Paper presented at the AARE/NZARE conference, Melbourne, November 29-December 2, 1999

Noeline Alcorn

University of Waikato

Change in teacher education in New Zealand since 1990 has taken place in a policy environment where the rhetoric of choice and accountability has been dominant and suspicion of professionals and academics widespread. While recent change partly mirrors developments in other Western countries, there has been less policy borrowing in the field of teacher education than in many others. New Zealand did not adopt either a fully university based professional preparation for teachers such as occurred in North America, England and Australia, or the subsequent strong governmental pressure for school based training seen in England and some sections of the United States. Until 1990 the continuing dominance of dedicated teacher education institutions with close links to schools and to central government education agencies resulted in a reasonably homogenous curriculum and espoused values but little real experimentation or autonomy. Preparation for primary and secondary education remained largely separate, underpinned by differing assumptions and subscribing to different priorities.

Wilkin (1994) theorised that initial teacher education in England can be understood in the context of an ongoing dialogue between the ideology of the ruling elite and the culture of the professional community whose responsibility it is to train teachers. In New Zealand the distinctions are less clear, at least until the 1980s. The series of reports and reviews designed to inform teacher education policy were largely written by education professionals and implemented by professionals turned bureaucrats. This paper examines major reports on teacher education in New Zealand over the past 50 years, relating them to the ideology of teaching and to the social and political context in which they were set. It argues that while major systemic changes in the 1990s were foreshadowed in the previous two decades the major ideological shifts have pitted policy makers and professional teacher educators against each other in a climate where professional voices have been discounted.

The Report of the Consultative Committee on the Recruitment, Education and Training of Teachers, presented to the Minister of Education in 1951, was the result of three years widespread consultation and intensive deliberation. Chaired by Arnold Campbell, Director of the Council for Educational Research, the committee comprised senior professionals whose work was carried out in a context of rapid expansion and differentiation of the school system. Members subscribed to the dominant educational ideology promoted by Peter Fraser and the First Labour Government: the greater democratisation of schooling through equality of access to a free, full and generous education; the fulfilment of individual potential; and the need for an informed citizenry in a democracy. Fraser had abolished the Proficiency examination which had acted as a barrier to free movement into secondary schools. Reforms to the school system overseen by the Director of Education, Dr C.E. Beeby, had included curriculum change intended to encourage understanding rather than rote learning, and to foster the importance of art, music and physical education as part of a wide and generous education. Such a curriculum demanded a great deal from teachers.

The perceived need for teachers who could exercise appropriate professional judgement and freedom informed many of the Consultative Committee’s recommendations. Members were unequivocal that students needed qualities of integrity, poise, warmth and colour of personality, a sense of justice and fair play, intelligence, initiative, humour and liking to work with people. Teacher education programmes should build on and enhance these qualities but no amount of knowledge or technique could compensate for them. Programmes should draw on the body of genuine educational knowledge, in learning theories and child development to ensure that students developed "some capacity to discriminate between assured knowledge and mere opinion, and between ephemeral stunts and real education al advances. Such a capacity", they noted, "requires both a good general education and professional knowledge of some depth and accuracy". (p3) . Those lecturing in teacher education needed opportunities for training to fit them for their roles. The Committee rejected suggestions that such lecturers should constantly return to the classrooms from which they had come, noting that they were engaged in specialist work in which they could be expected to need five years or more to reach a maximum level of efficiency.

The Committee‘s recommendation that less time should be spent in schools is an interesting one in light of current proposals to increase the percentage. The context in which it worked was one where college students spent half their time in schools for the very pragmatic reason that most colleges could only accommodate half their students at any one time and the others had necessarily to be carrying out observation or practice teaching. The Committee noted that this practice could be counter productive since "effective observation is a very difficult task for which the average student requires sustained and systematic training." (p. 81)

In spite of the emphasis on professional judgement and autonomy the Committee was clear that ultimate responsibility for administering the colleges should remain with the Department of Education. " No other organisation is nearly as well equipped for the task of seeing to it that adequate numbers of adequately trained teachers are available for appointment to schools." Any other arrangement such as university control, would entail "a risk of serious lack of coordination between the Department’s general educational policy and what was done in respect to the recruitment, education and training of teachers." (p 112) Nevertheless much of the Department’s responsibility could be delegated to the Education Boards or the Colleges. To facilitate this process the Committee recommended the establishment of a permanent National Advisory Committee on the Training of Teachers, chaired by the Director of Education who would convene the group and prepare the agenda. Members would be drawn from the profession with no lay representation.

