Beginning teacher comments about pre-service education and their suggestions for future pre-service training programs

This paper reports at 9 months on the results of a 2-year longitudinal study into beginning teacher's perceptions of their work and well-being. Data was collected from the graduates of three Queensland universities on two occasions during their first year of teaching. On the basis of their early career perspective, beginning teachers were asked to comment on the adequacy of their pre-service training and were encouraged to make suggestions about how they thought their overall training program may be improved. The longitudinal dimension of this study provides an added perspective often ignored in other contemporary investigations of perceptions of pre-service training for teachers. While both qualitative and quantitative analyses of beginning teacher perceptions are presented, the emphasis has been placed upon the qualitative analyses of beginning teacher responses, with quantitative data being reported to provide an overall context for the qualitative responses over the respondents' first 9 months employment. It is expected that results will be useful to those planning teacher preparation courses in the future. Suggestions are made for improving future teacher preparation programs, and comparisons are made to similar investigations that have been conducted in the past