Secondary Beginning Teachers' Preparedness to Teach Literacy and Numeracy: A Survey

This paper reports the findings of an Australia-wide surveyconducted as part of a national teacher education research project thatexplored the preparation of teachers to teach literacy and numeracy inAustralian schools (Louden, Rohl, Gore, Greaves, McIntosh, Wright,Siemon & House, 2005) 1. The project included various phases ofinquiry, beginning with a desk audit of teacher education programcharacteristics and an international literature review (Gore &Griffiths, 2002), that drew on literature published in English in the lastfew decades. The issues identified in the literature review guided theconstruction of a set of national focus groups that targeted early years,primary and secondary teachers and teacher educators. Data from thefocus groups informed three nationally representative questionnairesurveys, the purpose of which was to determine the preparedness ofnew graduates to teach literacy and numeracy to a range of schoolstudents. A survey was designed for each of the following three groups:senior school staff, primary beginning teachers and secondarybeginning teachers.