment-for-graduate-teaching-afgt], one of the endorsed Teaching Performance Assessments in Australia.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5952-734X
Email: v.morey@curtin.edu.au

Associate Professor Madeleine Rose Dobson, School of Education, Curtin University, Western Australia, is an academic with experience and expertise in early childhood education and care. Her research focuses on social justice in educational contexts, often with an emphasis on children's rights and voices. Madeleine's recent projects have focused on the representation of children on social media, caring and trauma-informed pedagogies, and children's experiences of belonging and connectedness across a range of contexts.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7615-6974
Email: madeleine.dobson@curtin.edu.au

Astrid Green is a postgraduate student in the Behavioural Science and Health Research Group at Curtin University, Western Australia. Astrid has expertise in quantitative data analysis which is utilised in her research studies and research assistant work.
Email: astrid.green@curtin.edu.au

Please cite as: Walker, R., Morey, V., Dobson, M. & Green, A. (2024). Pathways towards equity: Achievements by online initial teacher education graduates across Australia. Issues in Educational Research, 34(4), 1638-1658. http://www.iier.org.au/iier34/walker-r.pdf


[ PDF full text for this article ] [ Contents Vol 34 ] [ IIER Home ]
Published under a Creative Commons licence: Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0)
This URL: http://www.iier.org.au/iier34/walker-r-abs.html
Created 13 Dec 2024. Last update: 13 Dec 2024. Website: Roger Atkinson [rjatkinson@bigpond.com]