Recently, (Nov 18, 1999), the New Zealand Education Review Office, a government agency with responsibility for reviewing and auditing the performance of schools and Early Childhood Centres released a report "on whether there is an appropriate match between current standards for graduation from teacher training programmes and the expectations of school employers as well as the broader policy purposes of the Crown." The report, which was written at the directive of the newly appointed Minister of Education, recommended explicit graduation standards for all ‘teacher training graduates’ within the framework of the New Zealand Curriculum, including a "new accountability regime to ensure that training providers are held to account for their responsiveness to legitimate external demands and expectations."

This is not a new idea. Over recent years various agencies e.g. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the Teacher Registration Board, the Ministry of Education, and the Educational Review Office have attempted to define sets of criteria or ‘standards’ for satisfactory teaching in New Zealand. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) began the process with an attempt to determine standards for initial teacher education. These standards, which were criticised by many as being narrowly technicist, have never been formally adopted or registered (Alcorn, 1999). The Teacher Registration Board, after a wide consultation process developed a set of guidelines for the competencies required from Provisionally Registered and Registered Teachers (1997); the Education Review Office (ERO) published a list of standards for the ‘capable teacher’ (1998); and in the same year the Ministry of Education introduced ‘standards’ for teachers and administrators in primary schools as part of the bargain for pay parity with secondary school teachers.

So what is going on here? Why are so many agencies trying to specify what effective teaching looks like? Is there a belief that writing down a set of standards will have an impact upon teaching? And what do ‘standards’ mean anyway? Are they precise, quantifiable measures, or are they more elusive and less easy to ‘pin down’? Which standards should be used? Although it would be difficult to argue with any of the ‘standards’ identified in these lists, they differ in the emphasis given to different aspects of teaching and in what they leave out. Grudnoff and Tuck (1999), for example, point out that the Teacher Registration Board competencies do not mention teachers’ use of assessment, and that it is only briefly referred to in the Ministry of Education standards.

Other issues including who should set standards (ERO seems to be suggesting that the Ministry of Education and employers should set the graduating teacher standards), how they should be defined, and how they should be assessed are likely to be contested. Such questions are part of an international discourse on standards for teachers and teacher education, and it is not the intention of this paper to debate these issues. (See Fitzsimons and Fenwick (1997) for a comprehensive literature review of this area.)

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study involving the use of performance standards with a group of practising teachers as part of their requirements for a BEd (Teaching) degree in 1999. These standards were derived from a recently developed pre-service BEd (Teaching) degree described below.

In 1998, the Wellington College of Education began teaching a three year Bachelor of Education degree which was built on a framework of knowledge, dispositions and learning outcomes based upon current international approaches to teacher knowledge and skill acquisition. (Shulman, 1986, 1987, Gibbs and Aitken, 1996, Cochran, et al 1993, Elbaz, 1983, Grossman, 1990, Erault, 1994, Reynolds, 1992, Ramsay and Oliver, 1995, Darling-Hammond, 1996, Schön, 1983, Tom, 1985, Wilson, Shulman and Richart, 1987) and examination of professional teacher education standards (INTASC, NCATE, QUALSET, and NBPTS and the Connecticut Standards). While strongly influenced by international approaches the framework also reflects the uniquely bicultural partnership between Maori and non-Maori New Zealanders, and the New Zealand Curriculum. This framework guides the nature, scope, and developmental sequence of the curriculum, the integration of each of its components and the pedagogy that is employed.

In practice this means that learning outcomes for each course in the BEd (Teaching) programme are derived from the framework statements. The course outcomes are developed collaboratively by staff teaching in the degree by recontextualising these generic statements into our various subject areas. We then create performance measures for the standards we use. In the process we build a professional consensus as to what really is important for our students to know and be able to do, and how we know when this has been achieved.

At the time that we were developing the preservice degree, practising teachers urged us to create a pathway which would allow them to upgrade their Diploma of Teaching qualifications (the typical qualification held by the majority of New Zealand primary school teachers) to the BEd (Teaching) qualification. The programme we developed in response is equivalent to a full-time year of university study, and consists of courses to improve teachers’ broad theoretical and pedagogical understandings of learning and teaching, as well as the submission of a structured professional practice portfolio. The portfolio component is worth half of the total credits required, so it is a significant undertaking. All components, including the portfolio, relate directly to the framework outcomes of the BEd (Teaching) degree. The portfolio was included as we considered that it would provide an opportunity for teachers to link general and pedagogical knowledge to their practice, reflect on that practice, and demonstrate that they had achieved the performance standards in the BEd (Teaching) degree. The outcomes teachers worked to are shown in the Appendix.

On enrolment teachers were given the opportunity to choose the groups in which they worked. Generally teachers chose to work in groups with people they knew, particularly with teachers from the same school. One portfolio group met off campus closer to the homes of the teachers.

Support was given through regular workshop sessions, the establishment of peer review and support systems and supervision/monitoring by teacher education staff.

