As the election approaches, I note education is increasingly grist in the political churn.
Deck chairs are being shuffled as educationalists jockey for position, aligning their agenda to the perceived direction of travel of any future government.
We are a small education economy and there is no doubt that our country’s educational challenges should engender urgent discussion about how best to respond.
However, the problem with a national discussion about educational performance within an election cycle is that it subjugates the necessary complex and careful analysis to clickbait headlines.
There is significant political capital to be made in claims of a crisis.
The problem with these claims is that there has been little research to illuminate the causes of our decline in student achievement. Too often blame is assigned to pedagogical approaches by those who have little knowledge of those very processes. For example, Inquiry Learning, Student Agency, and Flexible Learning Environments have all been recently undermined. These approaches to teaching and learning all require deep capability and expert understanding to ensure they benefit students. They are vulnerable to misinterpretation and when implemented without rigor, are naturally much less effective.
In the ensuing political melee, educationalists must avoid playing in favour of any political master and remind politicians of all stripes what is at stake in this election. Quality pedagogy is defensible within research, and it is the job of the profession to take a strong leadership stance on setting direction.
I am proud that the New Zealand Principals’ Federation have done this in their excellent 2023 positional paper published in May.
Their position is not a knee-jerk response to the beating of drums but a determined recognition that our educational direction of travel is mature and appropriate.
There is much we can achieve working constructively together to respond to the educational challenges we are experiencing. Such action does not require a 180-degree turn but a partnership with the sector to fund and grow change and areas of obvious need.
Post-election, three significant issues require an immediate response.
Curriculum change should not be left to chance
The expectations of teachers need simplification. Far too much is expected with little or no coherent time and motion analysis. Te Mātaiaho | The refreshed NZ curriculum is a brave nation-building document, but it is not a refresh—it is a significant rebuild. We must support teachers and principals to implement it successfully.
This is occurring in Auckland, where a pilot between the Tui Tuia | Learning Circle, the Ministry of Education, Auckland Primary Principals’ Association (APPA), and Auckland Secondary School Principals’ Association (ASSPA) sees representatives of 17 Kāhui Ako come together over the next 12 months to engage in successfully implementing Te Mātaiaho.
Such approaches throughout the country are important. Principals play a critical role to ameliorate the implications of curriculum change so that teachers’ work is achievable. The successful implementation of Te Mātaiaho will take careful local planning and principals play a vital role in articulating what to pay attention to and what can be developed later so that any change is carefully considered, realistic, and authentic.
What does it mean to teach?
A second important goal is the re-engagement of teachers in curriculum discipline knowledge. The 2007 National Curriculum was a visionary document. We should not forget that it was warmly welcomed by the profession as it replaced a crowded outcomes-based curriculum that was overly prescriptive. The problem with the 2007 curriculum was that it left content knowledge poorly described and didn’t define localisation. Many schools simply worked to the strengths of their teachers, and their local priorities. Curriculum that required a deeper and more detailed knowledge base, suffered.
Such an approach to curriculum has not been helped by a misunderstanding of what it means to teach. Without the necessary professional learning, many teachers saw themselves as facilitators of learning and took a simplistic view of students as agents in their learning. One doesn’t need to think too deeply about the obvious flaws of depowering the teacher as an expert and the likely impact on achievement.
It is critical that we unpack the teaching act and do so in a way that doesn’t return teaching to the mechanistic delivery of knowledge and that strikes a balance between clear and explicit discipline knowledge and the invitation for young people to be involved in the learning process and able to exercise influence. These two goals can work together. Understanding how calls for sophistication.
Political positioning will never illuminate this sophistication. This is the responsibility of the profession to champion.
Going back to basics
Finally, all of this is for naught if we cannot commit to substantive change in the way we train teachers in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). If we cannot adequately do so, then schooling is undermined at the outset by issues of quality provision.
In 2021 as the National President of NZPF, I made submissions for change in ITE to both the Minister of Education at the time, Chris Hipkins, and the Teaching Council, the professional body that assesses and accredits ITE. At the time the Minister choose not to implement change and the Teaching Council was confident that changes to their assessment and accreditation processes would improve teacher training.
There is little evidence this has occurred.
I echo the comments of NZPF in their manifesto where they recommend that “Reviewing and improving Initial Teacher Education programmes will better prepare educators for the classroom.”
The teaching profession must not be silent on matters of pedagogy. We must do everything we can to support principals and teachers as adaptive experts and avoid the reductive influence of political overreach and public pressure for simple solutions to complex issues. Such a goal will be particularly important post-election irrespective of the Government’s political stripes.