The Committee’s report could hardly have appeared at a more difficult time for the implementation of its reform proposals. . The Committee recognised with frustration that the increasing demand for teachers precluded necessary reforms such as lengthening the period of training. The Department’s Annual Reports for the first half of the 1950s are dominated by statistics about the struggle to build more classrooms and to find teachers to work in them. Emergency "pressure cooker" schemes for training teachers continued. Not only was it difficult to meet the quotas but standards of entry had clearly fallen. Whereas in 1946 80% of the entrants held matriculation, by 1958 the percentage had dropped to 40%. Within the institutions life appears to have carried on without a great deal of change.

By the early 1960s Arnold Campbell had become Director of Education and roll growth was steady rather than spectacular. The Currie Commission, set up to investigate the effectiveness of the educational directions of the past 20 years, gave the system a general seal of approval, countering accusations of falling standards. In its 90-page chapter on teacher training, however, the Committee expressed its "firm conclusion that the present arrangements for the training of teachers are in need of fundamental reform." (p. 481) The aspirations of professional leaders in the 1950s had not been realised. Noting the cost of three-year training the Committee was adamant that the government had a responsibility to provide buildings, resources and higher salaries. Like the Campbell committee, it recommended the setting up of a National Advisory Committee to guide the Minister of the day. This time the recommendation was acted on.

In 1964 this National Advisory Council on the Training of Teachers (again professional and this time all male) reported to the Minister on strategic issues such as the establishment of three year training for primary teachers, and the location of future colleges. The advisory council did not question the assumptions and principles articulated by the Campbell Report, which it saw as setting admirable directions, which had not yet been fully implemented. Colleges still operated more like secondary schools than institutions of higher education, programmes tended to be compartmentalised, and traditions established in the first half of the century had persisted. To address its concerns about quality the Council sought to raise the standard of entry required by making University Entrance the base qualification as soon as was feasible, to attract better staff though raising the salary of lecturers, and to foster independent work and reflection by freeing up the crowded timetable and providing more extensive libraries. More able students could take advantage of the long standing New Zealand practice of allowing college students to take university papers concurrently with their teaching studies, a practice not then allowed in Australia, England or the United States.

This Committee’s major recommendations were implemented despite their considerable implications for government expenditure. Three-year training was phased in over a four-year period from 1965. By the early 1970s the colleges were very different institutions from those a decade earlier. Their staffs were enlarged and better paid, the timetables had in many cases been altered to allow for considerable independent study, a number of rebuilding programmes had been completed or were planned, libraries had been extended. Boards of control, recommended by the Advisory Committee to give the colleges greater autonomy were established in 1968 and gazetted in 1969. But the Department of Education continued to set annual quotas for new students in each board area. Appointments were still made through the education boards and senior appointments required the assent of the Department or in the case of principals of the Minister. In spite of regional differences between the traditional providers, teacher education remained homogenous.

The early 1970s in New Zealand were characterised by considerable social questioning as the manifesto of the third Labour government, the rhetoric of New Zealand and overseas feminists, the activism of Maori groups posed challenges to established beliefs, practices and assumptions. While educationalists had supported diversity and the learning needs of the individual, these groups claimed that the system had been blind to the needs of whole groups who were consequently disadvantaged. The Education Development Conference in the 1970s provided an opportunity for a wide cross section of New Zealanders to discuss educational issues. The Advisory Committee on Educational Planning, which had served as the steering Committee for the conference, recommended a comprehensive review of the pre-service education of teacher including teacher selection and the extent of practical experience in the programmes. To determine a way forward, in 1977 the Minister, Les Gandar, chaired a conference which attracted representatives from education, from employing authorities, from industry and commerce, and from community groups and set up working parties to study the major issues identified.

