In 2007, the Ministry of Education adopted a curriculum bereft of knowledge. A few years earlier it had implemented NCEA, an unorthodox ‘standards-based’ approach to school qualifications. NCEA encourages fragmented teaching and rewards superficial learning.
Around the same time, Teachers Colleges were absorbed by the universities. The universities’ initial teacher education (ITE) programmes do not prepare new teachers well for the profession. Trainees have too little classroom experience during their training. The quality of the professional mentoring they receive is highly variable. The coursework focusses on the wrong things.
Data, both domestic and international, demonstrate the dismal consequences. Our young people are less literate and numerate, and generally less knowledgeable, than they were 20 years ago.
Education Minister Erica Stanford is on a mission to turn things around. A new, knowledge-rich curriculum is on the way. Work is being undertaken to reform NCEA.
Improving ITE will be more difficult. The Minister cannot simply decree reform. Two key institutions are beyond her direct control.
Universities have academic freedom. Politicians cannot dictate the content of their courses – and that includes ITE programmes. If universities want to include ineffective literacy instruction methods in their ITE, they can do so. The Minister cannot stop them.
That brings us to The Teaching Council. To register as a teacher, ITE graduates must meet the Council’s Standards for the Teaching Profession.
Ideally, the Standards would incentivise universities to improve their ITE programmes. If they required teachers to demonstrate effective classroom instruction, for example, universities would have to ensure their graduates could do so.
Unfortunately, the teaching standards provide no such incentive. They are vague and are not rigorously assessed. And again, there is little the Minister can do about it. Most of the Teaching Council membership is elected by the teaching profession.
An amendment to the Education and Training Act, currently before select committee, will begin to move things in the right direction. The amendment will require the Teaching Council to consult the Minister before changing teaching standards. This is only a minor change, but it puts the Council on notice.
The Minister is right to tread carefully. Overtly politicising teachers’ professional standards would be a mistake. She has taken the curriculum by storm, but with teacher education, a softly-softly approach is more likely to yield durable results.
Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
Data, both domestic and international, demonstrate the dismal consequences. Our young people are less literate and numerate, and generally less knowledgeable, than they were 20 years ago.
Education Minister Erica Stanford is on a mission to turn things around. A new, knowledge-rich curriculum is on the way. Work is being undertaken to reform NCEA.
Improving ITE will be more difficult. The Minister cannot simply decree reform. Two key institutions are beyond her direct control.
Universities have academic freedom. Politicians cannot dictate the content of their courses – and that includes ITE programmes. If universities want to include ineffective literacy instruction methods in their ITE, they can do so. The Minister cannot stop them.
That brings us to The Teaching Council. To register as a teacher, ITE graduates must meet the Council’s Standards for the Teaching Profession.
Ideally, the Standards would incentivise universities to improve their ITE programmes. If they required teachers to demonstrate effective classroom instruction, for example, universities would have to ensure their graduates could do so.
Unfortunately, the teaching standards provide no such incentive. They are vague and are not rigorously assessed. And again, there is little the Minister can do about it. Most of the Teaching Council membership is elected by the teaching profession.
An amendment to the Education and Training Act, currently before select committee, will begin to move things in the right direction. The amendment will require the Teaching Council to consult the Minister before changing teaching standards. This is only a minor change, but it puts the Council on notice.
The Minister is right to tread carefully. Overtly politicising teachers’ professional standards would be a mistake. She has taken the curriculum by storm, but with teacher education, a softly-softly approach is more likely to yield durable results.
Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
The Coalition could have threatened to withdraw public funding from Auckland university unless the Maori course was optional. A reasonable approach This did not happen - now embedded forever. The Minister is woke.
NZ could do much worse than restructure teacher education and training along Japanese lines. There are Universities of Education there who are associated with 'lab schools' where students are given practical training, and plenty of it. Teachers at those schools are moreover trained to be mentors to student teachers. The training of student teachers is a cooperative effort between these schools, the universities, and Ministry inspectorial staff.
Teachers in Japan are expected to complete 100 hours of in-service training annually for the duration of their career. In-service topics are devised by the Universities of Education in league with the Ministry of Education. Professional teacher associations also have an input.
Does it work? Yep. Look at their outcomes at all levels. And don't forget about the cost -effectiveness of this model either - you'll be impressed.
Japan has been very fortunate not to have been cursed with the insane educational ideologies that dominate in the West and particularly the English speaking world. Unlike Japan we in NZ , now have by far the worst youth suicide rate out of 36 countries , along with those stats. mentioned by Michael yet that suicide rate , is what our current educational thought, condemns Japan of with its more structured and disciplined schooling - the exact opposite pedagogy to us.
We have instead constructivism, Progressivism, using schools as a vehicle for socialism instead of education, permissive child centered discipline , rejection of subject matter , dismissive attitudes to academic and intellectual learning , testing , memorizing, drills and hard work, constant experimenting on kids as with project learning , group cooperative learning, whole language , the numeracy project , discovery learning , multiple intelligences idea, the self-esteem movement ..... This is not even mentioning the introduction of Te Reo
to further confound teaching English literacy when we already have the worst literacy scores in the English speaking world. As if things couldn't be worse schools are now being inundated with Marxist DEI, the Climate cult , Maori science and religion and the transgender craze, student activism ..... Anything it seems except the tried and tested methods of Traditional Education , which are now shown to be effective and most like high educational performing countries like Finland and Singapore. and other Asian countries.
Katherine Burbalsinghe , at her Michaela School in London has her low SES ( socio-economic status) students achieving as well as those at prestigious Eton! She trains her own teachers because most of the orthodoxies , I have listed above, for NZ , are features also of the British educational institutions, but are so counter to Katherine's traditional beliefs and practices.
Post a Comment
Thanks for engaging in the debate!
Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.