for primary teaching given over to papers most likely to raise education reform
issues has been reducing. In the late 1990s, the New Zealand Ministry of Education
began to fund three rather than four year teaching degrees for primary teachers and
this become the norm for all institutions. In the process of reducing the degree,
many papers that would have introduced students to political issues became
optional or were dropped altogether. An example is that in the 1990s I used to teach
a second year paper,‘Sociology of Education’, at the University of Waikato. This
paper no longer exists, a casuality of the reduction of teaching time.
On the other hand, the New Zealand situation has remained one where learning
about educational policy and politics should still be an important part of ITE. One
of the‘Graduating Teacher Standards’established by the New Zealand Teachers
Council (now the Education Council of New Zealand) requires that beginning
teachers‘have an understanding of education within the bicultural, multicultural,
social, political, economic and historical contexts of Aotearoa New Zealand’
(Education Council 2015 ). This means that all teaching degree qualifications in
New Zealand should still include a component on social and political issues in
relation to education. At the University of Waikato, for instance, this is explicitly
provided through a second year paper on‘Social Issues in Aotearoa New Zealand
Education’which is compulsory for most primary teacher education students. In
this respect New Zealand teacher education is still a far cry from, for instance, the
situation in England where most students pass through a one-year PGCE or through
school-led initial teacher education programmes such‘School Direct’or‘Teach
First’. In New Zealand there are one-year postgraduate courses and one university
does sponsor a Teach First programme but most primary students still do a
three-year undergraduate teaching degree.
Changing student perspectives are part of the picture as well. New Zealand
university students today are encouraged to be more instrumental about their uni-
versity education than their parents’generation through user-pays tertiary education
fees introduced in the 1990s and by the secondary school assessment system of
counting assessment credits towards their school-leaver qualification, the National
Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). Many New Zealanders under 30
have also known nothing other than neo-liberal policies, leading to some decidedly
conservative positions on social and educational policy that need a careful response
by their university teachers. For instance in 2011, I gave a lecture that criticised the
contentious National Standards policy and a small group of students complained
directly to the Minister of Education’soffice. Such incidents have served to teach
academics to be careful in the political climate that has come to dominate New
Zealand life.
University-based professional learning or continuing professional development
for practising teachers has also become an increasingly difficult space within which
to interrogate the GERM. New Zealand used to have a permanent advisory service
based in universities but in recent years those working in this area are typically on
one-year contracts and working within frameworks and within programme that are
not intended to encourage critique. The focus of professional learning has also
narrowed considerable with many curriculum areas no longer supported and a
404 M. Thrupp