The ensuing report (Hill Committee report 1977) though based on wide consultation was written largely by education professionals. It reported that principals and inspectors claimed there had been a continuing improvement in the quality of students leaving the colleges, who established good relations with children and appreciated the implications of their pupils’ diverse cultural backgrounds. The academic qualifications of college entrants had continued to rise; advanced courses in a range of areas catered for individual interests and aptitudes. Nevertheless the Report also raised a number of concerns. These were mostly systemic. The Committee noted widespread reservations about the selection process, the mix of applicants for teaching, the lack of a coherent qualifications structure, lack of flexibility in opportunities for entering and completing initial teacher education programmes and perceived irrelevance of certain courses. Greater cooperation between schools and colleges was called for. Some of these concerns were perennial; their strength reflected the wider inclusion of members outside the colleges and the Department. Suggested changes greater flexibility, individualised and modularised programmes, the recognition of prior learning, and an end to the expectation that cohorts of students should necessarily start and graduate together. If fully implemented these recommendations would have resulted in a weakening of the corporate culture on which the colleges had prided themselves and which had so influenced the socialisation of primary teachers. They would also have weakened the management of teacher supply exercised by the Department of Education.

The Committee also called for "an agreed statement on the essential core of components for effective teacher training covering separately initial training, induction, and in-service training."(p. 52) and for the establishment of a national body to coordinate and evaluate the development of teacher education and training in order to ensure continuous improvement. The collection of a range of data would help "those concerned in providing teacher education courses as fully as possible in objective analysis of their effects as a basis for making improvements . . . . instruments of research and evacuative procedures for the monitoring of teacher education programmes against criteria of success in the classroom would continue to be developed and used." (p. 51)

By the early 1980s the educational and social contexts had changed further. Growing awareness of the impact of gender and culture on learning outcomes resulted in continuing critique from feminist and Maori academics and community groups. Falling rolls in schools had led to overstaffing and drastically reduced intakes into teacher education programmes. Rising unemployment meant that a number of school leavers were unable to find jobs. The Department of Education was accused of being overly bureaucratic. This was the context in which the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education and Science determined at the end of 1985 to conduct an enquiry into the quality of teaching. Only the Chair of the group, Noel Scott, had teaching experience; the other Members of Parliament in the group came from quite different backgrounds. Though their political and ideological viewpoints differed considerably, they shared a concern that some students were leaving school unqualified and alienated by failure. They believed that too little was being done to bring unsatisfactory teachers to account or to listen to the disquiet of parents. While the focus of the report was the quality of teaching in New Zealand, teacher recruitment, selection and training were examined as part of the process. The Select Committee consulted widely. A call for submissions elicited 172 written papers and members travelled around the country, hearing oral submissions and holding discussions.

Their report marked a major shift in attitude and assumptions. The use of key terms such as "quality" and "accountability" reflected the new world of the 1980s. Members of the committee were convinced that the influence of the education professionals needed curbing. " The balance of influence is too strong at present. It protects the rights of teachers at the expense of the interests of students and their community. This imbalance has been brought about largely by the priorities established by influential professional organisations." (p.6) They also queried the longstanding assumption of the teaching profession that teachers were the guardians of educational equity. The Committee's view of educational equity was that the interests (not the voices) of all learners should be included in education policy and planning. The supported community input into the values and attitudes to be reinforced local school programmes.

The Select Committee reiterated the call for more flexible entry criteria for teacher education programmes, with less emphasis on academic criteria in some subject areas. It supported targeted and flexible assistance to attract under-represented groups, an end to regional quotas and research into the relationship between selection criteria, assessment of suitable candidates and subsequent success in teaching. It also recommended more flexible courses of varying lengths and greater use of RPL. It suggested that lecturers should be appointed on five-year renewable contracts and receive training for adult teaching though their possible involvement in research was not mentioned.

The focus of the report was the quality of teaching. Good teachers were defined as those who established clear goals, related well to pupils, were innovative and responsive to differing needs, were respected by pupils and colleagues and cared about their pupils as individuals. The emphasis on personal relationships is reminiscent of the Campbell report. The Committee also expected a repertoire of teaching skills, the capacity to review practice, an ability to understand the learning process, and a willingness to undertake further study. Professionalism required accountability, seen as essential to "protect the rights of pupils." (p. 36) To ensure the maintenance of quality the Committee supported more frequent reputable and credible assessment of teachers through self assessment, collegial assessment, board and community assessment, with the Inspectorate involved to ensure objectivity and national comparability. The committee recommended commissioned New Zealand university research into a model for evaluating the quality of teaching and the separation of the Inspectorate between advisory and audit functions. To reinforce its conviction that education had become too important to leave to the professionals the committee called for community input to all evaluation procedures.

