Taking Stock - Tertiary Practitioner Education Training and Support

Written by Projects International

Date - June 2010

Foreword

Ako Aotearoa’s core business is to support tertiary education organisations and their staff to provide the best possible outcomes for all learners engaged in post-compulsory education.

A key driver of high quality tertiary education is the capability of staff in the sector and the way they are supported to develop their practice as educators. It seemed to us that the way in which this is achieved in New Zealand is singularly complex (which may or may not be problematic) and – to say the least – somewhat confused: for instance an initial scan of qualifications listings indicated there were over 100 different qualifications available for tertiary educators in New Zealand. We were also concerned to hear anecdotally of professional development capacity being lost in some
parts of the sector.

We therefore commissioned Projects International to undertake this stock-take of qualifications and formal and informal support available to new tertiary teachers in New Zealand. I would like to thank Martin Eadie, Chris Knol and Brigid Thorns from Projects International for their enthusiasm and professional approach to this work as the various complexities unravelled. I believe they have done an excellent job and provided a comprehensive landscape of what is happening in the sector.

Particular thanks to all those organisations and people that freely gave their time to provide data and share their views for this study. I would especially like to acknowledge Roger Smyth and his team at the Ministry of Education for collating the enrolment and completion data for this project.

Projects International’s brief was to present the data as objectively as possible, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion from this report that a renewed debate on effective preparation of new tertiary teachers and ongoing professional development for established practitioners is overdue in this country.

We see this publication as one of two pieces of work that will provide the platform for this debate. The other is Alison Viskovic’s updated Survey of Literature Relating to Tertiary Teacher Development and Qualifications.

We look forward to discussing these findings with the sector in the coming months.

Dr Peter Coolbear
Director, Ako Aotearoa

Executive Summary

Tertiary Teaching Qualifications

There are currently 62 qualifications available in New Zealand that are intended for the education and training of tertiary teachers. Eight of the qualifications are national qualifications. Just over 8,000 people gained a tertiary teaching qualification between 2004 and 2008. Sixty-one per cent of qualifications completed during this period were in five national qualifications at level 4 and 5. Seventy five per cent of all qualifications awarded during this period were for completions in eight qualifications (3 national qualifications and 5 local qualifications).

Annual enrolments in tertiary teaching programmes leading to local qualifications over the 2004 to 2008 period ranged from around 800 to 1200 EFTS per annum and the total completions were also constant at approximately 600 per annum.

During this period the number of enrolments by level changed significantly in some years. For example enrolments in
level 6 local qualifications dropped from 186 EFTS in 2004 to 32 EFTS in 2009.

Thirty-eight of the currently available qualifications are focused on education and training of generic tertiary teachers, with the remainder having a specific focus on one of; Māori learners, literacy and numeracy, e-Learning, curriculum/programme design, clinical teaching, or language teaching.

Over the last 6 years the total stock of tertiary teaching qualifications has remained stable at around 60 qualifications with 25 new qualifications being registered on the New Zealand Register of Quality Assured Qualifications and 18  qualifications closing during this period. The majority of the changes in qualifications (new registrations and closures) have occurred in the ITP sector in level 4 to 7 certificates and diplomas, with eleven new qualifications registered and fifteen closed by ITPs during this period.

Selection of New Tertiary Teachers

“Tertiary teachers are usually appointed on the basis of their knowledge, qualifications and experience in their subject areas, and lack pre-service teacher education.” (Beaty, 1998)¹

This statement remains largely true across the university, ITP and PTE sectors, especially in respect of the importance of an applicant’s subject qualification. There are though, differences between the sectors at the time of selecting new tertiary teachers on the importance placed on:

• Work experience in the subject area
• A teaching qualification and previous teaching experience

Both the ITP and PTE sectors place greater value on an applicant’s previous work experience in their subject area than the university sector. Forty percent of PTEs responding to the project survey specify a teaching qualification as a requirement for appointment to a fulltime tertiary teaching position while no university or ITP has this requirement.

Fifty percent of PTEs and 80% of ITPs responding to the project survey require a teaching qualification to be gained within 2 or 3 years of a fulltime appointment. No university has an organisational requirement for a teaching qualification to be gained by a new tertiary teacher after appointment.

