Classroom for improvement

In Alex Williams' class, Pippin the rabbit is a welcome distraction. That these are adult students and Williams is training tomorrow's teachers is a lesson in itself.

Should parents be alarmed that the students who will shape their children's futures keep a bunny?

Williams, acting head of Unitec's education department, says the rabbit serves to remind trainees that no matter how well they follow the curriculum, children will be more motivated by "live" learning. And enthusiasm to learn is what teaching is all about. Let's call this lesson one.

But right now, teachers fresh from training feel like startled rabbits. Barely in front of the whiteboard and politicians, bureaucrats, academics and even some principals are branding them failures.

A parliamentary select committee report out this week links concerns about a declining standard of beginner teachers to an explosion in the number of training institutions, shorter courses and a "bums on seats" approach.

It quoted a Canterbury University education department submission that first year students have "limited general knowledge, limited vocabularies and some cannot write an adequate sentence or structure ideas".

The report follows an Education Review Office study that concluded a third of primary teachers and nearly half of secondary teachers in their second year of teaching - their final provisional year - were incompetent. National education spokesman Bill English is aghast that they are likely be registered anyway.

"If these ineffective teachers are in front of classes next year, about 20,000 students will have their education blighted."

Which, if true, should frighten not only parents and employers but society, conjuring up the self-perpetuating nightmare of thicko teachers producing dunce students, who either venture into the workforce or return to school as thicko teachers.

So much for the knowledge economy and OECD rankings.

But even the ERO report is not as damning as has been painted. It has been criticised for applying the standards expected of senior teachers to provisional teachers. The most-quoted finding - that only 65 per cent of primary and 52 per cent of secondary teachers meet the required level of competence - is an overall measure covering the spectrum of teaching practice, ie: that they are good at everything.

Break it down to its components - crucially, subject knowledge and the ability to engage students - and primary teachers score closer to 80 per cent and secondary 70 per cent.

Still, room for improvement. But the extent to which training institutions are behind the supposed decline has been the subject of fierce debate for some time.

Auckland Secondary Principals Association head Brent Lewis says principals are concerned about the calibre of some of the people accepted into courses.

"There are wonderful people coming out of the training colleges, but a number do have some written and oral language problems because they have taken in people who are not easy to understand. But there's never been a time when we haven't been talking about the quality of students coming out of courses."

Then there's the "bums on seats" bogey. The tertiary funding system encourages providers to lower their entry standards, because more students bring more state funding, argued submitters to the select committee inquiry.

But the institutions maintain - and the select committee agrees - that there's not a skerrick of evidence of a decline in standards. Auckland University's faculty of education, the former Auckland College of Education in Epsom, released countering research this week saying only five per cent of beginning teachers in 1999 and 2000 had significant professional development needs. Dean of education John Langley says it's in schools where the problems start - professional development is an essential part of teaching and supervising teachers require both better support and financial recognition.

Unitec lecturer Wendy Morris, an associate principal at Coatesville School, says financially-squeezed schools are allocating less time and money to professional development.

"It's what happens when these new teachers go into schools," says Morris. "They're meant to have support and guidance from [tutors] within the school, but there's a lot of variation between schools."

Such is the pace of change in the curriculum, teaching methods and technology, that new teachers often end up mentoring their more experienced colleagues.

Morris says schools are struggling with "professional development overload". The assessment-driven curriculum, new numeracy and literacy programmes, increased planning and accountability requirements and the "social worker" role teachers are forced to fill are driving many to leave.

Beneath the surface of this debate is a philosophical struggle about what makes a good teacher and whether the market model is delivering them. Since deregulation in 1990, the number of training institutions has grown from six to around 30, offering 130 courses.

Many are niche providers, for kura kaupapa, Christian and Montessori schools - the established handful of colleges, universities and polytechnics continue to churn out most teachers. But critics argue that with five accreditation agencies approving courses, there's too much variation in course content, entry and exit standards and monitoring.

The select committee calls on the five quality assurance agencies to develop unified approval and monitoring standards, with the Teachers Council co-ordinating, and asks the profession to develop consistent national exit standards for trainees.

Williams fears this could create a homogenised teacher. "To assume one size fits all masks the complexity and diversity inherent in education. It doesn't work with kids and we need to be wary about adopting it with teachers."

He says a push for standardisation and uniformity is driving the debate but different schools have different needs. "Not every school is looking for the same person."

Lesson two about teacher trainees is this: not all are straight out of school or university. Most of Unitec's one-year diploma course intake are in their 30s and 40s. They are an ethically diverse group of trained accountants, graphic designers, flight attendants, bankers and business administrators. Many have school-age children and believe their life experience will help in class.

