Passionate Teachers Lighting The Way
Do you remember your favourite school teachers?
The commonality of childhood experience is such that we can all attest to the influence that our teachers had to either enrich or deflate our learning experiences. We may remember a good teacher who drew potential from us that we didn’t even know existed; conversely, a lesser teacher may have snuffed out the flame of inquiry and creativity before it had barely begun to burn. What remains clear is that passionate, inspiring teachers who love what they do and love the students in their care are remembered fondly for a lifetime. Connection, it would seem, is the seedbed of education.
Dr Beverley Norsworthy, Head of Teaching and Learning at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute (BTI) believes that the bond between teacher and student is of utmost importance, and that it is the quality of this connection that will determine how well a student will learn and develop. Dr Norsworthy explains, “There is almost something mysterious about this process… there is something in the relationship where the student actually has to give permission to the teacher to let them influence. Good teachers have the capacity to make connections with their students”.
The commonality of childhood experience is such that we can all attest to the influence that our teachers had to either enrich or deflate our learning experiences. We may remember a good teacher who drew potential from us that we didn’t even know existed; conversely, a lesser teacher may have snuffed out the flame of inquiry and creativity before it had barely begun to burn. What remains clear is that passionate, inspiring teachers who love what they do and love the students in their care are remembered fondly for a lifetime. Connection, it would seem, is the seedbed of education.
Dr Beverley Norsworthy, Head of Teaching and Learning at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute (BTI) believes that the bond between teacher and student is of utmost importance, and that it is the quality of this connection that will determine how well a student will learn and develop. Dr Norsworthy explains, “There is almost something mysterious about this process… there is something in the relationship where the student actually has to give permission to the teacher to let them influence. Good teachers have the capacity to make connections with their students”.
What Does It Take To Produce A Good Teacher?
It’s one thing to intuitively recognise a good teacher, but the million-dollar question is, what does it take to actually produce a teacher like that? Given that teachers spend one to three years in pre-service preparation before they enter the classroom or early childhood centre, the importance of effective initial teacher education cannot be underestimated. It is like a rock dropped into a lake that will ripple out incessantly, reaching many unknown shores.
BTI’s distinctive and innovative approach to teacher education is built on a meaningful Christian worldview and is formed out of a deep belief that if teachers are to develop good connections with students, they must first deepen their knowledge of themselves. While a typical teacher education programme will focus primarily on curriculum and methodology, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of teaching, BTI has a passionately developed approach, which also considers the person who is the teacher as a foundational concept.
Dr Norsworthy noted, “Rarely do questions about ‘why’ do the teaching be asked, and almost never is the question ‘who’ is the teacher that teaches asked. At BTI one of our distinctive commitments is to the person who is the teacher. It’s not just about the projects the teacher gives the student, but everything about the teacher actually ends up being influential. This means it would make really good sense to focus on who the person is who does the teaching, and that’s what we’ve done at BTI.”
The way that elements of BTI’s unique character have been shaped is in itself unusual, in that BTI student teachers and graduates have had a significant role in shaping the programmes. Dr Norsworthy says, “Research around teacher education is often about what theorists think, what should happen or might happen, but this programme is developed by student voice. It came out of the early stages of my doctoral work when I was asking student teachers about what made a difference for them in terms of their learning; what really influenced them.”
BTI’s distinctive and innovative approach to teacher education is built on a meaningful Christian worldview and is formed out of a deep belief that if teachers are to develop good connections with students, they must first deepen their knowledge of themselves. While a typical teacher education programme will focus primarily on curriculum and methodology, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of teaching, BTI has a passionately developed approach, which also considers the person who is the teacher as a foundational concept.
Dr Norsworthy noted, “Rarely do questions about ‘why’ do the teaching be asked, and almost never is the question ‘who’ is the teacher that teaches asked. At BTI one of our distinctive commitments is to the person who is the teacher. It’s not just about the projects the teacher gives the student, but everything about the teacher actually ends up being influential. This means it would make really good sense to focus on who the person is who does the teaching, and that’s what we’ve done at BTI.”
