In 2019 the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand released a new set of requirements for the approval and accreditation of initial teacher education (ITE) programs in Aotearoa New Zealand (TCNZ, 2019). All ITE programs in Aotearoa New Zealand must be approved under these new requirements by 1 January 2022. This chapter considers a central tenet of the new requirements, that “program design and delivery must be based on authentic consultation and partnership with relevant key partners” (TCNZ, 2019, p. 10). The idea that ‘authentic partnership’ can be a requirement of ITE is explored using positioning theory (Davies & Harre, 1990; Harre, et al., 2009), to understand the construction of ‘authentic partnership’ as necessary for quality ITE and what its early impacts on practice are. First, positioning theory is explained briefly, in the context of understanding institutional actors in the public arena rather than individuals. Then, the key analytical tools of positioning theory are used to understand the shifts in positioning embedded in the TCNZ Requirements (TCNZ, 2019). To understand how new positioning of providers and the teaching profession came to be central to the TCNZ Requirements, and thus to the work of teacher education providers, an analysis of key documents and events leading up to the publication of the new requirements is presented. This analysis also uses positioning theory, particularly to identify the emerging story lines that put authentic partnerships in the centre of ITE reform. The analysis is centred on teacher preparation for English medium schools.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, initial teacher education (ITE) is regulated and accredited by a national body called the Teaching Council. The Council is separate from Government and is responsible for providing leadership to the teaching profession and enhancing the status of teaching as well as registering, certificating and disciplining teachers and setting teaching standards. In ITE, the Teaching Council sets the requirements that programs must meet, accredits programs through a panel-led approval process and monitors programs regularly. The Teaching Council is governed by a board of seven representatives elected by different sectors of the profession, including one from ITE providers, and six people appointed by the Minister of Education. In 2019, after a lengthy process of development and consultation, the Teaching Council released new ITE requirements. This chapter considers where the ideas in these requirements came from and what their impacts are for partnership in ITE in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The ITE Requirements

In the preamble to the 2019 ITE Program Approval, Monitoring and Review Requirements document, Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (TCNZ, 2019)Footnote 1 states “these requirements represent a shift in the Council’s expectations for initial teacher education” (p. 3). Stating that they want graduates to be “ready to teach and well equipped to continue their development journey” (TCNZ, 2019, p. 3), they list four foci. One is “providers establishing and maintaining authentic partnerships with key partners such as schools/centres/kura,Footnote 2 and MāoriFootnote 3 and iwiFootnote 4”, to “get their input into key elements of a program” (TCNZ, 2019, p. 3). This aspiration is elaborated as Requirement 1.3: Design and delivery based on authentic partnerships. The requirement is that “program design and delivery must be based on authentic consultation and partnership with relevant key partners” and that: “there must be a plan to show how authentic partnerships with key partners (with mutual benefits that are explicit and interdependent, structured and with shared responsibility for success) will be strengthened and expanded over the following two to three years” (TCNZ, 2019, p. 10).

Providers meet this requirement by submitting documentation and answering questions from a TCNZ-appointed panel in a face-to-face approval process. A session with partners is part of the approval panel process. TCNZ requires evidence that partners are involved in:

  • program design

  • designing professional experience placements and working out how professional experience will be assessed

  • developing the assessment framework for the whole qualification

  • developing a set of ‘key teaching tasks’ that graduating teachers need to be able to do independently in classrooms

  • developing the candidate selection process

  • assessing student teachers course work, especially the capstone ‘cumulative integrative assessment’

  • reviewing the program and identifying improvements

  • giving and receiving mutual benefits

  • authentic consultation.