Erynn Riesterer, 44, spent two years in an intermediate as a teacher aide and office assistant before enrolling. "I know how hard and stressful it's going to be - I've seen the nonsense both from the children and from management. But I can't wait to get in there."

Sue Vincent, 32, says a teacher can't possibly know it all - particularly in primary schools where they teach everything from algebra to aquatics. "As long as I understand the basics and where to go to upskill, that's fine. If you are not a very good speller, here's what to do."

But many principals have a different concept of what makes a good teacher. In a select committee submission on behalf of the Education Forum, Auckland Grammar head John Morris complained about a "child-centred, progressive, constructivist pedagogy" in teacher colleges, producing an "abandonment style of education: Teaching is bad, mentoring, coaching and facilitating is good. Skills are in, knowledge is out."

Grammar is one of a growing number of schools recruiting overseas for maths, physics, chemistry, technical and foreign language teachers. Though this can bring communication barriers and teachers who lack familiarity with the curriculum, Morris wants "people with degrees who know the subject well".

The recruitment problem is partly due to teaching's waning attractiveness to bright school-leavers and graduates, particularly males. But, adds Morris: "There are too many providers and the quality of programmes does vary. Are they training the right people? Have they got the right subjects?"

Williams argues the expansion in providers is catering for society's increasing diversity. "We need to be careful about saying there's a decline in standards because somebody is doing things differently. New teachers are coming out with new ideas and new ways of doing things."

He says he's trained doctors and PhD maths students who make no better teachers. "The ability of an expert to utterly switch children off is amazing."

The claim that students are less competent has dragged the length of courses into focus. Since deregulation, four-year bachelor courses have become three-year and graduate courses have gone from two years to one. The Teachers Council says this is at odds with international practice.

But many of Unitec's diploma students would be lost to the profession if they had to train for longer, says Williams.

"I know we haven't covered the maths content, geography and physics I would like to cover, but I know they'll pick that up on the job.

"Learning is an internal motivational thing. I know that when these students are standing in front of a class they'll be thinking differently about how they should be teaching those subjects.

"Maths teaching is not about knowing your times tables, it's about not switching kids off."

Which ushers in lesson three: pedagogy - the science and theory behind teaching. "We teach teachers how to teach - the what to teach is already there."

The notion of the teacher as the fount of all wisdom is seriously flawed, he says. With knowledge, technology and teaching methods constantly evolving, it's becoming impossible to anticipate what teachers and pupils will need to know in the future.

"Teachers definitely know their stuff. What they need to know is no longer so content-driven, the emphasis is now on pedagogy.

"When parents see kids looking things up on the internet or building rabbit hutches, they say that's not how they learned. Transmission education is redundant but society is struggling with it."

Even Canterbury's education department is embarrassed by the focus on the "can't write" line in its three-year-old submission, which argued for an increase in the length of the bachelor's programme from three to four years. Departmental head Alison Gilmore says the comment related to students' ability to write academic texts.

"Around the university we hear anecdotally that students can't write like they used to, but that probably reflects memories of their writing."

Colleague John Church says every generation complains about declining standards, but there is no research to show that the quality of new teachers is rising or falling.

Wendy Morris says any institution churning out incapable teachers would soon be found out. "Principals are very savvy. If in the interview they don't measure up to standard you don't employ them." 

Teacher trainee standards

Concerns about the ability of teacher trainees and their aptitude for both classroom and administrative activities were a theme of many submissions to the education and science select committee inquiry into teacher education.

The inquiry, which stretched over three years, received 65 submissions from principal and teacher unions, academics, colleges, universities, schools and agencies such as the Teachers Council, Tertiary Education Commission and NZ Qualifications Authority.

Many claimed a relationship between the proliferation of training providers and a lowering of the standard of students entering courses and moving on into teaching. The Post Primary Teachers Association said it was the widespread view of principals and senior teachers that the quality of applicants accepted for training had declined.

The Tertiary Education Commission reported concerns from "stakeholders" about the calibre of new recruits and "some concern about accepting applicants for teaching who have been unsuccessful as learners themselves".

Several submitters argued New Zealand was too small to support 30 different providers, with staff and resources duplicated or spread thinly. There were claims that shorter courses - from four years to three years or from two years to one year for graduates - meant students emerged under-prepared and lacking depth of study.

But the Auckland College of Education argued there was "nothing magical about a particular period of time" and the inquiry found there was such variation in the length of courses that any comparison became meaningless.

The inquiry said the opening up of teacher education had challenged the ideological hegemony of traditional providers.

But no evidence had been presented to demonstrate a deterioration in the professional standards of beginning teachers.