Teacher Education Forum of Aotearoa New Zealand (TEFANZ)
Te Rauika Titohu Kaiako o Aotearoa
Annual Report
August 6th 2015
General
Since our last Annual General meeting 9th July 2014 the ITE context has continued to evolve nationally. A range of strategic decisions have been made by providers in relation to delivery of programmes as they attempt to plan for the future. Decisions range from suspending graduate diplomas or BTchg programmes to concentrate on postgraduate programmes, to offering blended delivery across all their programmes. The current media releases publicising an oversupply of teachers is not helpful to ITE programmes. The teacher census being carried out by the Ministry of Education will confirm large numbers of teachers in the 60+ bracket which must impact on demand.
The award of exemplary programmes to all universities that offer Initial Teacher Education is positive recognizing the capacity of institutions to offer programmes at this level. However there have been significant issues with the management of the contract bidding process with delays and breach of confidence. In addition the monitoring processes surrounding these programmes are time consuming and unwieldy with each institution managing 4 different processes: Ministry contract monitoring, Education Council Monitoring, Martin Jenkins external monitoring and their own evaluation processes. This is putting enormous stress on ITE programme leaders. Māori Medium and ECE exemplary programme contracts have also been awarded and will be announced in the near future. TEFANZ endorses the inclusion of these two vital groups that contribute to high quality teacher education.
The new Education Council New Zealand: Mataū Aotearoa is in place as from July 1st and it will be interesting to see what impact this will have on ITE processes and the level of consultation that will occur around decision making. While TEFANZ made a nomination to be represented on the Council we were unsuccessful. Once again ITE is underrepresented. The Education Council’s approach will be to propose priorities for action in the key strategic areas of Initial Teacher Education, Professional Leadership and Professional Learning and Development, seeking input and feedback. I have been invited as TEFANZ chair to a meeting of stakeholder groups with the new chair Barbara Ala’alatoa on August 25th. – a positive start.
Of great concern to ITE is workplace planning for both meeting the demands of schooling and the ECE sector but also attracting people into the ITE sector with appropriate practice and research base to ensure we maintain quality. Recent media releases have not been helpful and we look forward to the publication of data from the new Teacher Census being carried out by the Ministry.
Finance and Administration
The TEFANZ Financial Report is tabled. The Executive approved the report at their meeting on 19th March 2015 in order to meet the requirements for an incorporated society’s year-end reporting. The finances have been managed by the University of Waikato, (at no cost) through the Faculty of Education. The responsibility for financial management/oversight is aligned with the TEFANZ Chair’s institution. Sincere thanks go to Amy De Toni for the additional work she has under taken undertake on behalf of TEFANZ.
The 2014 AGM agreed that membership subscriptions would be tied to ITE EFTS not institutional EFTS.
$1000 for institutions with fewer than 500 teacher education EFTS and $2000 for institutions with more than 500 teacher education EFTS.
Motion: 2015 member subscriptions remain at the current level.
Constitution
Further work has been completed on the constitution since the last AGM where it was approved in principle. The final version will be circulated and placed on the web site. The revised constitution calls for nominations of new executive members at the biennial conference which is in 2016.
Executive Committee
The Executive has met face-to-face twice over the past year: 19th March in Wellington, and in Auckland 6th August in conjunction with the TEFANZ Forum. As usual, communication has also been via email and telephone.
TEFANZ Member Organisations
Auckland University
Auckland University of Technology
Bethlehem Tertiary Institute
Eastern Institute of Technology new member
Laidlaw College
Manukau Institute of Technology –
Massey University
New Zealand Tertiary College
Open Polytechnic/Kuratina
Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand
Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi
Unitec Institute of Technology
University of Auckland
University of Canterbury
University of Otago
University of Waikato
Victoria University
WINTEC, Waikato Institute of Technology
TEFANZ Preparedness to Teach Surveys:
You will recall from the last AGM that following three years of iterative piloting, the TEFANZ Entry and Exit Preparedness to Teach surveys for ECE, Primary and Secondary student teachers were fully implemented for the first time in 2013.
In developing the surveys, TEFANZ aim was to develop a robust set of national data that, over time, would provide ammunition to counter negative anecdotal comments regarding ITE. Another aim was for each participating institution to have access to their own data set which could be used to support programme review and improvement, and highlight areas for further investigation. NZTC (Education Council) has confirmed that the surveys will meet their requirement re providers gaining information on their graduating students.
