Vicki Carpenter: Our children deserve nothing but the best from teachers

Teaching as a profession requires the very best people with the highest possible qualifications. Our children deserve nothing less. Photo / Getty Images

I am a teacher and a teacher educator. I love teaching and am very proud to be a member of the teaching profession. Teachers are integral and central to our learning society.

Teachers can and do make profound, positive differences to people's lives. It is a privilege to teach.

A Government report released last month called A Vision for the Teaching Profession recommends substantial changes in the profession.

If implemented, the recommendations will affect my professional life and my colleagues, and also the lives of future generations of schoolchildren. The changes will do much to improve teaching in New Zealand - but there are also pitfalls.

I am vitally interested in all that the report recommends. My focus here, however, is on the recommendations related to teacher education. The report recommends:

* Restricting teacher education entry to graduates (those already holding a degree).

* Balancing the numbers being trained in Initial Teacher Education with the appropriate number of placements available.

* Including a formal selection process for all trainees which includes a "disposition to teach" criterion.

* Altering the structure of Initial Teacher Education and provisional registration so there are stronger links between trainee and beginning teachers, and teacher education providers and schools.

On the surface the last three points appear manageable. The balance issue and the formal selection processes will involve policy changes for some initial education providers, such as universities and polytechnics.

Teacher education now stops almost overnight as graduates exit into a teaching role. From that time onwards, schools take over the responsibility of teacher preparation for registration.

If this point becomes policy there will be far greater fluidity in the initial education/school relationship arrangements, with the main emphasis being on supporting beginning teachers in their professional work.

The first recommendation is the most significant. It signals an enormous change to New Zealand's initial teacher education.

For more than a century, people have been able to leave school and head straight to teachers' college.

The length of teacher education programmes has fluctuated, from the pressure cooker training of six months (after World War II) to the more recent three or four-year undergraduate programmes.

Some people have a break between secondary school and teacher education, while others simply move from one education environment (school) to another (initial training education), and ultimately to another (back to school) as they begin their teaching.

Contemporary initial teacher training education courses sometimes graduate 21-year-olds with little worldly experience. By closing the pathway directly from secondary school to initial teacher education, prospective teachers will be forced to enrol in an undergraduate degree (BA, BSc).

Whatever the degree is, students will be intellectually challenged, and hopefully taken well outside their comfort zones. Only when the undergraduate degree is completed, a high grade average obtained, and a disposition for teaching evident will a student be eligible for teacher education.

The youngest entrants to this education are likely to be in their early 20s, and all will have made a conscious and mature decision to enter the teaching profession.

I feel largely positive about a move to graduate initial teacher education. But I do harbour some apprehensions and reservations.

Tertiary education will increase to at least five years for most teachers. Who will be able to afford to become a teacher?

Our teaching workforce tends to be white, female and middle class. According to international research we have a long tail of underachievement - our education system is failing the poor, the marginalised, Maori and Pasifika groups.While the ethnic/gender/class mismatch cannot be blamed for our problems we undoubtedly need greater diversity within the teaching profession.

How will we ensure diversity of ethnicity, gender and social class? Will equity-based student scholarships be available?

What will the initial teacher education curriculum include? Our teachers ideally need to be public intellectuals - well read, curious and able to advocate for their pupils and communities.

The initial education must balance curriculum knowledge with critical thinking, analytical skills and research abilities.

How long should graduate initial teacher training last? Despite the funding ramifications, two years seems necessary and appropriate.

Programmes should be at the postgraduate level so beginning teachers start teaching with Masters degrees. This level of degree entry is common practice in many overseas countries.

Teaching as a profession requires the very best people with the highest possible qualifications. Our children deserve nothing less. This report signals positive moves towards endorsing and enabling greater teacher professionalism in New Zealand.

* Dr Vicki Carpenter is a principal lecturer at the faculty of education at the University of Auckland.