Universities worried about scripted school teaching method

Teacher educators are worried by the rise of scripted lessons for teaching subjects like maths and reading.

They say the practice can undermine good teaching and at its most extreme is "bonkers" and bad for children.

Universities raised the issue publicly after a meeting with Education Ministry staff.

An associate professor at the University of Otago's College of Education, Naomi Ingram, said attendees were told teachers should use explicit and direct instruction about 80 percent of the time.

She said that rang alarm bells with many attendees because it sounded like a mandate and because direct instruction typically involved working from a script.

The Education Ministry told RNZ structured teaching approaches might be used 80 percent of the time when introducing new learning but it was not a requirement and it was not prescribing a single way of teaching.

"Teachers are expected to use their professional judgement. Our role is to support them with practical, evidence informed tools, not to prescribe a single way of teaching," it said.

The ministry also denied that teachers would be expected to teach from scripts.

"Direct instruction is teacher-led and responsive - teachers adjust their approach as they go based on what students need. There is no requirement for teachers to use scripts," it said.

Dr Ingram said she was not convinced because New Zealand was copying approaches used in England and parts of Australia where teaching from scripts was common and sometimes rigidly enforced.

She said on a recent trip to the UK she visited a school where every class was expected to work from the same point in a maths lesson at the same time.

"In the UK you have principals walking down corridors going, 'Are you up to slide 16 everyone?'," she said.

Ingram said explicit teaching could be very powerful and it had its place.

She said it was effective for preparing students to pass tests and develop "procedural thinking" but it did not build their understanding of maths concepts.

"We do really well in New Zealand with problem-solving so it'd be really sad if we lost some of that number eight wire mentality because we are procedural thinkers," she said.

Ingram said over-use of scripts would also undermine teachers' ability to craft lessons to suit their students.

"Teachers have to be constantly making decisions and have autonomy to make those decisions in the classroom about 'we're going to spend longer on this' or 'actually I don't know what the students know so I'm going to ask this new question'. So if we're following scripts or slide decks, powerpoints, and there's no room for autonomy we're losing the craft of teaching. That really concerns me," she said.

'This is bonkers frankly'

Otago's dean of education Vivienne Anderson said the use of scripts Ingram witnessed in the UK should not be mirrored in New Zealand.

"This is the extreme use of scripted teaching. We all do the same thing regardless of the children in front of us. I mean this is bonkers frankly. It's bonkers," she said.

Professor Anderson said some of the structured literacy approaches New Zealand schools used to teach reading and writing involved scripts and in some cases trainers would return to schools to check that teachers were sticking to the script.

She said the university's students had returned from classroom placements where they were told to use scripts to teach reading and writing and some schools had told them not to bother doing any lesson planning because they would use a script.

"You could call it a kind of teacher-proofing so anyone can pick up this thing and it will have this outcome," she said.

"Actually we know from evidence about how children learn that this is a really, really simplistic view of how you improve educational outcomes. All brains do not learn the same.

"We are really concerned about this, partly because it's not evidence-based but partly because it also has the potential to do harm."

Anderson said the most recent national Curriculum Insights study found enjoyment in learning had fallen among some students.

"We know a lot about what engages children in learning and it is not the use of scripts," she said.

Anderson said some teachers were overwhelmed and poorly supported so it was not surprising they liked the new approach, but it was not good teaching.