TCNZ (2019) also tests that the “roles and responsibilities of each party have been clearly negotiated, clearly defined and well understood” (p. 11) and “whether the plan on how an authentic partnership with key partners will be strengthened and expanded of the following two to three years is likely to achieve this and…result in a shared responsibility for preparing ITE student teachers” (p. 11). In addition, Requirement 3.2: High-quality features of professional experience placements, stipulates eight features that professional experience placements must have in approved programs. Here, again, there must be “an authentic partnership between the provider and the schools/centres/kura” (TCNZ, 2019, p. 21). The features include negotiation of roles and responsibilities and the purpose of professional experience. Complete integration between theory and practice is required, as are shared expectations and agreement about assessment of student teachers.

Partnership between providers and practice settings pervades the ITE requirements document beyond these two specific requirements. Clearly, TCNZ is using the ITE requirements to shift the relative positions of providers and schools in designing and delivering teacher preparation—and to define the nature of the relationship between these parties in ITE. Providers will not get approval for their programs without demonstrating ‘authentic partnerships’. Requiring institutions to have a certain type of relationship with each other sends a strong message to ITE providers, the professional community and those they serve. Positioning theory provides a framework to trace how this came about and what its impacts might be.

Positioning Theory

Positioning theory was introduced to psychology and sociology by Davies and Harre (1990). It grew out of dissatisfaction with the static nature of ‘roles’ in understanding relationships. In understanding ITE partnerships, the concept of ‘role’ is frequently used. The role of the provider, the school, the mentor or associate teacher, the student teacher, the visiting lecturer and liaison roles are often foregrounded in explaining partnerships. This suggests that roles can be assigned to people or institutions and that they will remain stable. Positioning theory uses three interrelated social phenomena to analyse dynamic relationships amongst people or larger-scale relationships amongst institutions or nations, rather than assigning long-term roles (Harre et al., 2009).

The three phenomena—positions, storylines and speech acts—are represented as points of a triangle to indicate their interdependence. Positions are “the cluster of rights and duties to perform certain actions with a certain significance” (Harre & Moghaddam, 2003, p. 5). Storylines are the “loose cluster of narrative conventions” (Harre & Moghaddam, 2003, p. 6) that unfold as people or institutions interact. Speech acts (or acts of communication more broadly) are “the socially significant actions, movements or speech” (Harre and Moghaddam, 2003, p. 6) made by the people or institutions who are interacting. Positioning theory is used to analyse interaction and its outcomes, across a range of timescales. Davies and Harre (1990) began by using positioning theory to understand interpersonal communication. Harre et al (2009) and a book edited by Moghaddam et al. (2008) extend positioning theory by analysing larger-scale interactions, such as the interaction between indigenous groups and NGOs in a developing country (Bartlett, 2008).

Speech actsFootnote 5 convey meanings, that build a storyline, that assign rights and duties to the various participants in the interaction. Multiple storylines might be invoked by single speech acts, depending on the perceived rights and duties of those involved (Davies & Harre, 1990). Storylines determine the positions that it is possible to take up in an interaction. For example, if a storyline positions two groups as ‘enemies’, it is hard to take up a position other than ‘us’ or ‘them’. Within the evolving storylines, through speech acts, rights and duties are assigned and taken up or rejected. What happens as the interaction proceeds is shaped by the willingness, capability and power of the participants (Davies & Harre, 1999). Willingness describes participants’ openness to being positioned or positioning themselves. Capability describes the extent to which the participants can carry out their assigned positions. Power, in this context, is about how participants are enabled to carry out positions (Harre & Moghaddam, 2003; Huang & Wang, 2021).

Defining positions by the rights and duties that they imply is a helpful tool to understand positioning between providers, schools and TCNZ with respect to partnership. Policies, position papers, reports and evaluations can be seen as ‘speech acts’ that assign rights and duties to institutions and people and create storylines about ITE and its effectiveness. Davies and Harre (1990) describe positioning evolving into the “braided development of several storylines” (p. 50).

