The Teaching Council, the professional body overseeing the teaching profession, sets the Standards. Teachers must meet all six to be able to practice in New Zealand. The Standards therefore, provide strong incentives for training providers to focus on course content that enables graduates to meet them.
The old Standards are vague. The Teaching Council presented vagueness as a virtue:
The old Standards also lack sufficient focus on effective teaching. Only two of the six directly address teaching practice. The other four are about professional development, professional relationships, providing inclusive environments in classrooms, and honouring the Treaty.
The effect of the old Standards is evident in teacher education programmes run by universities. Those programmes fail to prepare teachers for the classroom. But because the Standards are vague, they leave enough wiggle room for almost all graduates to be deemed to meet them anyway.
The revised Standards are a significant improvement. The number of standards has increased from six to eight and are much clearer. Crucially, the balance has shifted towards a focus on effective teaching.
Teachers will now be expected to know the curriculum content and how to teach it. They will also have to demonstrate knowledge of how students learn. They will have to develop effective lessons and use assessment to guide feedback to students. Specific and timely feedback is one of the most powerful tools at teachers' disposal.
When the new Standards are implemented, the universities will have to improve their teacher training programmes to make sure that graduates can meet them. Otherwise, private providers will take their business. My money is on the latter.
Either way, this relatively minor and inexpensive policy change could lead to a substantial improvement in the quality of teaching in New Zealand's schools.
Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
The old Standards also lack sufficient focus on effective teaching. Only two of the six directly address teaching practice. The other four are about professional development, professional relationships, providing inclusive environments in classrooms, and honouring the Treaty.
The effect of the old Standards is evident in teacher education programmes run by universities. Those programmes fail to prepare teachers for the classroom. But because the Standards are vague, they leave enough wiggle room for almost all graduates to be deemed to meet them anyway.
The revised Standards are a significant improvement. The number of standards has increased from six to eight and are much clearer. Crucially, the balance has shifted towards a focus on effective teaching.
Teachers will now be expected to know the curriculum content and how to teach it. They will also have to demonstrate knowledge of how students learn. They will have to develop effective lessons and use assessment to guide feedback to students. Specific and timely feedback is one of the most powerful tools at teachers' disposal.
When the new Standards are implemented, the universities will have to improve their teacher training programmes to make sure that graduates can meet them. Otherwise, private providers will take their business. My money is on the latter.
Either way, this relatively minor and inexpensive policy change could lead to a substantial improvement in the quality of teaching in New Zealand's schools.
Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
7 comments:
Seems to me if a teacher is thoroughly familiar with the subject, refinement of teaching technique not a huge hurdle. But from what i read the reverse situation often applies. teachers have been delivered endless teaching theory but do not know their times tables, or how to manipulate fractions..At least for primary teacher,s and secondary for the first two years, there is no excuse for not being thoroughly on top of the topics taught. The Teaching Council has perpetrated most of the problems of the last many decades. It behaves as a Union. with similar political alignment.
If you seek out the new Standards on the Teaching Council website, you’ll most likely be disappointed to find that the indoctrination machine is still well and truly plugged in and switched on. The first standard is:
“1. Te Tiriti O Waitangi partnership.
Demonstrate commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in
Aotearoa New Zealand.
1.1 Understand and recognise the unique status of tangata whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand.
1.2 Understand and acknowledge the histories, heritages, languages and cultures of partners to Te Tiriti
o Waitangi.
1.3 Practise and develop the use of te reo and tikanga Māori.”
T o change the system we all need to know of the disingenuous theories and methods that have been inculcated into teachers for decades
Most briefly there needs to be a halt on using schools as indoctrination centers which has always been the agenda of Progressive Education( PE).
Group think is encouraged instead of individuality, along with condemnation of knowledge and facts. Schools are to be pleasant and unchallenging with children reaching their full potential through activity and play effortlessly.
PE is based on socialism and morphed into Marxism and CRT , hence the excessive emphasis on Maori studies to overcome 'evil colonisation'.
The idea of forcing children to to complete a task , of imposing demands ,of expecting discipline and industriousness is said to be tragically repressive to the child's tender spirit.
As adults we know differently , if eg we wish to learn to fly a plane . It requires study, reading instruction manuals , memorizing stuff, taking tests and proving over and over that we are actually mastering the knowledge and skills. A process that may take months or years. But there is no other way.
At present out of the misguided mind of academia has come craziness -no facts and no work. A realm almost insanely disconnected from real life.
Thanks Michael. Anon has summed up some of my concern. I have to re-apply to renew membership this year.
I responded to the feedback when it was made recently. I objected to most of Standard 1, especially as regards learning te reo. I use my fluency in 2 languages and a smattering of a third regularly in my lessons. Yet, my teaching competency would be questioned, absurd?
Statement 4.6 asks that teachers strive so that "Maori succeed as Maori". I'm sure that I'm not alone in being brassed off with this. We teach ALL students in our class, striving for the best outcomes, regardless of their ethnicity.
So many of my colleagues view the Council as being not fit for purpose, not representing teachers, is an overstaffed bureaucracy, that
imposes ideology on all of us.
Minister Stanford, you can stop this nonsense.
Why is Dr Johntson praising the "new" standards when , according to some of the comments' they clearly have not changed much at all, Who is correct?
Focusing on effective teaching methods is a good start but only the start .
There is so much in our fiasco of an education system that needs changing it would seem hopeless.
Here are some other aspects that need addressing - the lack of work ethic, the obsession with group work and project work, the overuse of screens, the permissive discipline , the belief school is to be fun and entertaining, the belief socialization is paramount, the lack of homework, the concentration on self esteem, the low competency particularly in maths of primary teachers, the overemphasis on trendy ideas that come out of academia, the opposition to drilling and memorizing , the child centered philosophy rather than the teacher as the authority in a classroom, the ongoing experimentation of trendy ideas like open classrooms and a woke curriculum with no basis at all in science, the insistence on multiple intelligences in learning the romantic notion about human nature particularly children's. ......
I guess a return to the effective methods of the 1920s is now impossible.The succesful Asian countries have the advantage of more ethically homogeneous and uniform high IQ subjects with decades of breeding for hard work, but what methods do they use?
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