Teacher Training Evaluation Urged

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 12

Teacher Training Evaluation Urged

In an address to the Geographical Society’s conference in Christchurch yesterday, Mr J. M. Renner, a senior lecturer in the secondary division of the Christchurch Teachers’ College, said that it was time New Zealand evaluated the development of projects overseas for the “training of teachers of teachers.”

“In New Zealand at present, the teacher-trainer must cope as best he can,” Mr Renner said. “No formal education in this field is available, and any standards and sense of purpose a lecturer might have gained are the result of his personal study and experience.” Using the example of training suggested for teachers of geography, Mr Renner said that present methods had

meant only a “parasitism” of overseas methods.

But. he added, many of the overseas developments did not

meet New Zealand’s specific requirements, and he recommended that a small research

group, linked to a teachers’ college or to a university, would be of great value; their findings could be channelled immediately into education through pre-service and inservice training. “We must recognise that our education system is distinctive—borrowed, perhaps, but distinctive,” he said. “We must face the fact that not enough of our time has been devoted to identifying and researching our needs. “We must give urgent priority to finding answers to our own problems. If we borrow we must be prepared to modify our ideas boldly, along with our techniques and materials. to suit ourselves.” At best, Mr Renner suggested, many of New Zea-

land’s solutions to the problems of teacher-education were dogmatic—“snap decisions, as it were, with little idea about implications and

about relationships with esfr ablished educational theory and practice. “At times we grasp at a thoroughly researched project from overseas and, with insufficient time or money for local applied research, we thrust it on to the New Zealand educational scene,” Mr Renner went on. “If it fails to provide all the answers, it is condemned as educational clap-trap. “Small wonder that many of us rubbish cynically all educational innovation. “I am' thinking of team teaching, simulation and programmed learning as recent examples.” What was needed, he said, was a research and development unit for, say, geographic education, attached to a teachers’ college staffed by seconded secondary teachers, university staff and teachers’ college lecturers. “More teachers’ college staff are needed, too, in our schools.” Mr Renner suggested. “There is some evidence to suggest that inadequate contact with the business of teaching may result in an unrealistic appreciation of the demands of the classroom. “Teachers’ colleges would, in short, benefit from closer links with the outside world, with schools, with universities, with research and develpment projects. “But colleges can manage

these changes only by being offered more liberal staffing, and by being granted more responsibility to develop as they see fit”