Clinical Judgement in Pre-Service Teacher Education: An Opportunity for Enhanced Professionalism?

Clinical models inform initial teacher education programs at several sites globally. Such models, and the term ‘clinical,’ along with related but not synonymous evidence-based forms of teaching, are advocated by some and criticised by others. Advocates emphasise an integration of evidence, theory, and research with contextualised clinical judgement that centres on students and teachers. Critics raise concerns over the privileging of ‘scientific’ or ‘medicalised’ ways of knowing that undermine teachers’ professional and moral judgement. This paper draws on focus group data exploring understandings of clinical judgement among 20 teacher educators in a well-established clinical teacher education course. Findings reveal that while there were tensions in the use of ‘clinical’, participants saw value in the language of clinical judgement in teaching. Clinical judgement positioned teaching as a profoundly intellectual activity in which the synthesis and evaluation of observations, research, context, and student learning evidence informed teacher decision making. Findings suggest that, when framed in this way, clinical judgement and clinical teaching models can enhance teachers’ professionalism and confidence in professional decisions. The perspectives of participants reveal an often-overlooked aspect of the clinical teaching debate—the experiences of teacher educators working within such a model.