Technology teacher education in New Zealand

Abstract

Undertaken in universities and other approved private providers, technology teacher education in New Zealand involves students in theory and practice. The New Zealand Teaching Council, the teaching professional body, regulates and approves courses and programs. Based on Constructivist principles situated within Sociocultural theory, teacher education in New Zealand focuses on meeting students’ individual learning needs, and is founded on the principles of equality and inclusion, guided by the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, The Treaty of Waitangi, ensuring the specific rights of Māori and the New Zealand Curriculum. Technology, briefly defined as Intervention by Design, occurs through a range of contexts across three strands for learning: Technological Practice, the Nature of Technology, and Technological Knowledge, and within five technological areas: Designing and Developing Materials Technologies, Designing and Developing Processed Technologies and Designing and Developing Digital Technologies, Design and Visual Communication and Computational Thinking. Technology in New Zealand, although world leading, faces a number of challenges. These include a lack of understanding of the philosophy and key ideas that underpin technology, low subject status based on its predecessor technical education, and the lack of time and facilities available in teacher education programs. Many currently practicing specialist technology teachers struggle with the philosophical changes needed to move technology from a technical, skills-based program to the needs-based student-centered program outlined in the current curriculum. Over recent years in primary education in New Zealand, the Ministry of Education’s focus on literacy and numeracy has led to the marginalization of technology education in schools and teacher education programs. It is hoped that recent revisions to increase the presence of digital technologies in the technology curriculum, and the move to teaching through inquiry, whilst acknowledging students’ lived experiences facilitates the consolidation of technology education as a learning area of status incorporating the duality of practical and academic thinking.