The New Zealand education system underwent massive changes following the government’s decision to implement administrative reform to devolve much decision making to school level. From October 1 1989 all schools were governed by elected boards of trustees and audited by a new body, which eventually became known as the Education Review Office (ERO). The tertiary sector also underwent major change as universities lost their monopoly of degree granting and institutions were encouraged to compete for students in a flexible new environment where the only certainty has been decreasing funding per student. A new body, The NZ Qualifications Authority (NZQA) embarked on the ambitious task of designing a framework for all qualifications in the post compulsory sector and began to develop a methodology to determine and assess units of learning.

At the same time New Zealand’s six teacher education colleges became autonomous institutions, responsible for the selection of their students, no longer bound by quotas set by the Department of Education. At first institutional behaviour continued to be shaped by the norms of previous cooperative relationships, allowing for adaptation without major attitudinal change. Though the colleges formed themselves into a New Zealand Council for Teacher Education (NZCTE), to influence policy the newly established Ministry of Education showed no strong policy interest in initial teacher education during the first few years of the decade when larger numbers of students graduated from colleges of education than there were vacancies in schools for them to fill. From 1994 a severe shortage of teachers resulted in major changes to funding policies, which encouraged the entry of new providers and alternative programmes. It is these funding policies which more than anything else have led to the current diversity and proliferation. (Alcorn, 1999) By 1999 there were a wide range of institutions – colleges, polytechnics, wananga, private providers and universities - offering teacher education programmes leading to registration. 18 of these providers offer degree level programmes or offer professional preparation to graduates. In the process there have been amalgamations and separations between parts of the college and university sectors, three year professional degrees have largely replaced diploma programmes and four year jointly taught degree programmes, greater numbers of graduates are entering primary teaching through one year professional programmes, distance programmes and franchising of varying kinds have increased access possibilities for potential students.

This proliferation of providers has sharpened official and professional concern over issues of standards, quality and professionalism, in particular between central regulatory agencies and those who design and implement teacher education programmes.

Professionals in many fields are responsible for the setting of standards for entry of new members. This has never been true for teachers. Even in the United States, supposedly independent university programmes must enable students to meet strict State certification requirements. It is questionable whether full professional autonomy is desirable in a state education system where students are required by law to attend school. There are multiple interests to be served in setting standards for the profession. But in New Zealand the balance has shifted. The Scott Committee report (1986) and the Picot Task Force (1987) championed the accountability to parents and pupils. Government rhetoric of the 1990s focuses on the competitive advantage a knowledge society expects from its school system. But the government has not acted in consonance with its own rhetoric about choice and consumer responsibility. Instead, in common with England, New Zealand has adopted an evaluative state model. Quality control is now exercised through a variety of central crown agencies.

Changes to educational bureaucracy after 1989 diffused responsibility for approval and accreditation of teacher education programmes, once the responsibility of the Department of Education, to NZQA and CUAP. NZQA delegated some approvals to sector approval agencies. Initially the Teacher Registration Board (TRB) was established as the final arbiter of full entry to the profession. Its determinations of fitness to teach were based on evidence both of successful teaching attested by a school principal and the completion of a diploma of teaching from an accredited provider. The National Government elected in 1990 made registration optional rather than compulsory on the grounds that Boards of Trustees, as employers, should be free to select staff as they chose. Not until the introduction of a private member’s bill in 1996 was registration made compulsory again, with a few exceptions to allow some untrained teachers a limited authority to teach status for fixed periods.

The TRB was able to flex its muscles over the introduction of the new intensive programmes for graduates seeking to enter primary teaching. . It was wary of the government's initiatives in this area, seeing them as a way to lower the quality of professional preparation and also feared that non-graduates might be admitted to the programmes. It insisted that new programmes needed Board approval in order to be eligible for funding from the Ministry. Institutions were required to forward extensive documentation on the aims, content, assessment, methodology and outcomes of their new programmes, as well as assuring the board about methods and criteria for selecting students. In this exercise the TRB required each provider to demonstrate that its programme would meet the revised unit standards developed by the NZQA which are described below. As other new teacher education programmes have developed the TRB has played a role by its representation on accreditation and approval panels set up by NZQA, and by requiring the Committee on University Programmes (CUAP) to ensure new proposals had TRB approval. It has developed its own set of guidelines for the competencies that beginning teachers and those seeking full registration should be able to demonstrate. In doing so the TRB has consulted widely. It has grappled with a range of providers in early childhood who may give excessive weight to prior learning without sufficient testing of this learning. But it has also been wary of its watchdog role, unwilling to take a definitive stand and relying on the judgement of institutions.

