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History of Education Review
“We know no such profession as a university teacher”: New Zealand academics' teaching
capabilities and student performance in the years of academic boom and student strife
Ian Brailsford
Article information:
To cite this document:
Ian Brailsford, (2011),"“We know no such profession as a university teacher”", History of Education Review,
Vol. 40 Iss 1 pp. 30 - 46
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/08198691111140794
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HER
40,1
“We know no such profession as
a university teacher”
New Zealand academics’ teaching capabilities
30 and student performance in the years of
academic boom and student strife
Ian Brailsford
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Abstract
Purpose – The historical study aims to trace moves towards professionalising university teaching in
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the era of post-war expansion in higher education using the University of Auckland, New Zealand,
as the specific case study.
Design/methodology/approach – The historical analysis draws from published papers and
original documents chronicling the state of teaching abilities in New Zealand in the late 1950s and
1960s and also draws from the University of Auckland’s own archives.
Findings – University teaching by the early 1970s was no longer a private matter. Facing greater
accountability from the New Zealand government and university students over the quality of teaching,
New Zealand universities responded by creating professional development units to enhance the
teaching capabilities of their academic staff.
Originality/value – This case study adds to the emerging histories of higher education academic and
staff development units in Australasia and the United Kingdom. It demonstrates the growing
realisation amongst academics, students and policy makers in the 1960s that lecturers could not be
entirely left to their own devices given the potential harm poor teaching could have on student
performance.
Keywords Universities, Teachers, Professional education, Academic and professional development,
Student learning, Higher education, Research, New Zealand
Paper type General review
Introduction
In November 1968, the Gazette, the University of Auckland’s staff journal, allowed
three academics to speculate on the future of the institution as it headed “towards
the seventies”. Historian Nicholas Tarling noted two recent developments likely to
affect the university in the next decade, one economic and the other generational.
Long-standing criticism of undergraduate failure and attrition rates was becoming
more intense with the recent economic downturn. Students were also questioning the
purpose of a university education, with many, according to Tarling’s observations,
wanting to avoid becoming a “cog in the wheel, a young executive, a suburban
husband” (Tarling, 1968). Emily E. Stephens, convocation member and retired schools’
inspector, mused about the problems of rapid university expansion, pointing to the
“almost reckless” policy of the university taking more responsibility for its students’
The author would like to thank Elizabeth Nichol, The University of Auckland’s Records
Management Programme Manager, for her assistance in locating the archival materials used in
this article along with David Parker (AUT University) and Frances Kelly (University of
History of Education Review
Vol. 40 No. 1, 2011 Auckland) for their comments on the draft version of this article. This research is one part of a
pp. 30-46 larger international project on the Histories of Academic Development in New Zealand, Australia
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0819-8691 and the UK involving: Barbara Grant, Mark Barrow, Alison Lee, Peter Kandlbinder, Margaret
DOI 10.1108/08198691111140794 Hicks, Catherine Manathunga, Sue Clegg and David Gosling.well-being, such as offering counselling, medical and accommodation services to the Academics’
growing ranks of undergraduates. Stephens cautioned against the University of teaching
Auckland modelling itself on General Motors or the Bell Telephone Company. The
university’s purpose was, “not to expand, not even exclusively to teach, important capabilities
though that is: but to be a centre of learning” (Stephens, 1968). Finally, zoologist John
Morton, discussing the complex relationship between research and teaching,
emphasised the primacy of research, especially since the publication of the Hughes 31
Parry Report in 1959 and the subsequent break up of the University of New Zealand
into four autonomous universities (Auckland, Canterbury, Otago and Victoria).
Teaching ability was largely assumed and academic appointments and promotions
were made on research capabilities. Morton claimed there were no instruction books
in New Zealand on the craft of university teaching but he was eagerly awaiting the
arrival of one such book, University Teaching in Transition, from the United Kingdom
(Morton, 1968).
