Things that make you go hmmmm

3rd rate journalism.

Edumacashun.

NZ seems to be paralysed by a highly politicised primary school teaching profession that has a poor ability to teach science and maths with an intractable bias against comparing results between schools.

Now some universities are coming out and saying that NCEA "achieving" levels for science and maths in secondary schools do not prepare students for tertiary level courses, but this is disputed by secondary schools:  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11164854

I wonder how much of this is "business as usual" - secondary students have always struggled to adapt from a highly structured teaching system to a self-motivated tertiary education system (i.e. developing an independent work ethic).  

Of more concern is this statement: "One submission to the TEC from Victoria University and Wellington Institute of Technology said students who received merit or excellence NCEA grades generally coped well with tertiary study. But most who got an "achieved" grade did not, and many would've had a "fail" grade under the old system."

Interesting choice of words - I thought labelling kids a "fail" was not appropriate anymore (the NZEI mantra)?

More on science, maths and the PISA report: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11168357

Three steps have been indentified to boost student performace:

1. The Government has since "raised the bar" for teacher entry, put more emphasis on practical classroom skills and is spending $10.5 million to boost maths and science teaching.
   
2. The Prime Minister's chief science adviser thinks teachers need to be better prepared for this complexity and the curriculum has to be presented in a way that engages children.
   
3. Families and communities have to value science.
   

I think that NZ is basically going to be munted for a generation or two due to the last step.

as a person who trained to be a teacher when they introduced the degree in education as well as the teaching diploma you do not need a degrtee to teach a 10 year old math or how to write or spell etc. You need patience, laughter and the ability to guide kids to understand how things work.

Not sure how I feel about the Masters thing.  But I would imagine that teaching like any other profession is getting more complex as our global society becomes increasingly complex and our information and understanding on "how to learn stuff effectively" increases.

I'd rather have a teacher that has the right bit of paper than one without.  I'm also making a huge and probably erroneous assumption that the teacher is motivated to teach kids (maybe even educate them) rather than pick up a pay cheque and attend a union meeting.

As for the gifted people who value the work they do - they need to be supported and encouraged to undertake further study if that is what is needed.  I would have thought that those that enjoy their career are always keen to learn more.

it's not difficult to teach algebra if you've passed it in school yourself - they teach you what the curriclum is in teacher's college and what you need to teach it. No degree in math at uni is going to help you teach a 10 year old how to work out this x+3=5, what is x

it's not difficult to teach algebra if you've passed it in school yourself - they teach you what the curriclum is in teacher's college and what you need to teach it. No degree in math at uni is going to help you teach a 10 year old how to work out this x+3=5, what is x

X is the location that the treasure is buried

School cert ftw. 

You used to have to learn everything, just in case it came up in the exam. 

Now internal assessment gives you half the marks, then you only need to learn the 3 achieved questions (and I literally remember teachers telling me to ignore trying to learn the excellence questions and focus on getting the achieved ones right) to get over the line. 

It may have changed since then however as that was 7-10 years ago. 

Don't you think a mix of internal assessment (ooh err) and a national exam is better?

Sounds like you had teachers who weren't in it for the students.

I agree with you FT.

A good friend of mine is studying to become a teacher. She does this thing called 'placement' where she goes to a school to teach as part of her uni work. Its quite good i think because you get that experience you talk about at the same time as doing the 'professional' stuff at uni.

Russians, Chinese, French and Australians... sounds like the little yellow digger all over again.

After 17 years we have replaced our top loading washing machine for a sexy front loader (Bosch) c/o the boxing day sales.

It arrived today but the cold water hose (metal) connection to the tap doesn't screw on at all.  So am using the old top loader hose (nylon connection) while I ask the store to sort it out (or I might have to end up getting a plumber in to charge me losts of money to put in a new tap or construct some sort of adaptor).

Actually yes, and it prepared you for university better. I did like that aspect of NCEA  (despite being better at exams than internal assessment). 

But the rest...I really hope they've changed it since I was there because it was a joke. 

True. Just a bit surprised that the new shiny advanced machine has a hose that doesn't hook up to a standard tap.

It has a fancy "auto stop" valve which might be useful. Dunno.

So am happy to use the hose and connections from old faithful until the store can sort it out.

Now NZers know what it is like to be stereotyped.