Using Positioning Theory to Understand the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements

If we conceptualise the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements (TCNZ, 2019) as a ‘speech act’, we can see how it assigns rights and duties (positions). ITE providers and schools, as well as other stakeholders such as iwi Māori, have to develop ‘authentic partnerships’. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 list the rights and duties directly assigned or implied by the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements. As mentioned above, partnership is a theme throughout the document, especially in Requirement 3.2, which outlines the requirements for high-quality professional experience placements. However, this analysis focuses on Requirement 1.3: Design and delivery based on authentic partnerships, because this is the place where the policy stipulates the kind of relationships that must exist, thereby positioning ITE providers and their partners in particular ways.

Table 2.1 ITE provider and partner rights outlined in the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirement 1.3 (TCNZ, 2019)
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Table 2.2 ITE provider and partner duties outlined in the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirement 1.3 (TCNZ, 2019)
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Although Requirement 1.3 stipulates that the benefits of partnership must be mutual, Tables 2.1 and 2.2 show that ITE providers need willing partners more than partners need involvement in ITE. School partners are being asked to engage with a list of tasks that have not historically been part of their core business. The list of program aspects that partners must engage in appears in both tables, because while the requirement opens up ITE providers to partners and gives them the right to contribute to who comes in to teaching, what they do in preparation and whether they should graduate, it also sets these up as duties for anyone who agrees to partner with an ITE provider. The overall goal of “shared responsibility for preparing ITE student teachers” (TCNZ, 2019, p. 11) requires ITE providers to shape their practice and decision-making with partners and partners to step into the ITE space in addition to their core functions. What some principals might see as new rights, others will perceive as new, perhaps onerous, duties. ITE providers are assigned the duty of seeking out those for whom the new rights present a welcome opportunity and finding out what they want and need to partner ‘authentically’ with them in ITE provision.

Positioning theory suggests that these positions, expressed as rights and duties, arise from, and contribute to, storylines about ITE. To understand how they contribute to ITE storylines in Aotearoa New Zealand, the next part of this chapter presents an analysis of key speech acts, in the form of reports, position papers and evaluations about ITE partnership, that emerged in the two years prior to the publication of the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements (TCNZ, 2019). The requirements were anticipated for much of this period. Analysing the speech acts between 2017 and 2019 for the positioning and storylines they contain reveals a ‘braided development’ of storylines that put Requirement 1.3 in context.

Gunn and Trevethan (2019) outline how ITE policies and associated documentation released between 2010 and 2018 constructed ITE as ‘a problem’ (p. 5). Alcorn (2014) reviews Aotearoa New Zealand’s ITE history between 1974 and 2014 and reaches a similar conclusion—ITE has been repeatedly evaluated and found wanting in cycles of policy-making since the Tomorrow’s Schools reform of the late 1980s. This analysis picks up the storylines from 2017, in the wake of TCNZ’s first formal foray into the ITE space: a paper entitled ‘Strategic Options for Developing Future Oriented Teacher Education’ (TCNZ, 2016). At the time, a cluster of postgraduate ITE trial programs was being developed and delivered as part of a Ministry of Education initiative. Extra funding had been awarded to ITE providers to develop and deliver equity-focused, postgraduate qualifications. In the Strategic Options paper, TCNZ stated.

The … Council believes the time is right for it to exercise its leadership role on behalf of the profession, in overall management of the ITE system. This does not mean the … Council should do everything in the system, but it believes that its role is to facilitate the development of a coherent vision as to how the system should move forward and to coordinate the actions of the different players to achieve that vision (TCNZ, 2016, p. 8).

