“LANTITE on an oily rag”. University perspectives of implementing external hurdles in initial teacher education courses

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate how two universities designed and implemented student support structures for the Literacy and Numeracy Test Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) a high-stakes licensure test. It identifies the challenges and opportunities they encountered when establishing processes to support the administrative and academic components, using a narrative approaches to elicit accounts of their experiences. Findings suggest each university faced unique challenges related to funding, staffing, communications, managing unsuccessful attempts, and data management. The universities identified opportunities, including the integration of professional learning within existing course delivery, securing external funding to support the development of LANTITE-specific resources, and accessing peer-support from other LANTITE coordinators located across Australia. Utilising Strangeways (2020) to frame the recommendations, this paper proposes the need to consider the professional knowledge, personal knowledge and socio-theoretical knowledge of institutions, and more broadly, work towards sharing our processes and experiences as teacher educators to provide students the necessary guidance to undertake LANTITE.