The New Zealand Council of Deans of Education says the education minister’s recent criticism of initial teacher education is “surprising and disappointing”.
Council chair Alison Kearney, who is also head of Massey University’s Institute of Education, said the group would like to meet with Erica Stanford to hear her concerns about initial teacher education (ITE), and better understand what evidence she was referencing when describing their programmes as “woeful”.
She went on to say that Stanford’s one-size-fits-all approach to lifting achievement was the “antithesis of achieving equity”, was likely discriminatory, and might breach New Zealand’s international human rights obligations.
The request for a ‘please explain’ meeting comes after Newsroom published comments from Stanford criticising teacher training and education.
The education minister said teachers had been let down by “woeful” initial teacher education, which hadn’t kept up with the latest science and pedagogy. She said she had universities – the ones that provided teacher training – in her sights.
“Young teachers come out of ITE and they say to me: I don’t know how to teach a kid to read, I don’t know anything about structured literacy, or the science of learning, or how the brain acquires knowledge, or cognitive load bearing, or any of that,” Stanford told Newsroom.
Teachers were not properly prepared to deal with complex behaviour management, learning needs, neurodiversity; and they lacked knowledge and confidence when it came to teaching maths.
“Teachers have not been well-served by ITE, and there is a big piece of work to be done there,” she said.
“The universities are not preparing teachers as well as they should be. Some do a better job than others but I think the broad view of the sector is it could be much better, and we could strengthen it, working with the Teaching Council and the universities.”
But the council pushed back at Stanford’s criticism, rejecting the assertion they weren’t keeping up with the latest, evidence-based practices in teaching.
University-based research staff produced the “latest science and pedagogy” knowledge for New Zealand’s classrooms, Kearney said. This was applied in the initial teacher education programmes, and informed the Ministry of Education’s own work programmes.
“Teaching is a really complex role and to be a teacher means to be a life-long learner,” Kearney said. “There’s no doubt that classrooms are really complex places.”
However, teachers continued to learn and upskill throughout their career, she said, adding that training extended beyond the university lecture hall.
University-based initial teacher education programmes produced 85 percent of New Zealand primary and secondary school provisionally registered teachers. As well as practical, in-school placements during their study, teachers had a further two years of teacher preparation in schools before becoming fully registered.
Of those provisionally registered teachers, 90 percent went on to become fully registered, meaning they were meeting the standard expected by schools, principals and the Teaching Council.
Kearney said she was pleased to hear the minister planned to focus on lifting achievement and tackling inequity. However, the one-size-fits-all approach Stanford was championing was the “antithesis” to achieving equity, she said.
“We live in a highly inequitable society. Our education system reflects those inequities.”
The New Zealand Council of Deans of Education chair Alison Kearney
The minister seemed to be focused on the “science of reading” or how a brain received and decoded language, she said. But this approach did not take into account other evidence, like cognitive learning theory, which looks at how the brain is influenced by internal factors (how distracted a student is) and external factors (whether learning is valued by a community).
Kearney said learning was more complex than just what happened inside the mind. Things like culture, poverty and motivation to learn all played a part.
A one-size-fits-all approach, which did not take into account the range of internal and external influences, would seriously disadvantage some students, she said.
This included discrimination – particularly those with neurodiversities or from diverse cultural backgrounds. The approach might also breach international human rights obligations, including the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“We live in a highly inequitable society. Our education system reflects those inequities.”
Changes to the education system couldn’t happen in isolation, she said. Until the broader inequities were addressed across society, they would be reflected in the education system.
Responsibility fell to the Teaching Council, schools, and the conditions set through teachers’ contracts, as well as ITE providers, like universities.
Initial teacher education programmes are approved and accredited by the Teaching Council, through a rigorous process, and are designed alongside stakeholders, including teachers and principals.
Stanford said she had met with the Teaching Council to discuss her expectations for teacher training and quality.
Changes to ITE would likely come through the Government setting its National Education Learning Priorities, which would be reflected in teacher training.
Teaching Council chief executive Lesley Hoskin said the council was focused on strengthening ITE and the process of becoming a teacher – particularly on the two-year induction and monitoring programme undertaken by provisionally registered teachers once they’re employed by a school.
