Completed regional hub funded projects

We are pleased to announce three more completed Central Hub projects. The teaching environments targeted in these projects are diverse, but they share a common aim to improve teaching and enhance learning outcomes for students.

Supporting accounting students to think critically

Led by Martin Turner from Victoria University of Wellington, and drawing on his previous research, the aim of this project was to develop a suite of Excel spreadsheets specifically designed to support authentic assessments in courses involving fi nancial statement analysis. Martin used course materials and assessment methods that required students to make insightful analysis and discerning judgements that would assist the development of their critical thinking skills – thereby enhancing their overall learning.

The key findings of this research show that assessments need to:

• be customised for individual students
• be authentic (dealing with real-world scenarios)
• involve regular formative feedback as part of an integrated set of interventions
• support accounting students to experience high-level task relevance
• contain high-level conceptions of learning
• be intrinsically motivating
• require deep learning as a necessary precondition to develop critical thinking skills in students.

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Identifying positive PTE tutor practices for Māori learner benefit

Anne Greenhalgh, Workforce Development Ltd, recently completed her hub project Towards the identification of key tutor practices that are positively correlated with successful completion for Māoristudents within a PTE environment. The project highlights what works well for Māori students in a private training establishment (PTE) environment and provides the groundwork for further exploration of the teaching practices of the tutors involved.

Using data from three previous years of Māori student completion and success, Anne identified courses with high achievement rates. Using questionnaires and focus groups, she was able to identify the characteristics of the learning environment in these courses that positively contributed to the Māori students’ success. These included being able to access learning through their language, having their culture valued, starting each day with a class meeting, singing waiata and using peer instruction and small group activities. The students described aspects of their day-to-day learning that made it enjoyable, gave them a feeling of support, and made it easier for them to achieve good results.

Most of the factors identified by the students are already acknowledged as good teaching practice for working with Māori learners and are closely aligned with the findings in our publication Hei Tauira, referred to later in the article. What is particularly important about this project is that the research focuses specifically on the learning environment of a PTE with a high proportion of Māori students, and the findings can provide valuable assistance to other PTEs across the sector. It is exciting for us to support projects at a regional level that focus on Māori success in tertiary education.

The second part of the project has started and involves working with the identified course tutors to describe in detail their teaching practices that contribute directly and specifically to Māori student achievement. That research will provide practical guidelines and resources for other teachers working in a similar PTE context.

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Teaching practicum in 21st-century New Zealand

This Central Hub project by Louise Starkey, Victoria University of Wellington and Peter Rawlins, Massey University, examined the learning experience of student teachers and their mentors during teaching practicums in order to describe a practicum model appropriate for 21st-century New Zealand.

Ideas about teaching, learning and mentoring are evolving, and the way that preservice teacher education programmes are organised is changing. There is a movement away from the traditional “craft” of teaching learnt through “apprentice” modelling to teaching as a profession learnt through reciprocal reflective academic study. This is where theoretical models inform teaching practice, and teachers appraise those models in the light of their teaching experience.

Louise and Peter’s report discusses the crucial role of peers in assisting student teachers to obtain meaning from their practicums. It highlights the nature of productive relationships between
student teachers and their associate teachers. The authors suggest the curriculum needs better alignment between the learning activities of student teachers and their daily work as registered teachers. Finally, the report describes how practicums could be designed to move understanding of practice from a specific context to a more holistic approach with multiple teaching strategies.

The authors intend to use the data to write practicum guidelines for schools, make course design recommendations for pre-service teacher courses, and generate material to assist student teachers to get the most value from their teaching practicums. Those three reports will form practical resources for others involved in pre-service teacher education. The reports will be linked to this report when they are published.

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