This claim positioned TCNZ as the leader of initiatives in the ITE space, rather than the Ministry of Education or providers, and began a multistage program of work that culminated in the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements. The key concerns in the Strategic Options paper were setting standards for, and assessing, graduate outcomes, improving the quality of practicums and considering whether teaching should become a postgraduate profession, strengthening entry requirements for teaching, managing the pathway from qualification to full certification as a teacher, managing supply of teachers, considering funding issues and taking a ‘whole of system’ approach to increase coherence and quality. These concerns reflected the times: there was a teaching supply crisis imminent, the post graduate trials were running, and there was concern about program quality and provider proliferation. Collaboration amongst providers was listed as a recommendation. Considering the key role that partnership would come to play in the eventual requirements, it is notable that the term is used only four times in the 2016 Strategic Options paper. Once it refers to the Council partnering with providers and the profession and three times it refers to provider–sector partnerships: for improving practicum quality, for improving the quality of the first two years’ induction in schools, and for developing a career pathway into teacher education for skilled practitioners. As we have seen above, partnership will eventually have a part to play in a number of the other concerns in this paper: in entry, standard setting and assessment of graduates. How did partnerships move from a tool for improving practicum to an essential requirement for teacher education program approval?

Speech Acts, Positions and Storylines 2017–2019

TCNZ undertook a development process to move from the 2016 Strategic Options paper to the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements. First, they commissioned a review of evidence about the features of ‘high-quality practica’ from the New Zealand Council for Education Research (NZCER) (Whatman & McDonald, 2017). Then they formed an advisory group (ITEAG), comprising people from a wide range of stakeholder groups and perspectives. Next, they consulted with the profession on a range of ‘future focused’ proposals and summarised their findings (TCNZ, 2017a, 2017b). Following consideration of the feedback, TCNZ published their vision for the new ITE system and their detailed decisions about the proposals (TCNZ, 2017b). In 2018, they released draft requirements for consultation and subsequently a document summarising the outcomes of their consultation, their response and next steps (TCNZ, 2018). In 2019, they released the final set of program requirements (TCNZ, 2019).

In amongst these policy actions by TCNZ, other interested parties also devised and released strategies, evaluations and recommendations. The space between the 2016 signals of intent and the 2019 finalisation of requirements allowed stakeholders to act to influence TCNZ’s thinking and wider professional and public opinion.

‘Normal Schools’ and ‘Model Schools’ in Aotearoa New Zealand are schools that receive additional funding in the form of staffing allocation and salary bonuses to all their teachers for involvement in teacher education. In the late nineteenth century, Normal and Model schools were the site of teacher preparation. When teacher education was the provenance of Colleges of Education, until recent decades, Normal and Model schools provided demonstration lessons and microteaching opportunities as well as practicum placements and were often a source of staff for the Colleges. In the time since teacher education provision has diversified, Normal and Model schools’ positions have also diversified. Some are closely involved with ITE providers while others are not. Social changes mean that many of the Normal and Model schools are now in high socio-economic areas with low numbers of Māori and Pacific students. As education policy shifts to focus on marginalised learners and equity, the location and demographics of Normal and Model schools as a group pose a challenge for their role in teacher preparation. The Normal and Model School Association (NAMSA) is an active group in the ITE space advocating for the role of their schools in providing quality graduate teachers. TCNZ’s, 2016–2019 process opened up a space for NAMSA to develop its own policies and statements around ITE’s direction. They produced two key documents in 2017 and 2018: a mission statement (NAMSA, 2017) and a ‘future focused ITE’ statement (NAMSA, 2018).

The Education Review Office (ERO) is the body that evaluates schools. Review teams visit schools on a rotating basis. Periodically, they publish overview reports to inform the system and policy-making. In 2017, ERO released a report on the preparedness of beginning teachers (ERO, 2017). Drawing on data from interviewing beginning teachers and principals in schools, ERO made recommendations about the content and structure of teacher preparation programs in this report.

MartinJenkins, a professional evaluation company, was commissioned by the Ministry of Education to evaluate their pilot of postgraduate ITE programs. MartinJenkins released their final evaluation of the programs in June 2018 (MartinJenkins, 2018). The ‘exemplary programs’, as they were known, were given additional funding to support increased partnership activity. The nature, extent and efficacy of these partnerships were part of the MartinJenkins evaluation (Table 2.3).

