performance management strategies in order to develop basic competencies and
dispositions necessary to create the same sort of optimum learning relations that
already exist in the great majority of New Zealand school classrooms.- Fourth, externally mandated assessment compliance workload is more likely to
be increasing rather than decreasing over time. This reduces the time available to
engage in pedagogically oriented activities that are argued to have the greatest
impact on learning.
Thefirst two of these trends cannot realistically be addressed through teacher
development and performance management at the school level. They require sig-
nificant additional investment by the state. The material conditions of teachers’
work are the state’s responsibility, not that of individual schools which have only
limited local room for manoeuvre within the shrinkingfiscal envelope determined
by government.
The third trend is a shared responsibility of professional associations and the
State on behalf of all teachers. However, the issue remains a chicken and egg
conundrum: Do some teachers not create optimum learning relations because of the
material conditions in which they work or because they do not know how, or
because they choose not to? While the state presumes that teachers are culpable in
this regard, the assumption is by no means a reasonable conclusion when all the
relevant evidence is evaluated.
The fourth trend is a matter of priorities. Prior to the 1990s, it used to be the case
in many OECD countries that teachers spent the majority of their time at work
teaching. Periodic surveys since then have consistently demonstrated that ever
larger proportions of teachers’time are spent in NPM compliance activities and
meetings outside the classroom. To the extent that this increasing proportion of time
is meaningfully devoted to activities that have a demonstrable beneficial impact on
the quality of student learning, it is feasible to argue its merits despite the personal
cost to teachers involved. However, it is far from clear that this is the case.
Specifically, for example, thefindings of a 2010 national assessment workload
survey (NZPPTA 2010 ) suggest that a substantial proportion of this growing
workload may be devoted to compliance and other rituals removed from the
classroom that have limited or no demonstrable impact on the quality of teaching or
learning. If the priority is the quality of teaching and learning, compliance costs
must be reduced and empty performativity rituals eliminated from schooling.
33.6 Conclusion
Teachers’individual and collective capacity to create optimum learning conditions
or“the quality of teaching”is a shared responsibility of state, teacher educators,
professional associations or unions, schools and teachers themselves. Central to this
is acceptance that conditions of work and quality of teaching are inextricably woven
together, and therefore must be analysed in tandem. Teacher educators, in
33 Teacher Educators’Responsibility to Prepare Candidates... 503