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As astute inside observers of the university, Tarling, Stephens and Morton each
identified short- and long-term changes within higher education that we can say, with
the benefit of hindsight, correctly anticipated challenges facing universities that still
resonate four decades later; universities today are having to prove the effectiveness of
their teaching and learning initiatives (Devlin and Samarawickrema, 2010) and this
historical case study demonstrates that an earlier generation of university personnel
grappled with many of the same issues. The central historical question posed here
is: was the quality of university teaching a significant factor in student performance?
As such, this research paper examines how teaching responsibilities were viewed
by academics themselves, the wider academic community, educational researchers and,
last but not least, university students. The first part of the narrative details the
national discussions and pioneering research into why many New Zealand university
students were, it was believed, under-performing. The second section uses archive
material from the University of Auckland to examine how the institution and
individual departments grappled with the problems of teaching struggling students.
These twin, intertwined narratives indicate that university teaching itself was
absolved of direct responsibility for causing student failure but the quality of teaching
was no longer taken for granted. New Zealand, with its long-held commitment to
liberal, “open entry” admission to university education, is a useful exemplar as the
country has had many years’ experience admitting students with a reasonable risk
of academic failure, in contrast to other western nations who have gone down the path
of “widening participation” more recently.
This article’s time-frame encompasses New Zealand universities’ first phase of
rapid expansion in student numbers through the 1960s, during which time teaching
changed from a largely private activity controlled by the lecturer to one scrutinised by
students, educational researchers, a growing band of professional staff developers and
the university itself. As a result, the quality of university teaching was queried for
the first time, not just in New Zealand but across the western world (Grant et al., 2009).
The increasing number of university students were viewed by academics as
more vulnerable (both emotionally and intellectually) than earlier generations of
undergraduates but also critical of their elders and authority in general. While the
concept of “massification” is associated with the second wave of the rapid university
expansion in the 1990s and what has been labelled as the “McDonaldization” of higher
education (Hayes and Wynyard, 2002), we can hear similar complaints from academics
about an increasingly impersonal relationship between themselves and students. SomeHER academics in New Zealand were also wondering if university teaching really was,
40,1 “a routine [scholarly] function, tacked on, something almost anyone can do” long before
the 1990 publication of Ernest Boyer’s influential tome Scholarship Reconsidered
(Boyer, 1990). Moreover, a shift to student-centred teaching and learning – again seen
as a 1990s pedagogy (Ramsden, 1992) – is there in the archives too. Looming over this
question of effective teaching was the claim made by Morton that when a student
32 enquired, “about university teaching as a career”, the proper retort was that “we know
no such profession”[1]. The three main histories (Sinclair, 1983; Tarling, 1999; Reid,
2008) of the university dealt with here – Auckland – perpetuate this ambivalence about
university teaching: it barely gets a mention.
University Teaching in Transition arrived in the University of Auckland library in
late 1968. Morton would have read the following quotation as he turned over the first
page of the much anticipated guide: “University teaching might be called the hidden
profession. It is practised as a secret rite behind closed doors and is not mentioned
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in polite academic society[2]”. However, the editor’s preface stated this state of affairs
was changing; complacency about university teaching was a thing of the past, driven
in part by governmental reviews of higher education, a burgeoning field of higher
educational research and a general “democratization” of the British universities in
the wake of rapid expansion in student numbers combined with a proliferation of new
scientific knowledge and teaching technologies. The “new student” confronted the
“new [university] teacher” (Layton, 1968, pp. v-vii). The handbook presented in paper
form the content of teaching methods courses offered at the University of Leeds under
four broad headings: teaching large groups; teaching small groups; aids to teaching
and learning; and examinations and marking. Across the Tasman, the University of
Melbourne with its University Teaching Project began offering teaching methods
courses from the early 1960s (Lee et al., 2008). By the late 1960s teaching methods
courses were commonplace in most British and Australian universities (Teather, 1979).