Table 2.3 Timeline of key policy and evaluation ‘speech acts’ about ITE partnerships 2017–2019
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In the following section, each of these speech acts is considered chronologically, in terms of the rights and duties (positions) it suggests or allocates, and the main storylines about ITE and partnership it contains. Five overall storylines emerge from this analysis, and these are presented in a summary at the end of the section.

Key Speech Acts

NZCER Review of High-Quality Practica (Whatman & McDonald, 2017)

TCNZ commissioned NZCER to “build an evidence base” (Whatman & McDonald, 2017, p. 1) about the features of high-quality practicum experience and the integration of theory and practice in ITE. The eight themes that emerged from this review were transferred directly into the new requirements as Requirement 3.2. Furthermore, this review is where the importance of partnership for achieving improved practicum and greater integration emerges, “In high quality practica there is a genuine/authentic partnership between institutions (the teaching institution and the school or ECE setting). Every aspect of the ITE program is integrated and there is not a sense of ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ being enacted separately in different institutions” (Whatman & McDonald, 2017, p. 19).

The terms ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ enter the requirements unaltered, and the rights and duties associated with being ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ come with them. Whatman and McDonald’s (2017) findings that “authentic partnerships with a clear sense of purpose” (p. 19) are central to high-quality practica, as are “collegial relationships” (p. 20) and “adopting new roles and responsibilities” (p. 20) suggest new positions for ITE providers and schools.

A central part of partnering in this review is time and commitment and the resourcing that goes with this. Both ITE providers and partners are assigned the duty of committing time and resources to the work. As most schools are not resourced to work in ITE, this implies a duty on ITE providers to share their resources with their partners. The positions described above contribute to five key storylines:

  • Authenticity is significant to success in partnership (‘fake’ partnerships will not work).

  • Schools contain significant expertise that is currently underutilised.

  • Partnering is time consuming, intensive, and costly.

  • ITE is unbalanced in favour of ITE providers in terms of decision-making and power.

  • Purposes and communication are unclear.

TCNZ: Future Focused Proposals Consultation 2017

TCNZ followed the Strategic Options paper with a set of future focused proposals in 2017 (TCNZ, 2017a). After consultation, the results of a short online survey, a more detailed open survey, and written and verbal submissions were combined with discussions at a series of meetings in 2017 to produce this summary.

The summary reports strong support for “strengthening practice arrangements” (TCNZ, 2017a, p. 3). However, the three key findings position school partners and associate teachers as incapable of working in the way the proposals suggested.

Respondents felt that there would not be enough quality placements available, positioning schools as not able to meet the more substantial duties outlined in the new proposals. Respondents suggested that the TCNZ provides resources for professional learning for associate teachers, positioning them as needing further development to be capable of providing high-quality practice. Some suggested that outside expert teachers would need to be brought in to schools to reduce the demands being made on staff in partner schools. While the literature review (Whatman & McDonald, 2017) positioned schools as an untapped resource of valuable knowledge that had to be brought into ITE, the respondents to the future focused proposals positioned schools as incapable of contributing in high-quality ways. The positions described above contribute to two storylines: one arising from TCNZ’s proposals and one from the sector voice summarised in the document:

  • ITE, especially practicum, is ‘weak’ and needs ‘strengthening’.

  • Schools are not capable of meeting the demands for higher-quality practica.

NAMSA: Strategic Direction 2017

The Normal and Model Schools Association (NMSA) produced a strategic direction in 2017 as they engaged with the Teaching Council’s proposed changes to ITE. Their strategic direction statement makes clear how they see themselves in relation to ITE providers and the Council’s direction.

