Grappling with the complexity of the New Zealand Curriculum: Next steps in exploring the NZC in initial teacher education (original) (raw)
Related papers
Initial teacher education and the New Zealand curriculum
2010
New Zealand teacher educators are faced with the challenge of how to prepare their student teachers to become beginning teachers who are able to base their teaching upon the national curriculum. To meet this challenge, designers of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes need to consider the interface between ITE curriculum and the legislated curriculum for schools. This paper looks at some of the historical influences upon the curriculum in both initial teacher education and schools by examining wider contextual influences. We point out that in ITE there has been an ongoing search for the most appropriate knowledge base for teaching, a search that is made problematic due to differing views of knowledge, teaching and learning We argue that in spite of these differences, there is benefit in an ITE curriculum that has a close relationship with the school curriculum in terms of what is learned and the teaching and learning approaches. New Zealand has a revised national curriculum for schools (Ministry of Education, 2007) that schools are expected to implement from 2010. In preparing student teachers to become beginning teachers, ITE providers are in a phase of designing learning experiences that link ITE curriculum and school curriculum. This process is problematic, for there are various internal and external pressures that lead to a crowded ITE curriculum and challenge ITE autonomy and innovation in curriculum decisionmaking.
Initial teacher eduction and the a New Zealand curriculum
Waikato Journal of Education, 2010
New Zealand teacher educators are faced with the challenge of how to prepare their student teachers to become beginning teachers who are able to base their teaching upon the national curriculum. To meet this challenge, designers of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes need to consider the interface between ITE curriculum and the legislated curriculum for schools. This paper looks at some of the historical influences upon the curriculum in both initial teacher education and schools by examining wider contextual influences. We point out that in ITE there has been an ongoing search for the most appropriate knowledge base for teaching, a search that is made problematic due to differing views of knowledge, teaching and learning We argue that in spite of these differences, there is benefit in an ITE curriculum that has a close relationship with the school curriculum in terms of what is learned and the teaching and learning approaches. New Zealand has a revised national curriculum for schools (Ministry of Education, 2007) that schools are expected to implement from 2010. In preparing student teachers to become beginning teachers, ITE providers are in a phase of designing learning experiences that link ITE curriculum and school curriculum. This process is problematic, for there are various internal and external pressures that lead to a crowded ITE curriculum and challenge ITE autonomy and innovation in curriculum decisionmaking.
Waikato Journal of Education, 2010
. The front end of the document includes key competencies and a statement describing each learning area. The language and literacy team chose to explore student teacher understandings of the English essence statement and the way in which that learning area is structured. The mathematics education team explored student teacher understandings of and implications for the "thinking" key competency for the teaching and learning of mathematics. Data were collected through in-class observations and tasks, and the analysis of aspects of student assessment work. The findings highlighted the value of an explicit focus on a particular facet of the NZC along with the challenges student teachers experience in envisaging how this might play out in practice.
Understanding and Implementing the New Zealand Curriculum Handbook
Over the past eight years, 2008 – 2015, education professionals have continued to consider, analyse and understand the depth of the statements in the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum document. Understanding and Implementing the NZC Handbook documents and develops these concepts and issues about the NZ Curriculum. Teachers need to understand these so that the true intentions of the NZC are implemented. Many of these concepts are clouded by the covert use of particular educational terminology. These ‘special words’ convey extensive implications when further understanding is synthesized. Some of the book’s features include: ▪ The implications of the Vision statement, the Principle and Key Competencies. ▪ Strategies to create full Treaty of Waitangi partnership, develop coherence and include the values in teaching and learning. ▪ The meaning and implications of future-focused learning. ▪ Can we teach ‘thinking’? ▪ Why should we use Wicked Problems and Systems Thinking? ▪ What might be missing from the NZC? The book includes readings and questions to engage teacher-educators to consider and discuss the concepts and issues. The book will provide an excellent resource for teacher trainees, or might be used to stimulate professional development of experienced teachers, either individually or in groups.