Support for New Tertiary Teachers

Comprehensive induction and support programmes for new staff appear to be in place across tertiary education organisations, including industry training organisations. The induction programme content and the support available to staff new to tertiary positions are largely similar across the sectors.

There are differences between the university sector and the ITP and PTE sectors in the area of required support to be in place for new staff. A significant number of both ITPs and PTEs have an organisational requirement that staff new to tertiary teaching are assigned a buddy/mentor and are enrolled in a programme leading to a tertiary teaching qualification.

Both buddy/mentoring support and tertiary teaching programmes are available in the university sector but the decision for engagement in these support mechanisms is made as part of the performance development agreement between the new staff member and their line manager within the Faculty/Department/School rather than as an organisation-wide mandatory requirement.

A wide variety of structural arrangements were found across universities and ITPs for the management of the teacher support and development services offered by the organisation. These structural arrangements included:

• Staff development, e-learning support, literacy and numeracy teaching support combined into a single business unit with a direct report to a member of the senior management team of the organisation
• Staff development co-ordination under HR or Academic Services and a separate staff services unit (for example with e-learning support, and sometimes in conjunction with a range of student support services)
• Staff development co-ordination in a central administration business unit with some teacher support (e-learning and programme development support) spread across faculties/departments

It was noted during the stock-take that a number of institutions had recently or were in the process of reviewing the organisational arrangements for delivering teacher development and support. The following drivers for the reviews of organisational structural were identified:

• Review designed to identify if the existing structures were the most appropriate to deliver to a new strategic focus on improving organisational staff capacity and capability
• An increased or new focus on a whole of institution approach to implementation rather than a faculty or department implemented approach
• Implementation of a new Teaching and Learning (or Learning and Teaching) Plan or Framework
• New senior manager (Chief Executive, DCE, Director, or Unit Manager) with a new focus on teacher development and support
• Desire for improved teaching and learning outcomes based on an evaluation of institutional performance
• Wider review of Senior Management structure – not specific to teacher support and development

Observations

Rate of Qualification Change at Levels 5 and 6

Over the last six years the total stock of tertiary teaching qualifications has remained stable at approximately 60 qualifications, with 25 new qualifications being registered and 18 qualifications closing during this period.

The majority of changes in qualifications have occurred in certificates and diplomas, at levels 4 to 6 (11 new registrations and 17 closures), in the ITP sector.

Also from the data supplied by qualification owners, 30% of the 62 active qualifications will have their next reviews during 2010, 2011 and 2012.

There may be both an opportunity and a desire for a collaborative approach to further qualification reviews and developments in this area. A useful start could be collaborative work on developing (or adapting a hierarchy of outcome statements) across the typical graduate profile for tertiary teaching qualifications at different levels.

Finding and Comparing Tertiary Teaching Qualifications

The content of graduate profiles and outcome statements for tertiary teaching qualifications varies widely across tertiary teaching qualifications. In some cases the content is one or two sentences and in other cases these statements provide a comprehensive overview of the qualification. As well as a wide variation in the volume of the statement there is also a wide variation in the type of information being conveyed in these qualification statements.

The 62 active tertiary teaching qualifications are also categorised under 14 different subject classifications. In a large number of cases the rationale for using the assigned classification is not obvious from the qualification title or the qualification’s outcome statement or graduate profile.

All 19 closed qualifications are also listed on the New Zealand Register of Quality Assured Qualifications,  www.kiwiquals.govt.nz. The qualification search function of the Ministry of Education’s database, www.whichcoursewhere.co.nz, has only 39 of the active qualifications listed and 18 of the 19 closed qualifications listed.

The inclusion of closed qualifications (with no indication of their status) on the two government agencies’ public databases combined with inconsistent use of the subject classification field and the wide variations in the content of qualification outcome statements and graduate profiles, limits the value of the databases as efficient and effective search tools for learners and other interested parties.

Providing information on the status, active, inactive or closed (or agreed terminology) of a qualification on KiwiQuals and Whichcoursewhere would be very helpful for all users of these public information websites.

1 - Survey of Literature Relating to Tertiary Teacher Development and Qualifications: Short Summary, Alison R Viskovic, 2009.