Reasons for including multiage settings in teacher preparation

Teaching is a complex and cognitively demanding exercise where teachers need to draw on their expertise in a contextually-sensitive manner. Multiage settings that comprise students with widely different abilities, ages, and cognitive and linguistics capabilities, require teachers to develop and upgrade specific pedagogic and administrative skills. Teacher education programmes offered at Australian universities however are yet to fully recognise this need. In this paper, the author develops an argument for inclusion of specific training in multiage education in Australian teacher education programmes.