At the University of Auckland a two-day course on university teaching methods
was first offered in August 1972. Colin Maiden, the new Vice-Chancellor, informed
senate in March 1972 that “such courses were a good idea; they would be on a
voluntary basis and designed particularly for new members of staff” (Auckland
University News, 1972). Experienced academics gave sage advice on teaching methods
to younger staff. For example, at the first gathering, Classics Professor William Lacey
informed 60 Auckland staff on how to deliver a lecture:
Shape: So prepare, but don’t get overweight [y] think of your lectures like the girls in a
beauty contest. Overweight is stodgy, fat, dull, unattractive; underweight, because under-
prepared, is skinny, thin, and lacks an attractive silhouette. The right features must be clearly
outlined — not too many — and well developed on a good structure. And if your model has a
smile or two as well, a real smile and not a sickly grin, so much the better[3].
University teaching method courses at the University of Auckland, and elsewhere in
New Zealand, became regular, annual events. Topics included running tutorials, lecture
preparation, small-group seminars, laboratory teaching and using audio-visual aids.
The organisation of these events was initially undertaken by the university’s Centre for
Continuing Education but with the arrival of the first Higher Education Research
Officer (HERO), Dr John Jones, in November 1974 there was an academic staff member
on hand to further develop not only introductory sessions on teaching techniques but
also customised ad hoc teaching workshops and seminars. But what exactly were the
problems with university teaching that these courses were meant to remedy?New Zealand university teaching under the spotlight: 1959-1969 Academics’
If, by 1972, university lecturing was fully exposed, over a decade earlier it was still teaching
discussed behind closed doors as alluded to in University Teaching in
Transition. There are mentions, however, of informal gatherings of lecturers coming capabilities
together to discuss teaching issues[4]. For example, Ray Stroobant, addressing
a staff seminar at Victoria in 1959 (organised by the Association of University
Teachers and reprinted in the New Zealand University Journal ), observed that 33
discussing teaching methods with his colleagues was a “very delicate and personal
business” since as things stood: “Teaching is what the teacher does. In the privacy
of his classroom or lecture room he is the sole selector of the procedures to be
followed and the principles to be upheld.” Nonetheless, Stroobant wanted to improve
his teaching. He felt that aids to lecturing, such as radio, films, recordings, models
and the soon-to-be-launched television, should be incorporated into university
teaching, along with more guidance from heads of departments on teaching matters
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and “some recognised way of training university staff members in teaching
procedures” (Stroobant, 1960).
The discussion following Stroobant’s paper captured the thoughts of lecturers in
different departments about whether or not university teaching could be taught. An
experienced lecturer wondered if he would have been perceptive enough at the
beginning of his career to have benefited from “instruction in the art of lecturing”;
his teaching skills had come through years of practice, although he did “shudder to
think what the students had suffered in the course of my self-development, through
trial and error, as a lecturer” (Auckland University Information Office, 1960). A
departmental head at the Victoria seminar saw it as his duty to meet up with new
lecturers on a regular basis to discuss progress, and without “any snooping around
with students” it was “surprising how much comes back of what is going on”, enabling
him to “make a pretty fair assessment and step in with advice when it was needed”.
Experienced staff in a department “can do a good deal to help, by showing interest in
how the younger ones are making out”. The seminar discussion concluded with
participants commenting on the relative importance of research and teaching. A
scientist put forward the proposition that “promotion goes to the research man, whose
ability is easier to judge than is teaching ability. In consequence, the more ambitious
younger men may well decide not to spend too much time on their teaching, which
comes to be regarded as a chore”. Stroobant retorted that good teaching was as hard as
good research: “Each activity calls for its own skills, aptitudes, knowledge – teaching
is easier only in the sense that it is easier there to get away with second-rate.” The
pressing issue for lecturers in New Zealand was to address the high first-year student
failure rate and teaching improvements were best targeted on “the mass-group of
rookies, fresh to university” (Auckland University Information Office, 1960, pp. 34-5).
