Kia ora e te whānau

As the 2021 NZPF/Ministry of Education curriculum road trip concludes, I want to say thank you to all our colleagues who have attended the meetings and generously shared their perspectives. I am looking forward to final meetings next week in Auckland (West/North) and Greymouth followed by a catch-up meeting in Wellington early in term 3.

Issues of curriculum, pedagogy, and achievement are fundamental goals of schooling. We have learned a lot in conversation with you and clear trends and patterns have emerged.

There has been substantial agreement that while fostering localisation, our generic curriculum does not adequately help teachers understand what is important to teach. The high-level nature of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) has left teachers guessing at the detail.

Principals have spoken about the deficit in teacher knowledge, particularly in knowledge rich curricula such as science, with its strands of Material World and Physical World and Mathematics, where algebra, especially, creates challenges for teachers.

There is no clear definition of what constitutes localisation of the curriculum, yet it is a key organising feature of the NZC. Some think localisation is the freedom to sift and sort what to focus on and just reflect local priorities. Others think it is giving local effect to the national curriculum so that it has relevance in the contexts within which it is being taught. If indeed we are not teaching the full scope of the national curriculum, then it follows that we don’t have a national curriculum, we have only a local curriculum. This has significant implications for national coherence. While localisation has its place, we appear to have ascribed an importance to it that has overtaken discipline specific national curriculum knowledge. Getting the balance right between universal knowledge and local knowledge or context, should be a fundamental goal of the curriculum refresh.  

The NZC encouraged us to redefine teaching as facilitation. This notion of teaching has been encouraged by the learning ‘just in time’ not ‘just in case’ thinking that underpins the NZC and is promoted by the need to respond to the huge explosion in knowledge in the information age and the need to teach students to learn ‘how to learn’. While there is certainly a case for learning ‘how to learn’, we are failing to ensure teachers are experts in holding deep curriculum knowledge that can drive intentional teaching. If teachers don’t know what is important to teach, how will students come to experience important and nationally coherent content? We must help our teaching workforce, particularly in the primary schools, to re-connect to deep knowledge of the curriculum.

Complimentary to this is a goal for our secondary colleagues - who largely work in knowledge rich modes - to emphasise the key competencies and support young people to ‘learn how to learn’. Such approaches are often not emphasised to the degree they need to be in our secondary schools.

We have enshrined student choice and freedom of curriculum context, over joining intentional teaching to student agency. The two are not mutually exclusive, they can and do work hand in hand. When the NZC launched in 2007, very little emphasis was placed on learning the associated pedagogy and soon afterwards the National Standards overtook the NZC with conflicting organising principles. Enabling a curriculum that encouraged greater student centeredness posed a problem for the teaching profession. How would a teacher bring their teaching goals to learning if those goals infringed on what a child judged they were interested in or keen to learn about? Very quickly teachers came to accept that student agency meant giving students choice even when it compromised the capacity for teachers to ensure the full scope of the national curriculum was taught. Such a perspective is faulty. Student choice is not a coherent pedagogy and educational research shows it has an almost negligible effect on learning.

Teachers must ensure the curriculum is taught. That does not mean being prescriptive or teaching in a one-way teacher to pupil transmission mode, nor does it stop young people being involved in interest-based learning. The alchemy of powerful teaching has always been about how teachers bring their important goals to the learner and land them in ways that inspire young people to wonder, to be curious, to ask and seek answers to questions, to explore and experiment, to debate, think, and act on what they know!

We have never focussed our profession on teaching as ‘designing young people into knowing’. We need to teach through means that reflect how young people build meaning and establish understanding. That is the true definition of student centredness and teacher knowledge is critical to doing this effectively. That is why NZPF is calling for not only the establishment of a curriculum advisory service but also effective pedagogical leadership at a national level. It is time we portrayed appropriate teaching and learning practices clearly and then connected this work to national professional learning.

Principals on the road trip have commented that wholesale curriculum change is a step too far. This is not what the Ministry intends. The NZC enables learners and be central to curriculum and principals judge this to be beneficial. However, we must deal with what a generic and localised curriculum constrains. We can see the impact of such constraints on student achievement, and it is our responsibility as educational leaders to call this out. As the curriculum refresh gets underway, we urgently need to help our teachers rediscover the importance of deep curriculum knowledge and effective teaching practice. Intentional teaching deserves a renaissance.  

A Simple Message to Stephanie Madden, Chair of NZEI Principals’ Council
Collaboration is the way of the future. Principals, many of whom are current NZEI members, have indicated they want PPBC at the bargaining table. Let’s meet to discuss how NZEI can support this call. We are indeed stronger when we work together and PPBC is gearing up to be a powerful voice for principals and an effective partner in collective bargaining. As leaders, let’s show principals what genuine positive partnership and progress looks like. NZEI and PPBC working closely together will be an unstoppable force for principals’ industrial interests. I’m excited about the possibilities! I’ll be in touch this coming week to agree a time to meet.

Principal Leadership Survey
Please find a link below to a survey to supplement the data gathered from recent Principal Association workshops about principal leadership and professional support.

Linda Miller and Iva Ropati, working on behalf of the principal peak bodies and in partnership with the Teaching Council, would appreciate hearing your views on leadership and what you need to be better supported. 

This work is live now. If we are to build exciting new supports for principals, then your feedback is vital.

The survey link is:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PrincipalPLD 

The survey will be closing at 9am Monday 19 July 2021. 

NZPF Conference Rotorua 2-4 August 2021
With 30 days to go until conference we have 560 delegates registered. This is an outstanding response. We are looking forward to celebrating your excellent leadership and giving you the opportunity to refresh and recharge together. Please be aware that the venue capacity is 650 people so do register quickly if you have not done so already.

New Zealand Principals Federation and the 2021 Conference Committee (nzpfconference.com)

Ngā manaakitanga

Perry Rush
perry@nzpf.ac.nz