Will scholars trump teachers in New Zealand teacher education?

The Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) assessment process in 2003 highlighted the research imperative for academic staff in New Zealand teacher education. This imperative was not new: it was implicit in the tertiary education changes of 1990, which ended the university monopoly over degree granting and gave autonomy to colleges of education and polytechnics. Previous assumptions about the roles of university and college academics were challenged. Few teacher educators had engaged in research before 1990; staff were recruited from the profession on the basis of their professional expertise. Developing a research culture alongside the demands of teaching and professional involvement in schools leads to tensions that few institutions worldwide have been able to solve. This paper examines the experience of two New Zealand teacher education institutions in responding to the new research imperative, and then considers the impact of the PBRF process and reporting on policy and practice. It identifies significant issues for resourcing and developing capacity but concludes that research is an imperative of professional practice that has the capacity to enrich our teaching and inform policy. However, maintaining balance and equilibrium among the contradictory demands and pressures of research and teaching is still an essential goal if we are to serve education well

Meat in the sandwich: The impact of changing policy contexts and local management of schools on principals’ work in New Zealand 1989-2009

The impact of principal leadership on school outcomes, particularly student achievement, is assuming unprecedented attention internationally. Official discourses often assume that principals can be trained to achieve prescribed outcomes through the employment of learned strategies. Such claims are challenged by critical leadership scholars who insist on the significance of context. This paper explores the impact of policy contexts on the work of a small group of experienced principals in New Zealand over a period of 20 years. During that time, they often struggled to reconcile their own espoused educational principles with policy imperatives in a small country where Local Management of Schools (LMS) has been extreme. It argues that national policy discourse around competition, curriculum and achievement, together with formal accountability to local lay Boards of Trustees (BOTs), are sources of tension and moral ambiguity, which tempt principals to comply and play the game for the sake of their schools. Principals are also caught between local and national accountabilities. In spite of this, principals in the study maintained an educational vision encompassing the wider social context of New Zealand education and retained a sense of personal agency

Uncovering meanings: The discourses of New Zealand secondary teachers in context

Recent official policy discourses on student achievement have stressed the importance of teachers and the impact that effective teaching can have on student life chances and on national economic performance. There is also a body of research on the way teaching and learning are affected by school context. This article discusses research designed to investigate how and to what extent the contextual features of schools impacted on the beliefs New Zealand secondary teachers and principals held about teaching and learning, the extent to which they believed their agency could influence outcomes for their students, and the aspirations and goals they pursued. We interviewed principals and teachers in six secondary schools, two each in high, mid and low socio-economic areas. The findings show considerable commonality in teachers' pedagogical discourses and that the rhetoric of formal policy discourses is pervasive and normalized in schools. All the teachers believed they could make a difference to student achievement and life chances, tried to address diversity among their student bodies, and saw success as much wider than academic achievement. Concurrently we found that the institutional habitus of each school largely determined how discourses were enacted and that relationships, confidence, student-centredness and success were interpreted differently between schools. We argue that these differences must be taken into account if school policies and interventions are to be successful

The ‘contested enterprise’ of Initial Teacher Education

Since 1990 Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in New Zealand has undergone significant change following organisational shifts across the education system. Yet key issues from earlier years are still contested, with ongoing debates over the locus and oversight of ITE, the nature of quality teacher education, and the establishment of national standards for ITE programmes and their graduates. The debates have been underpinned by changing social and cultural expectations, the establishment and development of new regulatory bodies, New Zealand and international research. This paper examines these debates and argues that policy makers and practitioners in ITE face contradictory pressures and challenges such as the continuing pressure for quick fix and uniform solutions and deficit thinking about ITE. Progress depends on ongoing dialogue at both national and local level, rigorous evaluation of new developments, an acknowledgement of complexity, and a need for mutual trust and accountability

Evidence and education: The braided roles of research, policy and practice in New Zealand