The high first-year failure rate in New Zealand universities, mentioned by Stroobant
as the key teaching problem, came to the attention of the senate of the University
of New Zealand in 1954. Senate decided to examine the academic abilities of
New Zealand’s new-entrant students. George Currie, Vice-Chancellor of the University
of New Zealand, justified the need for research “in view of complaints by university
teachers that many students admitted to the university are in fact insufficiently
prepared or unsuited for university studies”[5]. This initiative led to George W. Parkyn,
the government’s director of education research, completing his two-part Success and
Failure at the University (1959 and 1967). Concurrent with Parkyn’s research, a major
study of the first-year experience was completed in the early 1960s by CanterburyHER University’s John J. Small at the behest of the New Zealand Council for Educational
40,1 Research.
The government-initiated “Report of the committee on New Zealand universities”,
universally referred to, after its chairman, as the Hughes Parry Report, also addressed
the attrition rate in its deliberations. This review mapped out the future direction of
higher education in New Zealand, following in the wake of the Murray report in
34 Australia two years previously. New Zealand’s universities needed to shake off their
“pioneering traditions” and become centres of research and teaching. The problems
around teaching, according to the report, were not about technique but student
wastage (high first-year failure rates and long times to degree completion), poor
facilities, inadequate salaries for lecturers and a failure to “immerse” full-time students
into university life. Improving teaching was about financial support for students to
allow for full-time study, attractive salary packages for lecturers and investment in
new buildings rather than training new lecturers. There were also recommendations
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for guidance and counselling services for new students to help them make the
transition from school to university. The report quoted at length a submission from a
head of one department with a staff of nine lecturers and 800 students, encapsulating
the problems of teaching “mass meetings of first-year classes”:
This system depends on the survival of the fittest. The student from a good sixth form comes
up well prepared, fits in, is welcomed and looked after. The inadequately prepared student
gets shabbier treatment. If he can emerge from the mass he too is welcomed and looked after.
But in the first year, especially, it is up to the student. We have not the manpower to discuss
individual difficulties, to help a shy or ill-prepared student around the corner (Report of the
Committee on New Zealand Universities, 1960).
This department head went on to note that the “survivors” obtained a good university
education: “But – to paraphrase the Murray Report – New Zealand does not need
merely a small number of very clever people but a large number of competent
graduates.” A problem identified in the report was that New Zealand already had, one
the one hand, a liberal admissions policy meaning that “some students admitted to
Stage I classes who are on the margin of suitability for university study” were
struggling to pass the first year but, on the other hand, there was a pressing need
for more university graduates as New Zealand headed into the 1960s. An improved
first-year student experience, resulting in less “wastage”, could only occur if
there were more teaching staff (Report of the Committee on New Zealand Universities,
1960, p. 20).
The Hughes Parry Report had seized upon two questions that had been vexing
university administrators and academics since the mid 1950s: who should be admitted
to university and how did undergraduates fare in their first year? New Zealand
prided itself on its “open entry” university admission system. Vice-Chancellor Currie
and University Registrar Edwin Kedgley expressed the prevailing view in 1959 when
they wrote that, “all qualified young people should have the opportunity for University
education” (Currie and Kedgley, 1959). Defenders of liberal access claimed weeding out
the large number of potential first-year failures would mostly likely exclude successful
students too. The principle of open entry, according to two retired senior academics,
“remained an accepted policy. Indeed it was almost the only policy, and one that
survived perhaps only because full advantage was not taken of it” (Malcolm and
Tarling, 2007). But the Hughes Parry Report cited Department of Education statistics
with projections of university enrolments increasing from their current rate ofapproximately 13,000 to somewhere between 26,900 and 30,750 students by 1972. Academics’
Opening entry even wider with a high first-year failure rate was potentially untenable teaching
for students and universities, and unaffordable for the nation as a whole[6].
