What is a teacher?

(Updated and moved to the front 20/4/2018)

The proposed bill, the Education (Protecting Teacher Title) Amendment Bill, is certainly thought-provoking.

It raises the question of who counts as a teacher.  Is a teacher anyone who teaches, regardless of context?  Or to count as a teacher must someone also pass some other sort of requirement (such as some suitable expertise, experience, qualification or registration, etc)?

Our everyday English word is, understandably, both vague and ambiguous about this.  It is vague because it is unclear how much teaching one needs to do to be appropriately called a teacher.  And it is ambiguous because, depending on context, we sometimes mean different types of occupations or roles.

For example, sometimes we are pretty wide with the definition, such as when, perhaps at the most extreme, we say that a parent is a child's first teacher.  Other times, towards the other extreme, we might more narrowly mean to be referring to just those who work in weekday schools teaching 5 to 18-year-olds.

But those who support the proposed bill appear to want to move away from this everyday multiple-meanings approach to the word, instead creating a technical/legal/jargon meaning that is very precisely defined.  Furthermore, they wish to restrict usage of the word and fine ($2000) those who use the word differently.

The immediate response is to ask why.

The answer seems to be that Charter Schools made it possible for people who had no formal teaching qualifications to teach in (weekday, children's) schools (although they would have surely had some other, subject-matter, competence/expertise).  Consequently, it was more difficult for students (and their parents) to know who at that school was a formally trained teacher and who was not.

And some saw this as a problem.  They thought it important to know the difference.  Implicitly (and sometimes explicitly), they thought there was an educational quality difference or a professional status difference.

Consequently, one proposed solution (given in the proposed bill) to this supposed problem is to restrict the word "teacher," such that it only refers to those who have some specified formal tertiary qualification in education (Bachelor of Education, Graduate Diploma of Teaching, or equivalent).  Unless you have this tertiary qualification in education, you are not a teacher and cannot call yourself one.

According to this NZ Herald article*** from a couple of days ago, it seems that the proposed bill is not "hard and fast", and lots of discussion is currently happening regarding the details.

Stepping back for a moment, it seems to me that there are two broad ways in which a person may get into teaching (with some overlap).

The first way is that the person learns some particular subject for a length of time such that they become suitably proficient in it.  At this point they may start imparting their subject knowledge/skills to others -- that is, teaching them.  Since they haven't specifically learnt how to teach, they might not be all that good at getting the subject matter across to their students.  Their ability to teach will depend largely on the luck of their personality, as well as their ability to learn on the job.  But because they haven't explicitly trained as a teacher, they might never stumble across certain teaching details that a more systematic training would have taught them.

The second way is that the person learns primarily about education and how to teach.  They might not have spent as much time learning specific knowledge/skills (aside from education), but at least they have teaching skills and knowledge, which allows them to (better) get their message across to their students.  The correctness of the content of what they teach will then depend on the adequacy of their earlier life experiences, and their ability to learn on the job.  Hopefully they will have picked up enough knowledge/skills to get the facts right in the subject they are teaching, but, all things being equal, they won't know as much as someone who specifically trained in the subject.

In other words, someone who trained mostly in the subject may not be able to get their message across as well, even if they know their stuff.  Someone who trained mostly in teaching may get the subject matter wrong more often, even if they are able to get it across.

It seems then, that those who support the proposed bill are prioritising the second way to get into teaching over the first way.  Why is this?  Are they significantly better at it?  And is there empirical evidence for this?

If there is no evidence for this, then is this a case of prejudice?

And if there is evidence for this, then why allow schools to hire these less competent teaching staff in the first place?

Regardless of this, why go to the extreme of redefining the word "teacher"?  Why not simply call those who have the approved qualifications "qualified teachers"?

Having said all this, the above discussion ignores the many different types of teaching, a lot of which does not involve teaching weekdays to 5 to 18-year-old children.

For many of these other teaching areas, the required tertiary qualifications listed in the bill may be mostly irrelevant to their needs, with topics and issues covered that don't apply in these other teaching environments.  For example, those who teach adults or small groups don't need to learn the details of classroom management of children.

Instead, these teaching areas often have their own subject-specific teaching qualifications, that are typically adequate to the teaching needs in those subjects.  There are many Certificate or Diploma-level teaching qualifications out there, specific to the subject to be taught.

Are those who teach in these other areas, and with these other teaching qualifications, going to be penalised because of the potential for confusion in that one particular teaching environment?

Whatever the case about my musings above, if this bill passes, it seems that Mama (who has been classroom teaching for over 20 years and has published textbooks as well as research articles on teaching) will no longer be able to call herself a teacher.  I hope this won't result in her having a mid-life identity crisis.

And as for us homeschoolers, I suppose we will just get on with teaching our children, whatever we happen to get called.

***To jump to the top of the class, spot the there/their mistake in the NZ Herald article!

UPDATE (20/4/2018): When I am looking at issues I try to be as charitable as I can with people's ideas -- presenting and fairly examining the best possible versions of people's stated ideas.  But another approach is to ignore their stated reasons and examine their underlying motivations.

Discussing this idea yesterday with Yeye (who is a "real" teacher, with a Diploma of Teaching, and whose university major was politics), we raised the idea that these stated reasons, above, are beside the point.

Maybe the real reason for this proposed bill is control.  Firstly, the bill is being proposed by the political party New Zealand First.  And secondly, the Diploma of Teaching arguably trains teachers to conformity, by breaking them down through extreme stress and rebuilding them in the politically desirable form.  Upping the professional status of those who get trained in this way, and denying the name to teachers who have not trained in this way, increases the control of those in authority.  1984-style thought control by language control.

I guess certain homeschoolers will sympathise with this conspiracy theory understanding of schooling!

UPDATE (8/5/2018): According to this NZ Herald article, the proposed bill has been withdrawn.