facilitate a shared understanding of common knowledge and skills across and
within specialist areas. This generic and specialized content was established prior to
the start of the program through conducting a national survey of 92 stakeholders
and 65 nominated individuals with interests in the specialist areas. Over 400 survey
responses fed into the initial program design, and ongoing development occurs
through consultation with seven Stakeholder Advisory groups, including a Māori,^1
Pasifika and Multiethnic Advisory Group that cross all specialist areas, ensuring
relevance for the diversity of students from different backgrounds and with different
needs across New Zealand.
The program is based on a technology-enabled Community of Inquiry and
Interprofessional Practice model. These three design dimensions: technology-
enabled; interprofessional; and inquiry-based will be discussed in the sections
below, with descriptions of how each one of these is applied in the program. For
each of the three dimensions, we report on data gathered from three cohorts of
teachers who have graduated from the program. The teachers completed online
surveys at the beginning of thefirst year andfinal year of their 2-year program. The
surveys covered a wide range of questions, but of particular relevance to this
chapter were those questions related to interprofessional practice and learning in a
community of practice, technology-enabled learning, and inquiry learning. The
survey at the beginning of year 1 asked participants to rate their perceptions of the
importance of each of these aspects of the program on a 4-point Likert scale from
very important (1) to not important (4), and to rate their sense of preparedness to
address each of these aspects of the program from very prepared (1) to not prepared
(4). The end of program survey repeated the importance scale and also asked
teachers to rate how well they thought they had achieved in each of these areas from
very well achieved (1) to not achieved (4).
Table17.1provides information on the number of teachers enrolled in the
program in each year, the number who agreed to participate in the research and the
number who completed the surveys.
For each cohort, demographic data were collected in thefirst survey. In relation
to all three cohorts, the majority of teachers were aged between 40 and 55, were
female, and identified as of New Zealand or European descent (Table17.2).
Participants in the study represented all seven endorsement areas as shown in
Table17.3.
For the purposes of this discussion, data for all three cohorts have been combined.
This is because there were no significant differences between the cohorts over the
4-year period of this project. Data from all three cohorts aligned in terms of their
responses to the model of learning. Discussion of these three elements of interpro-
fessional practice, inquiry-based learning, and technology-enabled teaching and
learning will follow in the next sections along with the teachers’perceptions of the
(^1) Indigenous people of New Zealand.
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