Evans, Theresa ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3252-4682, Munari, Anna, Munari, Gracie, Dunn, Lenyssa, Koh-Chua, Eugenia and McLaren, Mary-Rose ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3485-9844 (2025) Stories from the road: A collective autoethnography of pre-service teachers’ being and becoming through placement mentorship. In: Contemporary Perspectives in Early Childhood (Co-PEC) International Conference, 2025, 14 Nov 2025 - 15 Nov 2025, Victoria University, Melbourne.

Abstract

In 2024 Victoria University received funding from the Department of Education, Victoria, to focus on additional placement supports for pre-service teachers in the graduate Diploma and the Bachelor of Early Childhood Education. This two-year initiative responds to sector-wide challenges in workforce diversity and retention, bringing domestic and international students together to create networks and mutual respect. At the heart of this project is a team of four Teaching Focused Academics (TFAs) who serve as university mentors, travelling across Victoria to conduct placement visits, facilitate coaching sessions, and lead learning circles. Their work bridges the university and sector; in doing so, the TFAs become a hybrid space, supporting pre-service teachers to feel seen, guided, and better prepared to enter the profession more confidently and successfully. Over the past year, these TFAs have become field researchers, gathering rich, relational data through mentorship interactions with students, in-service mentors, and service leaders. The project has since expanded to include two academic research leads. Together, the team engages in collective autoethnography (CAE) to document, unpack, present, and re-present these human stories, which are often messy, non-linear, and deeply situated in place and practice. This presentation offers a glimpse of this CAE process, exploring what effective mentorship looks like in early childhood professional experiences, the challenges faced by both mentors and mentees, and the conditions that enable meaningful, transformative mentorship. Through layered narratives and shared reflection, this presentation offers insights into how mentorship can shape not only professional readiness, but also the being and becoming of early childhood teachers.

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