1.6 Teacher concerns

How teachers perform in their professional role is in part influenced by the environment in which they work, with their concomitant constraints, demands and related issues. In the case of LNL teachers, there is no career structure or professional infrastructure that is in any way comparable to those found in other educational sectors that enable the recording and monitoring of these professional issues. As a newly-emerging sector, research about these teachers’ concerns is therefore a useful source of information about how to influence LNL teachers to review and change their practice.

An American study of 63 adult basic education practitioners included the identification of teachers’ and programme administrators’ concerns (Bingman, Smith, & Stewart, 1998). Their concerns fell into eight main categories:

• issues of participation: recruitment, retention and motivation
• programme and policy issues, particularly programme structure and funding
• curricula and instruction issues
• assessment of students and measurement of programme performance
• the needs of ‘special’ students, including those with learning difficulties, teens and the elderly
• staff issues and professional development
• the impact of adult basic education on students’ lives outside the classroom
• working with a variety of learners in one class.

McGuirk’s (2001) Australian study reported the following issues for teachers (identified as ‘extremely significant’ or ‘very significant’ and ranked):

1. pressure to do more in less time
2. access to professional development
3. technology
4. long-term unemployed clients
5. short-term funding arrangements
6. ‘youth at-risk’ clients
7. reluctant learners
8. increasing casualisation of teaching
9. flexible delivery
10. increasing vocationalisation of literacy and numeracy
11. lack of professional support networks
12. competitive tendering.

1.7 Summary of literature findings

The aim of this study was to gain a broad overview of what actually occurs in a range of New Zealand LNL contexts. The purpose of this brief literature review therefore is to review what other researchers have documented about what actually happens in literacy, numeracy and language teaching and issues related to this form of teaching. The literature had two major themes.

Firstly, all of the research reviewed points to the importance of the relationships teachers build with learners as an integral component of the sort of learning environment where learners are likely to make gain. Researchers reported that tutors are very learner-centred and supportive in their dealings with students; this attribute is considered to be very important with learners with high levels of need. Conversely, the actual teaching that took place was teacher-directed, with minimal learner input or participation being observed. Researchers thought teachers perceived themselves much more learner-directed in their teaching than was seen happening.

Secondly, a number of reports discussed how provision may not contain as much explicit teaching as learners’ needs might warrant, and in particular there was little direct teaching of reading. The corollary is that literacy, numeracy and language teachers need considerably more training and professional development in those core competencies.