A biographical experience of teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

The article analyses initial teacher education (ITE) policy and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand over forty years. Central to the local ITE context was the incorporation of the ‘monotechnic’ colleges of teacher education into the university sector in the 1990s and 2000s, following New Zealand’s structural adjustments to the state education sector in 1989 and 1990. Policy ideologies of ‘marketisation’ and ‘professionalisation’ raised expectations of the abstract knowledge base and competencies that university-based teacher education graduates would acquire, while simultaneously degrading the rich immersion in cultural, curriculum and subject studies and learning by doing that were the hallmark of the former colleges. Indigenous staff and students arguably suffered most during the incorporation years. The final section looks to New Zealand’s future demographic, environmental and socio-economic imperatives and asks how ITE can be recast to enable teacher educators and beginning teachers to face the realities and challenges of the decades ahead.

Keywords:

• Teacher education
• education policy
• teacher professionalisation
• te reo Māori me ōna tikanga
• te tiriti o Waitangi

Acknowledgement

I am deeply grateful to my colleague Dr Bevan Erueti (Taranaki, Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Tūwharetoa) for his advice and guidance on te reo Māori me ōna tikanga.

Notes

1. Briefly in 1840 representatives of the British crown and some (but not all) Māori chiefs signed a treaty of cession called te tiriti o Waitangi (Māori version) or the treaty of Waitangi (English version). There are three articles of the Māori version that are respectively manifested by the terms

kāwanatanga (governorship), the Crown has the right to govern; rangatiratanga (chieftainship), Māori kin groups have the right to own and manage collective assets; and ōritetanga (equality), Māori individuals have the same rights and responsibilities as non-Māori New Zealanders. (Wyeth et al. 2010, 305)