Rate My Professor Allison Byth

Dr Allison (Alli) Byth is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, affiliated with the School of Curriculum Teaching and Inclusive Education. Her research centers on initial teacher education (ITE), particularly mentoring and coaching practices that foster preservice teachers' pedagogical knowledge and reflective practice. Byth's work highlights the importance of school-university collaborations to bridge university-based teacher preparation and professional practice in schools. She investigates mentoring through retrospective video analysis, focusing on how mentors facilitate reflective, educative conversations. Additionally, she co-leads an international ISATT project involving 17 countries, exploring strategies to support graduating preservice teachers in transitioning to employment, identifying context-sensitive practices for this critical phase. Current projects include Developing a Video Analysis Tool to Improve Preservice Teachers' Reflective Practice and A Cross-Cultural Exploration of How ITE Providers Prepare Final-Year Preservice Teachers for Their Teaching Landscape.

Byth's professional background encompasses roles in primary and secondary education, as well as initial teacher education across Australia and internationally in Malaysia, Indonesia, and China. Prior to Monash, she held positions at RMIT University, leading government-funded initiatives for university-school partnerships. At Monash, she teaches units such as EDF4068 Teacher Performance Assessment, EDF4069 Transition to the Teaching Profession, EDF5855 The Teaching Profession and the Professional Teacher, and MON2100 Global Immersion Guarantee. She has spearheaded curriculum innovations emphasizing authentic assessment, graduate readiness, and professional wellbeing, incorporating AI-supported simulations and practice-based learning. Byth received the 2025 Simulation Australasia Limited Congress Project Innovation Award. Her key publications include "Rethinking the gradual release of responsibility in ITE mentoring: an andragogical perspective" (2026, The Australian Educational Researcher), "Addressing the hidden labour of mentoring preservice teachers" (2025, The Australian Educational Researcher), "Beyond window shopping: using stakeholder narratives to inform the design and impact of Australian non-metropolitan teacher placements" (2025, Australian and International Journal of Rural Education), and "From guesswork to growth: understanding how preservice teachers interpret and enact appraisal within a teacher performance assessment" (2025, Australian Journal of Teacher Education). She has presented at conferences including the Australian Teacher Education Association Conference (2025) and the Australian Association for Research in Education (2023, 2022), and contributed to educational blogs on video analysis and mentoring challenges.