The Hughes Parry Report drew from Parkyn’s work-in-progress research in making capabilities
strident calls for reform. Parkyn’s final reports indicated that school performance was
a poor predictor of university success. His analysis of the external factors impacting on
student achievement has a familiar ring to it: full-time vs part-time study; students’ 35
course loads; paid employment; lodgings; travel; socio-economic background; and
teaching methods. Parkyn prefaced his summary on teaching with the comment:
“From time to time the question has arisen whether the quality of some of the teaching
in the universities may have been a cause of failure” (Parkyn, 1967). More research
“with technical assistance from a research unit devoted to university problems within
each university” was needed to investigate what impact teaching quality had on
students’ academic performance (Parkyn, 1967, p. 120). Parkyn’s analysis of the
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teacher’s impact on students was their role as (typically) the sole examiner. Parkyn
wryly noted: “When a teacher is disappointed at the quality of the work done by his
students and fails them heavily, it is an open question, in default of valid evidence one
way or the other, whether he is an average teacher with poor students or a poor teacher
with average students” (Parkyn, 1967, p. 117).
Parkyn’s legacy to New Zealand higher education was evidence supporting the
ideal of open entry, although several academics took issue with Parkyn’s methods
and conclusions (Cockrem, 1961; Cockrem and Orr, 1967; Munz, 1968). However, it
became prevailing wisdom that first-year failure was not inevitable. His research into
why a significant number of students were underperforming directed attention to
assessment, specifically examinations. He suggested that the system itself was setting
up students to fail. University lecturers were encouraged to:
Specify with considerable precision the minimum objectives that they expect the lower ability
group of their students to reach in a year, for these are the ones who are most likely to fail to
reach the required level of competence if they cannot envisage clearly what they must learn
(Parkyn, 1967, p. 223).
John Small investigated the first-year of study experienced by over 100 full-time
Canterbury undergraduates to uncover the factors leading one group to pass all their
courses, a second group to both pass and fail courses, and a final group failing
outright. The rigorous statistical research cross-tabulated students’ school records, IQ
scores and reading comprehension abilities with social, personal and cultural factors
that emerged from in-depth one-to-one interviews. Small concurred with Parkyn that it
was very difficult to predict in advance which students were likely to succeed or fail: “It
is obvious, in other words, that the most successful students were those who had more
ability and tried harder. This is scarcely surprising; the problem is to identify the triers
in advance” (Small, 1966). Given the problems identifying who was going to fail in
making the transition to university, Small suggested numerous reforms to lower the
risk of failure and attrition: professional counselling; study-skills workshops; better
liaison between schools and universities; course advice and planning services;
and improved relations between lecturers and new students. While few students
surveyed attributed failure to their lecturers, Small recorded comments about instances
of poor teaching by the “few lecturers” who “were teaching in ways which irritated
or confused students” (Small, 1966, p. 35). He concluded that “there seems to be some
room for improvement in the methods of teaching, and also sufficient resources, in theHER form of certain highly skilled teachers, to provide the necessary correctives” (Small,
40,1 1966, p. 81). Small’s investigations were also incorporated into Parkyn’s second volume
and, as we shall see below, the two were cited in tandem when the New Zealand
universities came together in the late 1960s to discuss how students were coping after a
decade of expansion.
The need to do something concrete about student performance came to a head in
36 1968 when, in a series of speeches, the Finance Minister Robert Muldoon discussed
the financial implications for the country of student failure. The prevailing liberal
“open entry” policy inherited from the 1950s – reinforced by Parkyn and Small’s
research work – was undermined by rapid increases in government expenditure for
tertiary education in the 1960s (as proposed by the Hughes Parry Report), exacerbated
by a severe economic downturn in 1967. Based on Treasury sources, Muldoon
estimated the 33 per cent first-year failure rate cost the tax payer $10 million per year,
an expense he felt the country could no longer afford to ignore (Gustafson, 2000).
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A meeting of senior academics in October 1968 charged Canterbury’s Neville
Phillips and Otago’s E. Alan Horsman with the task of compiling a report on the
quality and performance of students. Their April 1969 findings responded to
Muldoon’s claims about the economic cost of student failure. Phillips and Horsman
defended open entry, questioning Muldoon’s statistics and the true extent of failure.
