We pursue a wide range of partnerships to ensure that students have the broadest and best experiences as part of their teacher education and preparation. From ELC (Early Learning Centres), primary and secondary in urban and regional settings through to placements in Indigenous communities and international organisations, we offer over 7,500 placements each year and currently have over 900 partners to provide an exceptional choice for students.
We also engage in research partnerships and collaboration extending our evidence-based pedagogies and offering a wealth of PhD opportunities. Many partnerships have components of professional experience and research and have grown over the years to be robust and mutually supportive relationships. In addition, we have developed collaborations with organisations like Drama Victoria that have educational functions but are not education establishments. These provide yet another dimension of learning and teaching for our students.
Urban Schools
We have partnership arrangements with a variety of schools and other educational institutions. Placements are typically over the course of a term and include more than one placement each year. Some of our longest-running and more mature partnerships are with schools like Frankston, where we have cohorts of students on placement who support each other and a robust mentoring program, or McLelland, where the focus is on experiencing classrooms with a higher number of Indigenous children.
At the Myer Schools - Mentone Primary and Rowville Secondary – Monash students opt in for a volunteer program that includes regular time at the school each week to make up a four week allocation. Likewise Killester College has cohorts of our students placed there who work on specific programs with a research component attached.
Carrumdowns Secondary College on the other hand takes placement of 100 Monash students with a focus on numeracy and Good Start and Brine Street (EFL) focus on early years learning and teaching.
The experiences are as diverse as the organisations with whom we partner and offer our student teachers enormous value as they determine where their passion and expertise lies.
Regional Schools
We place a number of students across regional partners in Hamilton, Horsham, Warrnambool and Sale. There is a huge amount of interest from our students in these placements and feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Given that it can be challenging to encourage teachers to regional areas of Australia, we are very encouraged by these partnerships and plan to extend them further to meet growing demand.
International Experience
Monash benefits from a global community and international campuses which affords students an instant availability for overseas experience. However, looking outwards is key for our student teachers and our partnerships with other universities is important for their professional development opportunities. We have arrangements with a number of institutions including Zurich University of Teacher Education.
Alternative Experience
To broaden thinking and creativity, we have developed partnerships with a range of organisations that have education components. These work exceedingly well and provide such unique experiences for our students that transforms the way they teach and collaborate.
