Three-Year Course For Teachers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30560, 1 October 1964, Page 13

Three-Year Course For Teachers

The training of teachers is a keypoint in the education of a nation and is rightly, the subject of review from time to time. At present, as the result of recommendations of the recent Commission on Education and in a desire to follow world trends, we are about to embark on a lengthened period of training in New Zealand. The National Advisory Council on the Training of Teachers has now made specific recommendations to the Minister of Education on both the length and the nature of concurrent courses for both primary and secondary training. Staffs of teachers’ colleges who have long advocated a lengthened training period, have been busy in working out the necessary objectives and practical details of such courses. Their enthusiasm and hard work have, to some extent, influenced the decision to advocate an early start and capitalise on the output of energy generated by this keenness which pervades all the New Zealand colleges.

The Minister of Education has accepted the advice to commence three year training for primary teachers but has not fixed a starting time. He has, however, arranged for conferences of the heads

of subject departments from all the teachers’ colleges to meet each week at Ardmore where details of course prescriptions are discussed. He has also authorised the building of additions to some colleges and the building of hew colleges in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Longer training will require not only more accommodation but also extra staffing and additional equipment

The calibre of the staff is of greatest importance and the nature of the additional staffing dependent to a great extent on salaries offered, will be influenced by salary negotiations being undertaken at present. The work of the staff grows more complex each year. Schools have the important work of making children literate, able to speak well and to calculate efficiently, as an essential aim in primary classes. However, they have much wider functions which depend on both the kind of education we design and in the way we give it. Each year more is known of the learning process, of the different endowments of children, of the stages of development, of social behaviour, of mental health and so on. We know that we want more mature teachers who should be both better educated and wiser. Our aim in teacher training is to produce in each student well-developed personal qualities, a good academic training, and superior professional equipment.

We believe that this can best be achieved by a redesigned three year course and fully support the recommendation that each college commence its new three year course with the whole of a new intake of students. The proposed course is for all students to take English, professional studies and selected studies. English is to be taken for the first two years by all students with special attention being given student’s own use of spoken and written English.

Professional studies are subdivided into education, the curriculum, and practical training, and are defined by the National Advisory Council as follows: Education.— This course should consist of two main parts: educational psychology, including a study of child development * from infancy to adolescence, with special reference to an area of differentiated professional training; and studies in the theory of education, including the aims and purposes of education in New Zealand and the historical, social, and institutional influences

that bear on the school system.” “The Curriculum.—This should include the organisation, social life, curriculum and methods of the primary and intermediate school; it should allow for substantial courses in the content and methods of the syllabuses in language and arithmetic; and it should provide special reference to one or other of three areas of differentiation, viz: the class range, Primers to Standard 2, or the class range Standard 2 to Form 1, or the class range Standard 4 to Form II.” There are good reasons for extending this last range to Form IV for some students.

“Practical Training.—Under this heading should be included all practical work done in connexion with the student’s professional studies —observation and study of children, guided observation in normal schools and in ordinary classrooms, and teaching practice. The council considers that the time spent on teaching sections should be restricted to a few weeks in the first year and increase progressively in the second and third years of the course.” It is not proposed to undertake more teaching practice in the three year course than is at present done in the two year course. We believe that school experience in the second and third years will be done with more understanding and self-criticism and be more valuable than that undertaken with younger students at present.

Selected Studies known at present as “credits,” are to be chosen by students from English literature, history, geography, science, mathematics, art and crafts, physical education, music, and other subjects approved by the Director of Education. The council hopes that foreign languages, particularly French will be added to this list. Through selected studies we hope to be able to improve each student’s general education and give him the opportunity to study in depth. Each subject will normally be taught at three levels (Stages A, B, and C) with each stage counting as a unit Students are to complete five units with most students taking one subject to Stage C level. Passes in units towards a university degree will satisfy requirements for selected studies provided a reasonable number of units are in teaching subjects. Thus we hope to see teacher trainees taking more advantage of opportunities for doing work at universities and ultimately, a greater proportion of teachers with university degrees. In the future we may see some of the work done in teachers’ colleges recognised by the universities as equivalent to work done within their walls, and credited towards a degree. Whatever the outcome, we believe that we will be able to improve the training of teachers.

The ever-increasing demands of longer schooling, a more complex society, and rapidly-extending frontiers of learning, will best be met by teaching which stems from the judgements of responsible professionally trained teachers. There are many such teachers at present. They have learned by experience, by attending refresher courses, by study and travel. Such professional growth will continue to occur. We hope it will develop ■ from wider foundations and from a deeper understanding in teachers who commence their work both better educated and at least one year older.