NAMSA’s explanation of their identity is “Our identity is defined by our specialist partnership with other providers of teacher education” (NAMSA, 2017, Strategic Direction section).This statement positions Normal and Model schools as teacher education providers themselves and highlights their specialist skills and knowledge. Their mission is ‘leading innovation and best practice as specialist teacher educators’, positioning them as leaders and again as teacher educators and specialists, not schools-that-happen-to-have-student-teachers. Their vision is “strong two-way partnerships” and “work(ing) in equal partnership with universities and other agencies to provide consistently high quality initial teacher education” (NAMSA, 2017, Strategic Direction section). It is clear that NAMSA schools see themselves as equals to ITE providers in being able to provide high-quality and consistent teacher education experiences for student teachers. In this document, they assign themselves a number of duties such as modelling exemplary practice, providing expert guidance and support and having cultures of professionalism, trust and inclusiveness. They claim the right to be seen as equals with tertiary providers and experts/specialists.

The position taken in this document creates new storylines of competence and interest in ITE amongst Normal and Model schools:

  • Normal and Model schools are teacher education providers.

  • Normal and Model schools are the equals of ITE providers.

  • Normal and Model schools are leaders and innovators in teacher education.

TCNZ: Vision and Detailed Decisions 2017

TCNZ’s next step was to release a vision document outlining their decisions about their proposed changes to ITE in Aotearoa New Zealand (TCNZ, 2017b). In this document “genuine and authentic provider-school partnerships” (TCNZ, 2017b, p. 6) appear as part of the proposed requirements, and the ‘quality factors’ from the Whatman and McDonald (2017) review are listed as proposed requirements. Providers are assigned duties: “we will require ITE programs to demonstrate they have quality practicum arrangements” (TCNZ, 2017b, p. 6), as are schools with suggestions of longer practicum times and the need for a ‘sense of belonging’ for student teachers in the school.

This document makes explicit the significance of partnership for TCNZ’s ambitions to “create system change in ITE, built on local collaborative relationships” (TCNZ, 2017b, p. 3). There is a shift towards greater professional involvement in ITE across a range of activities in this document. These will later be reflected in Requirement 1.3. New storylines emerge alongside some recurring plots:

  • ITE needs transformational change.

  • The profession will make better decisions than providers.

  • Without surveillance, providers will not maintain quality practicums.

  • Authenticity is significant to success in partnership (‘fake’ partnerships will not work).

One storyline that emerged from the Whatman and McDonald (2017) review and was reinforced in the future focused proposals document (TCNZ, 2017a) was the costliness of partnership, in money, time and energy. In this vision document, TCNZ deals with the resourcing storyline by saying they will “work with the Ministry of Education to provide advice to Government” (TCNZ, 2017a, p. 6). In this way, they position themselves as not being responsible for resourcing the changes they advocate. It is TCNZ’s right, and its duty, to set the requirements in a way that promotes quality ITE, and it is someone else’s duty to fund or otherwise resource any necessary changes.

ERO: Newly Graduated Teachers: Preparation and Confidence to Teach (2017)

In December 2017, ERO released an evaluation of the preparedness and confidence of newly graduated teachers (ERO, 2017). Based on conversations in schools with newly graduated teachers and school/centre leaders, the report found “a lack of confidence” in ITE to prepare teachers (ERO, 2017, p. 4). ERO listed a number of factors that contributed to the inadequacy of preparation they observed:

  • Lack of clarity about expectations and relative responsibilities of ITE providers and associate teachers in supporting student teachers

  • Insufficient opportunities to learn the practice of teaching.

  • Variable quality of guidance by associate teachers.

  • Lack of integration between theory and practice.

  • Theory and practice were unbalanced—too much theory, not enough practice.

  • ITE programs needed strengthening.