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority, which approves degrees outside the university sector, has also played a major role in attempting to determine standards for initial teacher education. In addition to approving a range of new teacher education qualifications it established a Teacher Education Advisory Group (TEAG) to draw up "unit standards" which institutions would need to demonstrate each teacher education graduate had met. This process has been analysed in detail elsewhere (Gibbs & Aitken, 1996a, 1996b; Hall, 1997). An initial rigidly technicist set of standards - more than 200 - were replaced by approximately 20 larger standards. They have still to be formally adopted or registered. The underlying assumption about teachers’ work appears to be that knowledge is subservient to competencies and skills. Advisory groups, set up to comment on the new standards, drew heavily on employer groups (especially in early childhood) as well as professionals. The Authority also touted the establishment of a National Standards Body (on which providers of programmes would be a minor voice) or an Industry Training Organisation for Education. This defining of education as an industry is significant and to some sinister. Resistance to the unit standards took different forms, including academic analysis (Codd, 1995; Hall, 1995), cooption and adaptation (Gibbs & Munro, 1994). Critics also queried whether passing a range of smaller standards could predict overall competence.

If the development of unit standards challenged notions of professional freedom endorsed by the Campbell Committee (1951, p.3), Concepts of quality also underwent profound shifts. Management definitions of quality as process subsumed academic concerns about effectiveness and professional judgements. Current policy mandates quality control through documentation, external approval of internal quality systems, and external monitoring. Finding appropriate resources to maintain quality thus becomes an institutional rather than a government responsibility. Often this is seen by academics as an attempt to deprofessionalise teaching (Codd, 1998). Hargreaves, (1996) takes a different view. He suggests that what has been prized in England as professional autonomy has been in fact a culture of individualism. He quotes Pring’s argument that claims of professionalism depend;

Hargreaves advocates a new professionalism which moves teachers towards new forms of relationships with colleagues, with students and with parents.

Hargreaves might provide theoretical underpinning for the concept of a professional body for teachers. The idea is not new but it is not easy to establish the necessary breadth and trust. In New Zealand a brave attempt, led by teacher unions and the TRB, to establish the Teaching Council of Aotearoa met with little success and the organisation was disbanded at the end of 1998. It failed for a number of reasons: lack of government support, the dominance of union representatives, and suspicion of teachers about what they might gain from such a body. It was raised again in the Government Green Paper on Teacher Education (1997), which claimed to seek "policy solutions to support a long term vision for education" [which] "must ensure that New Zealand has a world class teaching profession capable of serving our country’s needs into the future." (p.6)

The Green Paper, produced entirely by officials, was published at a time when teacher supply dominated official thinking. However, the report focussed on the need for quality teaching, recommending the establishment of minimum standards to ensure that "the taxpayer funds appropriated for pre-service teacher education are producing well-trained beginning teachers, " (p. 29) who were "versatile and committed to success", (p. 5) . To this end, it asserted, "the Government sees a need to specify the requirements for pre-service teacher education." (p. 30In the interim, the report suggested, the unit standards developed during the 1990s by the Teacher Education Advisory Group under the auspices of NZQA, "could provide a basis for Government’s specification of the functional competencies it wishes to fund." (p. 30) It is interesting to compare the tone of this report with that of the Consultative Committee headed by Arnold Campbell fifty years earlier. While both insist that teachers need both knowledge of children and knowledge of subjects the vision and concern for the individual that characterises the earlier report have disappeared in the Green Paper.

During the 1990s there have been conflicting trends between the idea of institutional autonomy and market choice as regulators of quality. The National Government moved to deregulate the sector by making teacher registration voluntary though this move was reversed after a successful private members bill initiated by the Parliamentary Opposition in 1996 with the support of teacher organisations. The Green Paper has suggested a Professional body responsible for promulgating and monitoring the professional standards to be met at the completion of pre-service teacher education. Teacher education professionals have in general supported the establishment of such a body provided it is widely representative and not captured by any one group. It would differ from other professional bodies such as those in law or medicine by the involvement of the Government, because of the compulsory nature of education and government’s interest in its outcomes. Methodologies for ensuring that published standards are in fact achieved are still problematic.