The way that elements of BTI’s unique character have been shaped is in itself unusual, in that BTI student teachers and graduates have had a significant role in shaping the programmes. Dr Norsworthy says, “Research around teacher education is often about what theorists think, what should happen or might happen, but this programme is developed by student voice. It came out of the early stages of my doctoral work when I was asking student teachers about what made a difference for them in terms of their learning; what really influenced them.”
Re-establishing The Student As Learner
The research made it apparent that secondary school environments had produced students who had a consumer approach to education. Many of them didn’t want to learn how to think; they wanted to be told how to think. “This made us alert to the fact that we really had to re-establish the student as learner in the first instance if we really wanted them to be inquirers”, says Dr Norsworthy. “Students come thinking that education is the completion of tasks rather than a developmental journey. Our first year is basically focusing on undoing that view of education and seeing that every part of the journey is a learning part.”
Previous research with BTI graduates had shown the power of engaging with the biblical worldview and asking the big questions like, ‘what’s the meaning of life, who am I, what is my significance, what is my purpose?’ Dr Norsworthy says, “Those big questions were the really powerful instigators for change.” Opportunities to engage with these big questions were then woven through many of the considerations of the programme, and form an important part of what has come to be affectionately known as BTI’s PIPI strand.
“What we’ve come to call the PIPI approach has been a commitment to making sure we focus on the teacher living the learning”, explains Dr Norsworthy. “PIPI stands for Personal Integration and Professional Inquiry and this is another way we outwork the fact that the learning that is going to make a difference is the learning that is integrated into the person. We want people who are learners, who will always inquire into what they are doing and why.”
Turning that ‘why’ back on themselves, student teachers are also taught to explore their personal motivations for teaching. They are encouraged to identify and define their core values, to discover what they feel passionate and purposeful about in their role as a teacher. These discoveries are distilled into a portable written statement called a Passionate Creed.
Angela Captein, who has now been teaching for a number of years, wrote the following about the value of a passionate creed while she was still a student teacher: “It shows my ability to articulate and justify my reasons for teaching and learning and captures it within a simple statement. By having this document written down, I am essentially accountable to the things that I believe and strive to live up to these standards and values in my classroom teaching and other aspects of teaching and learning.”
The PIPI strand is woven into primary, early childhood and secondary teacher education programmes at BTI. Sala Naivalulevu, who graduated with a BTI early childhood degree, is a likeable and inspiring young woman. PIPI was an important part of her personal development. “Without PIPI in our course there’s a lot of things about myself that I wouldn’t have learnt,” says Sala, “I don’t think that you can totally separate one’s personal and professional life; I think that who you truly are comes out in your teaching. If I didn’t have PIPI I think that I wouldn’t be as good, as a teacher, as I could be.”
Another core value within BTI’s teacher education programmes is the notion of teachers becoming wise, as opposed to being simply knowledgeable. In traditional models of education, the teacher’s focus is on the acquisition of knowledge, which is then dispensed to their students, often from their lofty positions in the ivory towers of academia.
Previous research with BTI graduates had shown the power of engaging with the biblical worldview and asking the big questions like, ‘what’s the meaning of life, who am I, what is my significance, what is my purpose?’ Dr Norsworthy says, “Those big questions were the really powerful instigators for change.” Opportunities to engage with these big questions were then woven through many of the considerations of the programme, and form an important part of what has come to be affectionately known as BTI’s PIPI strand.
“What we’ve come to call the PIPI approach has been a commitment to making sure we focus on the teacher living the learning”, explains Dr Norsworthy. “PIPI stands for Personal Integration and Professional Inquiry and this is another way we outwork the fact that the learning that is going to make a difference is the learning that is integrated into the person. We want people who are learners, who will always inquire into what they are doing and why.”
Turning that ‘why’ back on themselves, student teachers are also taught to explore their personal motivations for teaching. They are encouraged to identify and define their core values, to discover what they feel passionate and purposeful about in their role as a teacher. These discoveries are distilled into a portable written statement called a Passionate Creed.
Angela Captein, who has now been teaching for a number of years, wrote the following about the value of a passionate creed while she was still a student teacher: “It shows my ability to articulate and justify my reasons for teaching and learning and captures it within a simple statement. By having this document written down, I am essentially accountable to the things that I believe and strive to live up to these standards and values in my classroom teaching and other aspects of teaching and learning.”