(ERO, 2017, pp. 4−5)

Interestingly, ERO has more recommendations for TCNZ than for ITE providers and none for schools. Schools are positioned as the ‘consumers’ of an ‘inadequate product’ in the form of under-prepared new teachers. While the role of associates is acknowledged, the duty of “providing clear expectations around the selection and practice of associate teachers” ERO, 2017, (p. 6) is assigned to ITE providers, along with “providing clear expectations… about the learning to occur on practicum” (ERO, 2017, p. 6). ERO assigns TCNZ the duties of strengthening their requirements for ITE programs and lifting standards. In essence, ERO sees formal approval processes as the lever on changing ITE provider behaviour, thereby positioning TCNZ as the agent for causing change in teacher preparation. ERO provides a list of areas that need strengthening by TCNZ in ITE program requirements. This list is almost a direct match for the list of areas in which partners are required to be involved in the 2019 ITE Program Approval Requirements: entry requirements, program design, the quality of practicum and setting assessments to ensure that student teachers meet the standards for the teaching profession before graduation. TCNZ takes up the duties assigned to it by ERO by requiring ITE providers to address those areas with partners from the profession. The key storylines emerging from the ERO report are.

  • ITE, especially practicum, is ‘weak’ and needs ‘strengthening’.

  • ITE is unbalanced, with too much theory and not enough practice.

  • Practicum experiences are poor, and providers are responsible for this.

  • There is a big gap between ITE providers and schools.

NAMSA: ITE Position Paper 2018

In 2018, NAMSA responded to TCNZ’s papers with one of its own. In it they positioned Normal and Model schools as a key part of achieving ‘future focused’ ITE. NAMSA position ITE providers as ‘academic’ and out-of-touch and seek greater opportunities to contribute to ITE, through genuine partnership with providers, but also as providers themselves, using field-based preparation models. In this paper, NAMSA sees expanded roles for schools in the proposed ITE requirements as rights rather than duties, extending from their origins as teacher education sites in the nineteenth century and their consequential special status. These rights need to be accompanied by proper recognition of the position they are taking up, particularly through resourcing. Their list of implications from their proposals includes ‘improving collaboration’ and ‘shifting from consultation to partnership’ but with little explanation of what the rights and duties of an ITE provider partner might be in their conception of Normal and Model schools’ leadership of ITE. Several strong storylines emerge from this paper:

  • ITE is unbalanced, with too much theory and not enough practice.

  • ITE is ‘weak’ and needs ‘strengthening’.

  • ITE lacks relevance and practice credibility.

  • Normal and Model schools can provide excellent solutions to the problems of ITE.

MartinJenkins: Evaluation of Exemplary Postgraduate ITE Programs 2018

In June 2018, MartinJenkins released their final evaluation of the exemplary postgraduate ITE programs pilot. These programs were developed in response to a Ministry of Education Request for Proposal with criteria including extended practicum time and partnership relationships with schools. Additional funding was offered for successful tenderers. This report provided empirical data about what happened when these approaches were adopted. The storylines that emerge from this analysis echo the recurring but somewhat suppressed call throughout the 2017–2019 period for proper resourcing to support partnership. MartinJenkins (2018) notes that “quality partnerships are rewarding but resource intensive; dedicated resources are needed to build and maintain effective partnerships” (p. 25). They also note that because of staff turnover, “continual investment” is needed (MartinJenkins, 2018, p. 25), “only half of principals and a quarter of mentor teachers (were) satisfied with compensation levels” (MartinJenkins, 2018, p. 6) and “partnerships can be strengthened over time if sufficient investment is made” (MartinJenkins, 2018, p. 5). The storylines in this report were.

  • Partnership needs resourcing to function, and it costs more than other models.

  • Partnership is time consuming and intense and requires effort to establish and ongoing maintenance.

