Professor H. E. Field To Go On Study Tour

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 13

Professor H. E. Field To Go On Study Tour

Dr. H. E. Field, professor [of education at the University of Canterbury and a [member of the National Advisory Council on the Trainting of Teachers, will go overseas next week to study closer relationships between universities and teachers’ colleges. The third report of the National Advisory Council provided for formal talks on the possibility of joint academic boards and committees to discuss the syllabus, examination, and qualification of teachers, Professor Field said yesterday. “In View of likely developments in Canterbury, I plan to visit the United States, Canada, and Britain, where interesting developments have occurred in the university training of teachers and university recognition of teachers’ college work.” Professor Field said proposals on further co-operation between the universities and teachers’ colleges, submitted by various education boards, had not yet been approved by the Minister of Education, birt the desire was clear. In a number of Canadian provinces modifications of the English institutes of education had been introduced, so that universities assumed responsibility for all professional training as well as the general education of teachers. After publication of the Robbins report in Britain, a number of universities there had developed schemes by

which work done in teachers’ colleges was recognised for a bachelor of education degree.

Professor Field will visit the University of Hawaii, the University of California at Berkeley, the San Francisco State University, the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Education Association conference, the universities of Alberta, Chicago (where Dr. R. J. Havighurst, who spent 1954 in Canterbury, is still professor of education), McGill, and Harvard (where Mr C. E. Beeby, former New Zealand Director of Education, is in the Graduate School of Education), the East Connecticut State College, and the Educational Testing Service at Princeton. The visit to Britain will be based on the London University Institute of Education, and Professor Field will visit Edinburgh and a number of provincial universities to study the pattern of bachelor of education degrees. Professor Field, who will be accompanied by his wife (Dr. Helen Field), will return by way of New Delhi and Hong Kong.