The University of Waikato
PPTA
NZEI
Professional Standards for Teachers and Teacher Education: Avoiding the Pitfalls
Martin Thrupp April 2006
Professional standards for teachers and teacher education can be ‘generic’ or ‘specified’. Generic standards are broad
descriptors of teachers’ skills and knowledge. Specified standards attempt to define more precisely what is to be
taught, what would count as evidence of the quality of that teaching and what would count as meeting the standard.
Specified standards are explicitly intended to allow an assessor to make judgements about teacher performance. New
Zealand has a history of favouring generic professional standards but there has been some recent interest amongst
academics and policymakers in specified standards.
This paper offers four arguments against introducing specified standards for New Zealand teachers and teacher education.
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