Pre-service teachers' attitudes towards overseas professional experience: Implications for professional practice

Reforms in Australia about the education of future teachers have placed a high degree of emphasis on the development of knowledge and skills that are necessary for practitioners who will ply their trade in culturally rich and diverse classrooms (Ramsey, 2000). There is now a broad consensus from key stakeholders (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2012) that pre-service teachers need to be provided with a range of opportunities that are grounded in classroom practices including exposure to teaching students overseas. The aim of this mixed mode study (Creswell, 2012) is to better understand the skills and knowledge that pre-service teachers need in order to function in and gain from their overseas professional experiences (OSPEX). In this study, we undertook semi-structured interviews, and then using the emerging themes compared a cohort of pre-service teachers' perceptions of OSPEX before and after their completed their professional experiences in Fiji via the use of a questionnaire. Results indicate that pre-service teachers need to be better prepared locally before attempting an OSPEX visit.