Journal of Education for Teaching, 2010
This paper reports on the research project ‘Shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the integration of the new New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) in initial and continuing teacher education’, which was funded by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative of the New Zealand government. The project maps the learning processes of practitioner‐researchers in their initiatives in the integration of the new NZC in their teacher education practices. The project is informed by discursive approaches that emphasise the instability of signification and the location of the subject in language. It used a range of specific conceptual and pedagogical tools designed to bridge theoretical debates relevant to the implementation of the NZC and the research itself. This research focuses on teacher educators’ narratives and strategies used to negotiate their theories/practices and subjectivities within the complexities and constraints of their own narratives, institutions and communities. The first part of this paper provides a brief overview of the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the research, and three of the conceptual tools used to bridge theoretical debates. The second part presents a snapshot of one case study, offering a situated analysis of a small part of the data collected in a graduate teacher education course focusing on social and cultural studies. This paper is written with a view to illustrate the benefits and challenges of engaging with theory through conceptual tools developed with the aim to create different possibilities for the production of meaning around pedagogical practices in teacher education.
aims of education and initial teacher education programmes in New Zealand
2016
Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes must take into account much more than just the current school curricula; they must also prepare student teachers for entry into a teaching environment that is likely to be very different from whence they came. At the same time, funding constraints, quality standards and potentially opposed stakeholder expectations provide an ongoing challenge. The New Zealand school system is undergoing major change as it introduces a new national curriculum focussed on outcomes. This new curriculum requires schools to design and review their own curricula within the framework of national philosophy and guidelines rather than according to prescriptions relating to the subjects that make up the curriculum. New Ministry of Education initiatives targeting senior students and Mori and Pasifika students require teachers to keep what is best for the student at the forefront of their teaching and decision-making. ITE programmes must ensure these considerations are...
Currently the New Zealand school system is undergoing changes as it introduces a new national curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum is focussed on outcomes and provides the underlying philosophy, guidelines and framework for schools to design and review their curriculum. In addition, teachers need to incorporate several other Ministry initiatives such as Schools Plus, Ka Hikitea – Managing for Success – the Maori Education Strategy from 2008 to 2012 and The Pasifika Education Plan, 2006-2010. For all of these initiatives, teachers need to keep what is best for the student at the forefront of their teaching and decision-making. Initial teacher education programmes need to respond to these initiatives, in terms of overarching philosophy, course structure and practical applications in courses. We have used the teacher education for the future project to help us identify key aspects of our initial teacher education programmes that need attention. This project is very timely in that it ...
2008
Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes must take into account much more than just the current school curricula; they must also prepare student teachers for entry into a teaching environment that is likely to be very different from whence they came. At the same time, funding constraints, quality standards and potentially opposed stakeholder expectations provide an ongoing challenge. The New Zealand school system is undergoing major change as it introduces a new national curriculum focussed on outcomes. This new curriculum requires schools to design and review their own curricula within the framework of national philosophy and guidelines rather than according to prescriptions relating to the subjects that make up the curriculum. New Ministry of Education initiatives targeting senior students and MƗori and Pasifika students require teachers to keep what is best for the student at the forefront of their teaching and decisionmaking. ITE programmes must ensure these considerations are evident in their overarching philosophy, course structure and practice. Teacher education programmes at the University of Canterbury are currently under review. As part of this process, we used the international Teacher Education for the Future project to help us identify aspects of the programmes needing attention. We asked stakeholders (teachers, student teachers and teacher educators) to rank the aims of education and their preferred future focus for ITE programmes. This paper reports the findings and discusses their implication for the design and facilitation of the university's ITE courses.
This research project tracked the engagement of eight teacher educators with theoretical discussions related to knowledge societies and post-modernity and traced the effect of this exercise on their conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the incorporation of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) document (2007) in initial and in-service teacher education during 2009 and 2010. As part of the project, teacher educators undertook pedagogical initiatives with students in initial teacher education (ite) and teachers from schools who were engaged in teacher professional learning, and they researched their own practice. the project sought to contribute to the understanding of how to best support teacher educators, teachers and student teachers to explore and critically engage with twenty-first century conceptualisations of knowledge and learning, and how they affected pedagogical practices.
Student Teacher Knowledge: Knowing and Understanding Subject Matter in the New Zealand Context
Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 2002
In the past few decades there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of early childhood education in New Zealand. Concomitant with this has been the move towards professionalising the early childhood sector through a national curriculum and increased expectations for its practitioners. This paper examines issues relating to the changing role of early childhood teachers as they manage the implementation of the New Zealand curriculum. There is no consensus about what makes up the professional knowledge base for early childhood educators. This paper explores the nature of professional knowledge and suggests that subject matter knowledge may be more important than previously recognised for early childhood educators.