A scoping review of classroom readiness: what is it? Can it (and should it) be assessed?

Abstract

This scoping review explores how the term “classroom readiness” is understood in relation to assessing the performance of graduating teachers. This review is timely because the assessment of classroom readiness has been touted in education policy to be the solution to enhancing public confidence that teachers entering the profession are ready to teach from day one in the classroom. This scoping review maps how classroom readiness is conceptualised in papers published between 1998 and 2023. Three themes were identified: classroom readiness as framed by codified professional standards; the view of readiness as part of a professional journey rather than a point-in-time assessable moment; and finally, the use of readiness as a policy construct that enables reform of teacher education programmes. The corpus illustrates why the term is inadequate for capturing the full range of work undertaken by beginning teachers, and thus does not lend itself to an assessment regime that can assure performance from day one in the diverse range of classrooms where new teachers may be located. Based on our review, we highlight that classroom readiness has been a useful policy tool for garnering public support for reform, yet cannot capture the complex, multifaceted nature of readiness for teaching.