Calls for educational policy and practice to be evidence-based have become insistent, yet there is ongoing contestation of the purpose and value of educational research. This paper addresses criticism of research from practitioners, politicians and policy makers and from within the research community itself. It examines the impact of the PBRF in New Zealand and the call for evidence-based practice here, in the UK and the US. It draws attention to research studies that are possible models for a principled and methodologically inclusive way forward and develops a set of principles for guiding future development in teacher education and education research

Reviews of teacher education in New Zealand 1950–1998: Continuity, contexts and change

After a period of 40 years of relative political and professional consensus, teacher education in New Zealand since 1990 has undergone considerable change. This has taken place in a policy environment where the rhetoric of choice and accountability has been dominant and suspicion of professionals and academics widespread. This paper examines a series of major reports on teacher education in each decade since 1950, from the Consultative Committee chaired by Arnold Campbell in 1951 to the Green Paper of 1997, tracking both the professional expectations and the social contexts. It focuses in particular on the changing concepts of professionalism and accountability and argues that a new order needs to be built that incorporates wider perspectives but does not silence the professionals

A little knowledge being a dangerous thing?: Decile-based approaches to developing NCEA league tables

In recent years it has become increasingly common for New Zealand newspapers and magazines to publish “league tables” comparing schools’ performances in National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). Since these results strongly reflect socio-economic differences between schools, some media outlets have taken up the practice of arranging school results by socio-economic deciles and/or providing decile “averages”. Although this approach is intended to indicate more clearly “value added” than approaches that do not group schools by decile, this article urges caution towards decile-based comparisons on the grounds that schools have numerous contextual differences that are not reflected in decile ratings. The problem is illustrated here by comparing findings from research in two schools with the same decile rating. We conclude that taking account of deciles does not make judgments about school NCEA performance more defensible, and suggest that the practice be discouraged

Keeping things on track: School principals as managers

Literature about education in New Zealand and internationally over the past 30 years has increasingly focused on the need for effective school leadership. In New Zea- land a major Best Evidence Synthesis study (BES 2009) led to an emphasis on instructional leadership aimed at raising achievement. This emphasis has tended to undervalue management, linked to the status quo rather than change and improvement. However, extended interviews with rural primary principals revealed they saw management as crucial to responding to parental concerns, handling disruption, and keeping the school ‘on track’. Making use of local knowledge and taking advice, they held the core responsibility for an observable response. These principals believed that managing issues helped them build and sustain the trust of the school community, which was of value ‘next time’. Thus, aspects of management combine the relational and context-dependent work of school principals. Drawing on Mintzberg (1990) we argue that the recognition and valuing of management aspect of school leadership is crucial for principal effectiveness

Evidence and Education: The Braided Roles of Research, Policy and Practice in New Zealand

Calls for educational policy and practice to be evidence-based have become insistent, yet there is ongoing contestation of the purpose and value of educational research. This paper addresses criticism of research from practitioners, politicians and policy makers and from within the research community itself. It examines the impact of the PBRF in New Zealand and the call for evidence-based practice here, in the UK and the US. It draws attention to research studies that are possible models for a principled and methodologically inclusive way forward and develops a set of principles for guiding future development in teacher education and educational research

Knowledge through a collaborative network: a cross-cultural partnership

A recurring issue for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners is how new knowledge can be disseminated, critiqued, assessed and incorporated into policy development and practice. Campbell and Fulford examined strategies in a Canadian Education Ministry which was striving to incorporate research findings into policy debate. They evolved a useful framework indentifying six forms and stages of knowledge development related to research use in this context: generation of new knowledge, mobilisation, contextualisation, adaptation, application and integration. This paper uses their framework to explore links between research and practice in a collaborative cross-cultural partnership designed to develop greater capacity in teacher education in a Pacific country, and based on action, co-construction and reflection. It argues that there are blurred boundaries between knowledge production and its practical implementation, use and testing, that contextualisation and relationship building are crucial to knowledge mobilisation, and that knowledge is generated across all stages in the process