Their data collection of recent student performance did not “lead us to question
Dr Parkyn’s well-known conclusion that further selection of students would have
little appreciable effect on the university failure unless it was very severe” (Phillips and
Horsman, 1969). Rather than close the wide open door, Phillips and Horsman
suggested three areas to support student achievement: improving teaching standards,
changing examining methods and course requirements, and academic reorganisation.
When discussing the improvement of teaching standards they noted that:
As nearly everywhere else, academic staff in New Zealand generally undergo no
methodological training as teachers and no systematic supervision of their teaching habits
and performance; in promotion, as in appointment, effectiveness in teaching, being difficult
to identify, tends to carry less weight than formal academic qualifications, research,
publication record and administrative service, all of which are more easily measurable
(Phillips and Horsman, 1969, p. 41).
The recruitment of many new academics in New Zealand during the 1960s meant the
proportion of experienced to inexperienced lecturers had shifted; the old system of
“leisurely induction of new recruits by wise men in the ways of university teaching
has almost ceased to be possible” (Phillips and Horsman, 1969, p. 42). Moreover, the
public and government were interested in the more visible “teaching function of
the university than in those functions which seem to it to be more esoteric and less
useful” (Phillips and Horsman, 1969, p. 42). The report considered “the extent to which
poor teaching contributed to student wastage”. Phillips and Horsman believed both
the recent New Zealand research studies and those conducted overseas showed that
failure “was mainly due to the personal circumstances of students and to academic
organization” (Phillips and Horsman, 1969). Nonetheless, improvements in teaching
standards were worth pursuing for their own sake. Better staff-student ratios and
allowing for small-group tutorial teaching were encouraged. Canvassing student
opinion on teaching – fraught with difficulties as it was – was proposed with the
proviso that the feedback from questionnaires would be confidential to the lecturer and
possibly head of department. Short courses on teaching skills, especially for juniorstaff, “might be run by the university” alongside regular seminars bringing together Academics’
older and newer members of staff to discuss teaching issues. Universities should also teaching
factor in teaching abilities when considering appointments and promotions and
perhaps institute a “periodic award to staff members for excellence as teachers” capabilities
(Phillips and Horsman, 1969, p. 44). These university-wide initiatives would, according
to the authors, complement the “most significant contribution” to imparting “tricks
of the trade” teaching skills which ought to take place at the departmental level 37
(Phillips and Horsman, 1969).
While improving teaching delivery was deemed a necessary venture, the crux of
suggested changes was the organisation of courses. More full-time study would
most probably, according to Phillips and Horsman, improve student performance and
time-to-degree-completion rates. The report approvingly noted the trend towards
including term-time essays and tests in a student’s final grade rather than relying on a
final exam exclusively. However, this move towards continuous assessment would
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“involve harder and steadier work for both staff and student, passes much of the
responsibility to junior staff members and could damage the confidence felt by
students in their tutors, who now become, in effect perpetual examiners”. Departments
were encouraged to compare student work loads during the year ensuring “that
individually, course demands are reasonably equitable and that collectively, they are
not excessive”. Students should also be given “clearer guidance, for example, by more
detailed syllabuses about course requirements”. Finally, Phillips and Horsman took
on board Small’s suggestions for universities offering “elementary study skills”
courses and improved counselling and advisory services (Phillips and Horsman, 1969,
pp. 46-7).
Phillips and Horsman’s other major proposal called for establishing units to
study higher education “in general and the gathering of data about the working of
particular institutions” in line with developments in North America, Australia and
Britain (Phillips and Horsman, 1969, p. 46). Collating accurate data from the different
universities for the report had in itself been problematic. The recommendation for
higher education research units was premised on the assumption that the “self-
knowledge of universities needs to be increased”. The paper suggested the following
mandate:
Together with research and the dissemination of the results, a need has been recognized for
offering services to university departments, e.g. advice on teaching and examining methods,
curricular design and other problems suggested by the departments themselves, as well as
the sponsoring of courses and seminars on subjects of interest to both academic and
administrative staff (Phillips and Horsman, 1969).
