particular, need to introduce candidates to the contested nature of“quality teaching”
and of the material conditions under which classroom teaching are facilitated and
constrained. This in turn requires teacher educators to adopt a critical stance toward
officially preferred discourses of teaching, such as the QTD, rather than simply take
them as given.
Unless the State is prepared to invest sufficiently to create the material conditions
for teachers’work that are necessary for them to be able to engage in activities that
have a demonstrable impact on learning, nothing much is likely to change by way
of students’learning outcomes. Paradoxically, in comparison with teachers in other
countries, New Zealand school teachers on average do better in promoting optimum
learning conditions for students, despite having fewer resources and less time to do
so. Feedback from students would nonetheless suggest that a sizeable minority of
teachers need structured support to adopt the basic pedagogical competencies
necessary to optimise learning relations that are otherwise commonplace among the
workforce as a whole.
Normative models of teaching such as the QTD are not only of limited use in the
endeavour to improve the quality of teaching, they may adversely masque the
material conditions of teachers’work that compromise this endeavour in practical
concrete ways. It is unclear, in this regard, the extent to which the missing basic
competencies are attributable to material conditions of work or personal occupa-
tional dispositions but, in any event, the QTD appears to have considered only the
latter possibility, which is insulting both to teachers as persons and their profes-
sional commitments to learners.
Reflexive scholarship by teacher educators on the origins, purposes and effects
of normative teaching discourses, and their own occupational positioning within
these, are both equally important if teaching candidates are to receive a realist
preparation for the local conditions in which they will develop their craft and
professional identities.
References
Alexander, R. J. (2012). Moral panic, miracle cures and educational policy: What can we really
learn from international comparison?Scottish Educational Review, 44(1), 4–21.
Alton-Lee, A. (2003).Quality teaching for diverse students in schooling: Best evidence synthesis
iteration (BES). Wellington: Ministry of Education.
Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T., & Teddy, L. (2007).Te Kōtahitanga Phase 3
Whānaungatanga: Establishing a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations in mainstream
secondary school classrooms. Report to the Ministry of Education. Wellington: Author.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith
(Eds., Trans.). London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Hattie, J. (2009).Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement.
London: Routledge.
Jensen, B. (2012).Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia. Carlton: VIC.:
The Grattan Institute.
504 J. O’Neill