About the Participants
Identifying and recruiting participants
Given the focus of the study we wanted to recruit people who work in the field of Teacher Education. We considered ‘people who work in the field of teacher education’ to include initial teacher educators who work – or have worked within the past ten years – with pre-service teachers (PSTs) and those who work with in-service teachers (regardless of time fraction or permanency), including teaching and research academics, research-only personnel teaching-only personnel, placement staff and university-based mentors of pre-service teachers.
We employed purposive sampling (using a combination of snowball sampling and typical case sampling) to contact potential participants. A database was developed that included
- individuals who met the criteria and were known by at least one of the researchers at Australian and International higher education institutions
- professional organisations linked with teacher education both in Australia and other parts of the world.
The individuals and organisations listed on our database were sent an introductory email explaining the purpose and methodology of the research, it also contained the survey URL. We invited them as well as relevant staff in their organisation to complete the survey. Following a snowball sampling approach, we also encouraged them to circulate or forward on the survey to their respective networks i.e. other potential participants via email. The invitation and initial survey was sent to 400 email addresses. We also used social media such as Twitter to invite people who worked in the field of teacher education to participate in the study and included a link to the initial survey in the tweet.
Information about those who participated
In total, 126 responses were received (with responses from each Australian state and territory along with 20 % of responses coming from outside Australia). This is a significant number of people involved in teacher education who wanted to share their perspectives.