2015 survey administration:
The agreement around cyclical implementation means that entry and exit surveys will be administered to students entering one-year programmes in 2015. Exit surveys only will be administered to those graduating from three-year qualifications in 2015. A reminder to plan for this in your end of year programmes. We encourage as many TEFANZ member providers as possible to support their students to participate in the 2015 iteration of the surveys. TEFANZ will cover the costs of the institutional and aggregated reports for this year. We believe that this is one tangible outcome/benefit of being a member of TEFANZ
Employer satisfaction survey
With regard to other research initiatives, TEFANZ Executive advertised a RFP to scope the literature around Employer Satisfaction Surveys. This will inform the development of an Employer Satisfaction Survey that will be able to be administered nationally by TEFANZ members to meet the Education Council requirements. The contract was won and the literature review completed by the University of Waikato. We are asking for comments form members on the questions posed in the literature and what is seen as the priority in the employer satisfaction survey. Getting feedback form your external stakeholders would be useful for TEFANZ before we tale the next step of development and trialing of the survey. This RFP will be released later in the year.
Education Futures Collaboration
TEFANZ is a foundation member of the Education Futures collaboration. We are developing a MESH around Educative mentoring led by Frances Langdon.
ITE teacher registration – After struggling with processes around getting our staff registered by NZTC a common template to evidence Registered Teacher Criteria in an ITE setting was developed and agreed upon by NZTC. This was circulated to TEFANZ members and hopefully this has assisted you.
TEFANZ Representation and Liaison
The Executive aims to continue with the strong efforts made by key people since TEFANZ commenced to ensure its position as the national voice for teacher education in the policy arena. In many cases this has been achieved via active participation in committees/working groups and meetings with key policy and teacher groups such as the MoE, NZTC, PPTA, NZEI.
Since the July 2014 AGM TEFANZ Executive has met with:
- Rob McIntosh, Deborah Wansborough, NZTC to discuss transition to the Education Council and issues pertaining to ITE
- NZEI Louise Green (Pres) & Grant Reid (EO)
- Bronwyn Cross, deputy general secretary, PPTA to discuss stand on the Education Council
Representation:
TEFANZ is represented on
- the Tertiary Teaching Awards by Mary Simpson.
- The Ministry of Education digital technologies in the curriculum working party by Louise Starkey
- The NZTC steering group on initial teacher education graduate entry by Lexie Grudnoff
- I have been invited to present at the Normal Schools Conference in September about TEFANZ
Submissions
NZTC consultation on academic entry requirements for candidates without UE to enter undergraduate ITE programmes.
Review of the positioning and content of digital technologies in The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa.
Louise Starkey our representative on this committee has provided an update of progress.
There seems to be strong support for having some form of key competency that is associated with digital competency. She is also advocating for the infusion of digital technologies into learning areas/subjects with discipline specific uses leading to powerful learning. We are requesting that TEFANZ endorse Louise’s stance.
She is also requesting that institutions comment on
- i) the impact on your current programme structures and staffing if secondary schools have a sudden increase in demand for computational thinking, computing or computer science teachers.- ie, do you have the academic staff to prepare teachers to teach this subject and could you recruit suitable graduates? Would it be easy/difficult to make any changes that you may need? Any stats on current students with computer science type majors could provide useful data if we would like to make a case for scholarships for recruitment.
- ii) the impact on your current programmes/staffing if primary schools were required to teach computer programming/ computational thinking.- ie, do you have the academic staff to prepare teachers to teach this topic/skill? Would it be easy/difficult to integrate into your current primary programme(s)? [From a VUW perspective I think the learning/content will be straightforward to introduce/integrate but there will be interesting conversations about which academic staff members should teach it, (maths vs technology specialists?) and in which particular courses- this may be influenced by the decision of placement in the curriculum]
Website
The University of Waikato’s Faculty of Education computer support have continued to provide generous support in the maintenance of the TEFANZ website.
TEFANZ Events
2016 TEFANZ Conference
We invite expressions of interest to host the 2016 conference.
General
I would like to acknowledge the Executive for their support and for the work that they undertake to ensure that TEFANZ is on the policy radar and that the biennial cycle of Conferences and Forums continue to take place despite the increasing pressures on teacher educators and providers. We are fortunate to have passionate teacher educators who undertake the work of the Executive as a service to TEFANZ, and to teacher education.
I would also like to give a big thank-you to members for your participation in TEFANZ matters and events, and for your commitment to our organization. The growth in member institutions over the last few years is fantastic- without you there would be no Teacher Education Forum of Aotearoa New Zealand (TEFANZ) Te Rauika Titohu Kaiako o Aotearoa.
Ngā mihi nui.
Bev Cooper
TEFANZ Chair