Source: Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 24, Issue 7, October 2008, P. 1799-1812
This article provides a conceptual framework for developing high-quality professional experiences for pre-service teachers. The article begins with a discussion of how professional experiences are conceptualized, structured and supervised in each of three orientations, which the authors have termed traditional, reflective and learning communities.
The authors then describe a number of professional experience initiatives at two Australian universities. These initiatives are being reconceptualised around the notion of learning communities.
The authors argue that framing professional experience around the notion of learning communities has the potential to support pre-service teachers to work with their peers and mentor teachers in more collegial and reciprocal ways.