3.1 The teachers

3.1.1 Socio-demographic characteristics

Only two of the 15 teachers were male.¹¹ The age distribution of the teachers in the figure below shows that most are aged 40+ years and few are under 30 years.

One of the teachers was Maori, two were Pasifika (Samoan/Tongan and Fijian) and the remainder were all Pakeha/European.

3.1.2 Qualifications and experience

As is common in general adult education, all of these LNL teachers have entered this educational sector via ‘the back door’ (i.e. they have had other career paths previously; there is not an acknowledged career structure comparable to other educational sectors), so it is not surprising that they have a range of educational and professional qualifications:

Of the 15 teachers:

• Five had degrees (three in education, one in linguistics and one in English)
• Five had school teaching qualifications
• Three had specialist ESOL qualifications
• Four had Literacy Aotearoa qualifications
• Three had degrees plus a teaching qualification
• Three only had vocational qualifications
• One had no post-school qualifications

Five of the teachers were currently studying towards a qualification, including a Bachelor of Education (Adult Education), a Certificate in Adult Literacy, a Master of Arts and two Certificates in Adult Teaching/Education.

¹¹ Because the majority of teachers were female, individual teachers are referred to as she irrespective of their gender to protect their anonymity. This practice is not followed with individual learners, as there was a reasonable distribution of both genders.