In 2019, the ITE system was reformed, but the changes were designed to be self-reinforcing so the programme would evolve over time.
Hoskin acknowledged the Government was placing a greater focus on specific curriculum changes, including things like structured literacy.
Therefore, should the system bring more specificity to things like structured literacy, the council would work with ITE providers to also align their programmes.
Hoskin said becoming a teacher was a complex, five-year journey. And the council would work collaboratively with ITE providers, schools, ECE services and the Government to achieve a system that was effective, provided assurance to the Government and the public, and was workable to implement.
“Ensuring that our children and young people receive safe and high-quality teaching is a key function of the Teaching Council, and something we believe to be critical to our future success as a nation,” she said.
“Quality of teaching is the most important factor, after family, in influencing educational outcomes.”
The Ministry of Education
Stanford’s initial comments to Newsroom were in the context of closing the gap between the highest and lowest achievers.
According to international and OECD data, New Zealand has one of the biggest equity gaps. Although there is a new, growing body of research that calls into question the validity of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) “juggernaut” and the influence it has on education policy. Meanwhile, a new study has found Australian students didn’t try in the latest round of PISA testing, as it doesn’t count for anything.
Alongside Stanford’s comments, and the latest PISA scores that found Aotearoa again had one of the least equitable education systems, the Ministry of Education said teacher quality was the biggest in-school lever it could pull when trying to tackle inequity.
“International and domestic research shows that teachers need to have the capability to understand and respond to the identity, language and culture of every student to attract, retain and teach learners,” the ministry said in the 2023 briefing to the incoming education minister.
“Quality of teaching is the most important factor, after family, in influencing educational outcomes.”
Stanford has previously been invited to attend the New Zealand Council of Deans of Education’s meetings. She was unable to make the last meeting, and has signalled she would attend their next one in June.
The New Zealand Council of Deans of Education was established in 2006 and includes representatives from the seven universities with education and teacher education programmes.
The group was created to establish ways the universities could take a lead in maintaining and advancing standards in teacher education.
The evidence is stark. NZ continues to fall in the PISA ratings and blagging the test is a cowards answer. Those who employ those students or even read the often miss-spelt NZ news headlines can see the effects. We have workers who cannot paint a “STOP” sign. More to the point, in Scotland and Wales which both follow the same NZ education model, the significant PISA “slippage” has seen questions asked, since English students, who have a more structured curriculum, continue to perform well. All of the UK demographics being equal, the spotlight is therefore on the teaching curriculum.
It’s not surprising that many people both within and outside the system have questions about the quality of initial teacher education hence the ongoing search for improvement, often via a silver bullet. If a silver bullet does indeed exist [and thats questionable] then in my opinion it lies with a changed attitude across society to teaching as a career so that our best and brightest choose it. Educators love to travel to Finland to see what is behind their success but the real answer can be found in the simple statistic that somewhere between seven and ten times as many people apply to become teachers as there are positions available.
In my professional work with science and maths teachers, especially in primary schools, it was apparent from many of the teachers themselves that they lacked confidence in teaching those subjects. Their training had not given them that. My conclusion, supported by several older teachers, is that universities having taken over teacher training is the source of the problem. Universities are good at research, and teaching how to a find out and “know” things, all theoretical activities, but not much good at teaching how to “do”things, viz practical activities. I’m not impressed with a university person defending their own institute’s system. If I were Minister of Education I’d bring back dedicated teacher training colleges that taught how to “do” things.
I believe we need to focus on the early childhood years and understand what is happening to our children in their early years. I am alarmed at what is coming through around the verbal interactions mothers are having with their babies in the early years – the number of words a baby has exposure to each month has, and is, rapidly declining. The cause – mothers fixated on their social media feeds, not “talking” or interacting with their babies.
Look around you – in parks, cafes, in homes, indeed anywhere there are mothers and children. The evidence is plain to see.
This verbal interaction is absolutely basic to the formation of language, learning and intellect.
I believe we have a tsunami of poorly developed children about to enter school and teachers will simply not be able to cope.
The implications for our society are self-evident.
Really, Ron? So fathers, grandparents, etc have nothing to do with child development? Nor do the incredibly high costs of raising children, especially housing them so that even two full time wages are often not enough? Much simpler just to blame mothers, apparently.