Two recent developments are also worth noting here. During 1999 ERO was contracted by the Ministry of Education to review initial teacher education within a very short time-frame. Defining this process as "pre-employment training" the Officer sought input from Boards of Trustees on their requirements. On at least one occasion the Chief Review Officer was reported as asserting that New Zealand would lead the world. It would be the only country where lay Boards of Trustees would set professional standards for teachers. A new association of teacher education providers, the Teacher Education Forum of Aotearoa New Zealand (TEFANZ) held its first members forum in October on the theme of Evaluating Teacher Education. It has established working parties to investigate key issues, including the possible establishment of a professional body for teachers.

New Zealand teacher education, while it has been the subject of numerous policy reports, has followed a relatively homogenous and straightforward track for the last 50 years. The change from two-year to three-year primary teacher education programmes did not affect the basic nature of the institutions in which teachers were trained. Relations with the universities, at least until the 1990s, remained civilised but distant though various arrangement for concurrent study were gradually developed. There was little direct academic investigation of teacher education and few alternative training paradigms were seriously mooted. Until 1990 the Department of Education retained considerable control over resources, level of staffing, intakes of students and curriculum development. New Zealand teacher education policy has not mandated either full university provision or school based provision though the debate on professional standards to be reached by beginning teachers has been as fierce as anywhere else.

In the forty years following the Campbell Report in New Zealand, the residual effects of the Fraser paradigm, the small size of the system, and the personal relationships between senior public servants, college principals and the leaders of the teacher unions, tended to foster a form of collegiality and a relatively shared culture. The Educational Development Conferences of the 1970s served to allow the Department to make concessions and assert a form of professional leadership as it did with the appointment of an officer for women for example. It was not until the early 1980s that serious challenge to this arrangement and the status quo began to occur. At the same time teacher education was savagely downsized. From the mid 1980s the bureaucracy, the teacher organisations and the teacher education institutions were all under attack. In 1989 the old relationships between bureaucracy and professionals changed fundamentally. The Ministry, at first hands off, became increasingly interventionist as teacher supply worsened, though their actions were driven by practical needs rather than educational theory. NZQA sponsored a major and protracted project to define the standards to be met by beginning teachers. Welcomed by some it also attracted opposition from academics and resistance from practitioners. Such critique was denounced by the Authority as reactionary.

The last decade in New Zealand teacher education has been one of diversity and change. A number of new institutions have entered the field and provision has become much more distributed. There is a greatly increased sense of competition among providers in place of the collegiality which once allowed a comfortable cooperation. While there have been important innovations the need to attract students to maintain funding has sometimes led to claims and counterclaims which are not easy for potential students to assess. The pressures of the market can make it difficult for academic staff to take a critically evaluative stance. Likewise while the ongoing debate around professional standards has been healthy, there is a continuing danger that official prescriptions may stifle creativity and questioning.

Since 1970 the professional consensus that shaped New Zealand education has gradually evaporated. A new order needs to be built that incorporates wider perspectives but does not silence the professionals. The current diversity in education makes the task of establishing standards both pressing and problematic. Those engaged in teacher education must ensure, as our Australian colleagues have done through the Council of Deans of Education, that their voice is heard at national level, that there is academic and professional debate, as well as genuine dialogue with the profession and employer groups. The assessment and maintenance of quality is crucial; so is the realisation that such issues are ongoing and should continue to be subject to critical scrutiny and debate. Quality is an elusive concept. We can define minimum standards. We can recognise outstanding merit. We have difficulty recognising the gradations in between. We have to ensure that we do not settle only for the minimum nor insist that all teachers reach an unrealistic level of excellence.

Though New Zealand has still to realise the vision of a graduate profession mooted by teachers organisations in the 1930s most new teachers will graduate with degrees. The growth of student numbers in the 1990s has occurred at a time when government has withdrawn from capital provision for buildings or libraries and the staffing ratios which improved steadily from the 1960s have fallen again to a level the Currie Commission considered undesirable. Rhetoric about quality rings hollow in such an environment. Graduate standards may be mandated but government has withdrawn from responsibility for adequately financing the process through which they are reached. Responsibility is shifted to the institutions. The dilemmas of teacher education have changed little: the rhetoric of government has shifted markedly. As we engage in ongoing policy debate teacher educators might do worse than to adopt as our own the vision of the Campbell committee: to develop teachers with integrity, a sense of justice, imagination, and interests of breadth and dignity.

Correspondence: Noeline Alcorn (alcorn@waikato.ac.nz)

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