The PIPI strand is woven into primary, early childhood and secondary teacher education programmes at BTI. Sala Naivalulevu, who graduated with a BTI early childhood degree, is a likeable and inspiring young woman. PIPI was an important part of her personal development. “Without PIPI in our course there’s a lot of things about myself that I wouldn’t have learnt,” says Sala, “I don’t think that you can totally separate one’s personal and professional life; I think that who you truly are comes out in your teaching. If I didn’t have PIPI I think that I wouldn’t be as good, as a teacher, as I could be.”
Another core value within BTI’s teacher education programmes is the notion of teachers becoming wise, as opposed to being simply knowledgeable. In traditional models of education, the teacher’s focus is on the acquisition of knowledge, which is then dispensed to their students, often from their lofty positions in the ivory towers of academia.
Transformative Education
BTI lecturers are deliberately mentoring a new generation of teachers who think differently. BTI lecturer Cathryn Bell remarks, “I think what we are really fighting is a historic transmission mode of education, where I am the expert and I’m in a sense downloading my knowledge to you. But knowledge is all in my iPhone now! We are about transformative education, but the only way you can teach transformatively is if you are continually being transformed.”
In keeping with a transformative model of education, wisdom is viewed as transactional, living, breathing, knowledge which is connected to the realities of life and dynamically expressed within the context of relationship. Wise teachers have the capacity to take their students beyond the dry crust of knowledge to the rich meal of relationship and understanding in a way which can be lived in real contexts.
In 2010 Cathryn Bell undertook a research project as part of her Masters of Education, in which she set out to discover what BTI graduates had found most valuable in their teacher education preparation programme; what had been most useful in setting them up to succeed in their day to day teaching practice?
The research findings overwhelmingly affirmed the value of BTI’s distinctive approaches in preparing students for effective and transformative teaching practice. New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA) feedback following BTI’s standard five-year re-approval process in 2010 was also positive, and affirmed the courageously innovative work that BTI is doing within teacher education.
In keeping with a transformative model of education, wisdom is viewed as transactional, living, breathing, knowledge which is connected to the realities of life and dynamically expressed within the context of relationship. Wise teachers have the capacity to take their students beyond the dry crust of knowledge to the rich meal of relationship and understanding in a way which can be lived in real contexts.
In 2010 Cathryn Bell undertook a research project as part of her Masters of Education, in which she set out to discover what BTI graduates had found most valuable in their teacher education preparation programme; what had been most useful in setting them up to succeed in their day to day teaching practice?
The research findings overwhelmingly affirmed the value of BTI’s distinctive approaches in preparing students for effective and transformative teaching practice. New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA) feedback following BTI’s standard five-year re-approval process in 2010 was also positive, and affirmed the courageously innovative work that BTI is doing within teacher education.
Influencing A Nation One Classroom At A Time
Some would say that education is currently in a time of transition with the baton of leadership being passed from one generation to the next. Cathryn Bell keeps in contact with many BTI graduates, and from the feedback she has received observes, “I think BTI is beginning to have quite an influence throughout our nation, one classroom at a time. We are beginning to get feedback from principals who say that our students know what they believe and are very gracious in fitting into a school culture but very clear on what are their non-negotiable values and approaches and understandings. Therefore, because they have engaged with this in such a way that they can articulate it to someone else, they are beginning to influence discussion. We are also beginning to see a number of our graduates in lead roles. I think that we are grooming our graduates for a longer-term passion for education. I would aspire that we are releasing the leaders of our next generation of teachers.”
With their mentors championing them from the sidelines, and the flame of their Passionate Creed burning in their hearts, it is easy to foresee that BTI graduates will be of that inspiring breed of teachers who are fondly remembered by their students, who will face the future with passion and confidence, lighting the way for those who come after.
With their mentors championing them from the sidelines, and the flame of their Passionate Creed burning in their hearts, it is easy to foresee that BTI graduates will be of that inspiring breed of teachers who are fondly remembered by their students, who will face the future with passion and confidence, lighting the way for those who come after.