In accordance with the standards for nursing and midwifery education, training and assessment, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council (ANMAC) requires students to engage in professional placement experiences as part of an accredited program of undergraduate study, with mandatory hours of activity linked to successful learning outcomes and registration to practise as a nurse in Australia (ANMAC 2017, Ford et al. 2016, Schwartz 2019). Clinical placements are therefore a central component of nursing education, complementing the theoretical foundations and simulation-based learning provided at university.

Preparing you for professional practice is the overarching goal of nursing education. Your success in professional experience placements depends on your ability to effectively draw upon and translate your learning to the clinical practice context and environment. This chapter provides specific information and strategies to help you to better understand and succeed in the clinical practice component of your degree program. The chapter also introduces the rapidly expanding role of social media in nursing education and practice.

You might be tempted to skip or skim this chapter and jump straight into the case stories. This is understandable as the whole premise of this book is that learning through stories is often more inviting than learning with discursive texts. However, if you do choose to jump into the case stories first, you need to return to this chapter later in order to stand back and see the broader landscape across which you are travelling as you read and write case stories. This metacognitive distance will deepen your understanding of the ways case learning helps you build your skills in problem solving, perspective taking and conditional thinking, which in turn will help you better develop these foundational skills of reflective teaching practice.

How we think we read stories or real-life situations, and how we actually read them are often very different. This chapter explores what the differences are, and how they can get in the way of effectively interpreting case stories. You will see how applying a systematic approach to reading case stories helps you become more self-aware and skilful in your interpretive practices. Following a systematic approach will enable you to separate observations from interpretations or evaluations and make you less likely to jump to conclusions. The approach presented in this chapter is the ‘SNAAPI’ steps, a simple five-step inductive reasoning–based process that will help you make sense of both the case stories in this book and the real-life situations you will encounter in schools. The chapter will also introduce three variants of the SNAAPI steps that you can use when you want to be more specialised in your engagement with a case story. All the interpretive approaches can be undertaken individually, but you will gain most benefit from discussing your thinking with others at all stages of the process.

Welcome to Case Learning for Teachers: Strategic Knowledge for Professional Experience. This book is primarily aimed at preservice teachers preparing for placement in schools. However, both the case stories and the model of case learning also provide rich professional learning material for teachers at all career stages. The book’s approach stems from the recognition that reading and writing cases builds the kinds of personal and/or professional knowledge that leads to significant change in thinking, attitudes and practice.

The final chapter concludes the text by considering how the mindful strategies outlined throughout the book can help you put your best foot forward as you begin teaching. The book's key concepts and themes are discussed, and the importance of mindfulness in building and sustaining a successful teaching career is emphasised.

This book bring together knowledge and skills from the last 20 years in initial teacher education. Stories from the authors and those of pre-service teachers are used to explore the kinds of skills and strategies – including those related to mindfulness – that enable teachers to cope with the challenges of their profession, as well as enjoy and savour the highlights. We hope that you find this book useful as you undertake your journey to becoming a mindful and committed teacher.

Upon reflection, I had, as a child, become a sound state-school student within a culturally diverse student group. The physical environment, from infants and primary school sites to the secondary school site, was not particularly diverse. It was often characterised by interiors of neutral-coloured linoleum, regulation departmental mid-blue accents, modular timber cupboards and exteriors defined by seriously brown brick walls, asphalt playgrounds and modestly allocated grass areas. Grey wire-fences surrounded the built environments of almost every school site. Landscaping was limited to an agglomeration of concrete-bound, sandstone forms providing an edging to the asphalt and was usually located near the entrance of the school. The plants inside were mostly hardy ‘natives’ that irrespective of their apparent suitability seemed to struggle to survive.