June 19, 2024
Dodgy data used to justify education change
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The Aotearoa Educators Collective is accusing a ministerial advisory group of using evidence selectively to justify its recommendations for far-reaching change in education.
The group’s Curriculum Report released last week recommended annual “checkpoint” literacy and numeracy tests for all children and grammar and handwriting lessons.
The Educators Collective, which includes principals and teaches as well as leading education researchers, says its claim that the decline in reading performance … coincides with the adoption of the whole language approach to literacy teaching during the 1980s ignores the sharp increase in inequality that also started in the 1980s.
Its claims about initial teacher education programmes were based on a cursory survey of web information published in a report by the New Zealand Institute lobby group that was not quality assured.
AEC spokesperson Jodie Hunter says the recommendations are not representative of the wider research and professional knowledge base in the education sector and failed to take into account the work taking place in Māori Medium education which has the strongest outcomes for learners.
Wider issues discussed in the review also include the Eurocentric focus and assumptions related to teaching practices and curriculum delivery, lack of engagement and consultation with the sector, and the over emphasis on cognitive science and narrow interpretation of the science of learning.