influence on the professional culture of New Zealand primary teaching has been the
New Zealand Principals Federation (NZPF), most primary principals are members
of this organisation as well. Teacher education mainly within Government-run
teachers colleges (incorporated into universities since the 1990s) has also played an
important role, as has the Government-run New Zealand Council for Educational
Research (NZCER). That a single institution like the NZCER could be so influential
reflects the intimacy of the New Zealand education system. Its small size has
facilitated easy communication amongst schools, principals and teachers.
These features, along with being able to observe the experiences of other coun-
tries further down the track with global education reform, help to explain why New
Zealand primary teachers have strongly fought the more obvious manifestations of
GERM. Led by a generally unified NZEI and NZPF, primary teachers and principals
have waged a number of feisty campaigns in recent years. One was against the
introduction of a high stakes assessment system‘National Standards’from 2010,
another fought against proposed increases in class sizes in 2011, and a third involved
the rejection of a 2013 clustering initiative called‘Investing in Educational Success’.
The class sizes campaign attracted public support and the Government quickly
backed away from the proposal whereas the contestation of National Standards and
Investing in Educational Success have been less successful in terms of shifting
policy. The NZEI and NZPF have also campaigned more against global education
reform more generally. As a result, most New Zealand primary teachers probably
have some understanding of the GERM and concern about it.
Yet although the professional culture of New Zealand primary teachers has been
robust, there are vulnerabilities. Teachers often fail to make connections between the
global and the local whether through lack of analysis or through wishful thinking.
Such lack of understanding may sometimes be self-serving within the context of a
competitive, performative education policy environment but often it will be quite
genuine. The shifts in teacher education as discussed below are unlikely to be
helping. Another vulnerability is that teachers tend to give way where they believe
others know better. As Locke and colleagues have noted, a teacher convinced that
‘the authorative other knows best’is‘...more likely to sacrifice autonomy out of
deference to the expertise of the other and that other’s judgement’(Locke et al. 2005 ,
p. 564). Both of these vulnerabilities are relevant to the examples of New Zealand
primary teachers not being critical enough discussed later.
27.2 Changes in University-Based Initial Teacher
Education and Professional Learning for Practising
TeachersNearly all primary initial teacher education (ITE) in New Zealand is still
university-based but, in the same way that has been extensively documented in
other countries such as England (see Furlong 2013 ), the proportion of programmes
27 Helping Teachers and School Leaders to Become... 403