Our major goal was to assist the teachers to improve the quality of their teaching by selecting, describing, analysing and reflecting on evidence about their own teaching. Six groups of ten teachers each with two portfolio supervisors met monthly over two semesters. Supervisors were available for individual consultation throughout that time. Attendance at portfolio meetings was seen as important to support progress, and to provide opportunities for structured discussions among other group members about teaching practices. These discussions were intended to focus on documented evidence of teaching (artefacts) that were collected and submitted by each group member.

Teachers were able to submit work when they felt that they had achieved each standard and feedback and guidance from supervisors was ongoing. Supervisors worked in pairs and all work was read and approved by at least two people.

The ten supervisors met after each workshop to share progress and to plan subsequent sessions. We also brought examples of teachers’ work to try to establish shared understandings of what evidence was sufficient to meet each standard; in this way we socially constructed the performance standards. (Grudnoff and Tuck, 1999.) Once there was consensus that a submission met the standard it was approved and in this way teachers could get a measure of their progress towards completion of the portfolio as a whole.

Supervisors also used expertise within and outside the group, when they considered that their own content knowledge was lacking. For example, if a pair of supervisors believed that a colleague could contribute greater depth in responding to a teacher they would approach that person for assistance.

At the conclusion of the process, when completed portfolios were submitted for assessment, all supervisors met for several hours and work was formally moderated across groups. We did not develop scoring rubrics, but as we had developed shared professional judgements regarding pass/resubmit criteria we felt confident that no teachers were unfairly disadvantaged by the process.

5. Some teachers required significant support to select, describe, and reflect on their evidence. They submitted and resubmitted each outcome several times, attending to suggestions from their peers and from supervisors. Typically they were referred to relevant readings, or to expertise from a fellow teacher or teacher educator. Next year we plan to provide more extensive sets of supporting readings so that these teachers take greater responsibility for developing understandings in areas where they have less knowledge.
6. Some teachers found it difficult to reflect on their work. In such cases, judicious use of questions such as "how do you know?" "What other explanations might there be for this?" "Why was it important to teach this?" "How might this practice impact differentially on different groups of children?" challenged them to think beyond the technical aspects of their teaching and question some of their previously unexamined assumptions. Despite the fact that there was an emphasis on critical approaches to education in earlier courses, it was not easy for teachers to apply these approaches in their own contexts. (None of the current standards for teachers in New Zealand require this.)

8. As the year progressed we became aware that few teachers used examples of children’s work as evidence of the learning outcomes. We were disappointed about this until we realised that the outcomes themselves were based more upon teacher inputs than student outcomes. This probably resulted in teachers selecting evidence which did not necessarily result in desired outcomes for their students.
9. Related to the infrequent use of children’s work as evidence was the teachers’ use of assessment. Teachers tended to use a checklisting approach to assessment which did not lend itself to being used for formative purposes. This may be a consequence of teachers seeking narrow summative data to meet external accountability demands. Hill (1999) has also reported this tendency. She believes that teachers would benefit from guidance in this area, and we intend to spend more time in earlier courses and in the portfolio in helping teachers develop deeper understanding of key issues and practices in assessment.
10. We also need to re-visit the sets of standards that we have been using. We need to evaluate their appropriateness for assessing classroom practice, and investigate ways of reducing the complexities involved in interpreting them with teachers. Most of the standards used have been developed outside the New Zealand context in response to differing socio-political and cultural environments. We plan to look critically at these standards, and at the ways we measure them.

Professional standards have the potential to strengthen the quality of teaching and learning in New Zealand classrooms. Teacher preparation should be based upon programme standards which broadly describe what graduates should be able to know and be able to do. In our experience programme standards can satisfy demands for public accountability and be educationally worthwhile.

The quality of teaching in classrooms can also be enhanced by teachers’ use of standards. In our case study teachers used standards to gain an academic qualification, but they could also use standards to demonstrate improvements in expertise. It is important to stress that how they are used is critical; it was not the use of standards, but the fact they were part of a coherent process with a shared purpose and direction that assisted their learning. Firstly, the process was built on a framework of earlier courses which developed new knowledge and skills which contributed to teachers’ achievement of the standards. Secondly, the process of evidence evolved as part of a collective discourse between teachers and their professional colleagues.

Assessment of the standards is a complex and expensive undertaking. If standards are to be fair and credible, reliable and defensible measurement models will be needed (Hattie, 1999).

While we acknowledge that the standards we used need some refinements, they nevertheless provided a helpful professional context for meaningful discussion and reflection about educational aims and means. On their own, written standards will not achieve anything worthwhile, they will be yet another set of documents gathering dust. Used as sanctions or as top down directions without appropriate assessment measures, they could produce destructive side effects which may work against efforts to improve the quality of teaching.

Standards could make a difference if they are part of an educational system which is focussed on developing the learning capacities of teachers, students and others, rather than as "a sledgehammer to beat schools into change" (Darling-Hammond, 1997). The voluntary NBPTS standards based on developing, identifying and rewarding excellence (Hattie, 1999) are an example of the sort of broadly supported initiative we could emulate in Australasia.