TCNZ: Feedback on Draft Requirements Summary 2018

In 2018, TCNZ released a draft of their new requirements for ITE program approval. After a consultation period, they released a summary of the feedback they received. In the feedback, TCNZ (2018) describes “strong support for authentic partnerships and putting in place the key factors needed for professional experience placements to be effective” (p. 4). These are the factors from the Whatman and McDonald (2017) report. In their response to the feedback they received, TCNZ acknowledges that “the kind of partnerships envisaged in the literature won’t happen simply by setting a requirement” and that putting these partnerships in place will “need leadership from all parts of the profession” (TCNZ, 2018, p. 4). TCNZ positions providers and partners as jointly responsible for a range of tasks, from the conceptual framing of a program, through selection to assessment and judging if student teachers are ready to teach. This is to enable “far greater confidence that they are equipped for their first teaching role” (TCNZ, 2018, p. 4) than current practice. To be ‘pragmatic’, TCNZ proposes to ask for a partnership plan as part of initial approval processes, recognising that it might take a while for the rights and duties associated with ITE to be redistributed and shared amongst the partners. They also propose increasing the length of professional experience placements, which assigns additional duties to schools, while positioning in-school experience as more valuable than other forms of learning in ITE. They finish by acknowledging “that these changes will require additional resourcing and (we) are actively working on how the funding and resources available might be realigned within the system to enable these new expectations” (TCNZ, 2018, p. 5). The key storylines taken up in this summary and response are.

  • Authentic partnerships will increase ITE quality and the quality of graduates.

  • ITE providers need partner input to produce quality programs.

  • Partnership will increase confidence in the system.

  • This work is time consuming and expensive but needs to be accomplished without additional resourcing.

Braided Storylines

As these eight key speech acts build on and respond to each other between 2017 and 2019, we can see storylines being braided together. Some storylines recur: ITE is weak, divided (theory–practice and provider-profession), unbalanced (theory–practice and provider-profession), under-resourced and unclear about its role and the role of the profession. Calls for clarity, alignment, coherence, ‘seamless’ experiences, integration and balance are repeated through the 2017–2019 period, alongside acknowledgement of the resourcing implications of shifts to greater involvement by the profession.

Requirement 1.3 tries to address these storylines. The solution is to embed involvement by the profession in ITE by requiring ‘authentic partnership’. In Requirement 1.3, authentic partnership underpins all phases of teacher selection, preparation and assessment and all key program design decisions. Partnership is no longer just about practicum, the space where it originally arose in 2016. ITE itself is repositioned through policy as a joint endeavour.

Conclusions

The re-approval of existing ITE qualifications will be complete by 1 January 2022. New qualifications and new providers have also emerged for approval. Positioning theory’s concepts of willingness, capability and power now come into play. When programs are approved, they can receive conditions that must be met before they are taught. A condition can be placed on any of the twenty-one requirements. As of July 2021, 23 conditions had been placed on Requirement 1.3. The next highest number of conditions on a requirement was 10, indicating that partnership is clearly the most difficult requirement for providers to meet (TCNZ, 2021). New types of partnership are emerging, for example with regional development organisations (Te Rito Maioha and Far North REAP, 2021) and iwi organisations (Wintec and Waikato Tainui College for Research and Development, 2021).

Throughout the speech acts analysed here, the partners are presented as institutions, but to make partnerships between institutions happen a network of interpersonal relationships needs to be developed. Requiring authentic school–university partnerships shapes the work of teacher educators and school leaders and teachers as people. Future analyses will be able to describe whether the system, and the individuals within it, has the willingness, capability and power to take up their assigned rights and duties and create authentic partnerships that improve ITE outcomes.

The analysis presented here teaches us that school–university partnership is seen by TCNZ, ERO and NAMSA as critical to effective ITE. As the conversation about partnership has developed through the 2017–2019 period, we have learned how differently positioned participants in the ITE system understand partnership and what its features need to be from their perspectives. ITE providers have meanwhile been developing school–university partnerships in order to meet the ITE requirements, with mixed results. Partnerships as described in the 2019 requirements (TCNZ, 2019) are hard for many providers to establish and to maintain, while for smaller and more agile providers, partnerships can provide a route into ITE provision. Dialogue between ITE providers, the Teaching Council and centres, schools and other partners is ongoing, and seeing how the programs developed under the 2019 requirements (TCNZ, 2019) perform will be the next step in learning about partnership in ITE from a policy perspective.