Coupled with the May 1969 National Development Conference’s recommendation that
universities “be encouraged to take comprehensive action” to provide training to
“assist university teachers to improve their techniques of teaching”, it was evident that
the concept of units devoted to investigating and then improving the dynamic between
teaching and student achievement had come of age (Report of the Committee on
Education, 1969).
In the ten years from Hughes Parry to the Conference of Universities and National
Development Conference, we can see university teaching coming under scrutiny.
While student performance was attributed to students and the way they navigated
themselves through courses and the wider university environment, there was a
growing acceptance that teaching quality was important. Traditional methods ofHER inducting new lecturers into their teaching roles were no longer adequate as New
40,1 Zealand headed towards the 1970s. In addition, universities were coming to realise that
they did not know much about their own teaching practices. The suggestion in the
Phillips and Horsman report to set up centres for teaching and learning within
the universities was carried through. Canterbury, Victoria, Otago and Auckland all
had units by 1974 (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1978). When the next conference of the
38 universities met in August 1974, Professor J. Vaughan reflected on recent changes in
attitudes towards university teaching, influenced by greater government expenditures,
more students on campus, new teaching technologies and hostile student voices
complaining about the quality of teaching. As a result, although New Zealand lagged
behind Australia and Britain in the provision of training courses, there “was a growing
recognition of the need not only for induction and in-service courses but also for
permanent research and advisory services in higher education” (Special Report, 1974).
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View from the chalk face: University of Auckland teaching in practice
The University of Auckland grew rapidly during the 1960s, with an ambitious
building programme in place and rising enrolments beyond official projections. It was
the modern New Zealand university envisioned in the Hughes Parry Report. English
Professor Sydney Musgrove noted in 1967 that the “problems of the ‘megaversity’
are not yet with us, but they can be seen looming in the not too distant future”[7].
By the end of the 1960s, the University of Auckland was approaching 10,000 students
and was New Zealand’s largest university. A publicity brochure promoting the
university to potential employees from overseas commented: “In 1969 the University is
in the midst of a building programme designed to cope with expansion of student
numbers common throughout the world, to which the growth of the city has given
an especial urgency” (The University of Auckland, 1969). Historian Keith Sinclair,
looking back from the vantage point of 1970, noted that the “jibe often reported in the
press in the past, that the university was a glorified ‘night school’, is now unjustified”
(Sinclair, 1970). However, writing in 1983, Sinclair characterised the 1960s as a decade
of both an “academic boom” and “student demonstrations and other strife”[8]. One
of the students’ complaints was about overcrowding. Student Peter Rosier, writing in
the national student magazine Focus in early 1970, noted that Auckland had reached
“maximum physical capacity” with 10,000 students (Rosier, 1970). Nevertheless, the
university, in its glossy brochure, reassured job applicants: “Staff-student relations
are in general unstrained, and this helps to counter the sense of anonymity and
feeling of alienation which students seem to feel in some large and growing
universities” (The University of Auckland, 1969). Surviving university and student
documents allow us to see how the national discussions on university teaching and
the recommendations for reform played out.
To help alleviate the growth problems, the university instigated two new ventures.
First, it established a counselling service. University of Melbourne student counsellor
Robert Priestley came to Auckland in 1965 to examine current provision of “peripheral
support services”, canvassing opinions from 100 Auckland academics and students.
His report to the Deans’ Committee in October 1965 argued universities were
increasing in size “too rapidly for traditional teacher-student relationships to be
adequately maintained”. According to Priestley, help from a suitably qualified
counsellor “at the critical time can well mean the difference between academic
catastrophe and graduation”. Universities adopting a “sink or swim” approach were
being uneconomical and inhumane, ignoring the fact that most incoming students wereinexperienced in planning their personal or academic lives without assistance and Academics’
were “probably too dependent on and too resentful of adult authority”. Priestley’s teaching
reconnaissance found pockets of academic support for struggling students, such as
within the Faculty of Science which he assumed was due to the high failure rates there. capabilities
Lecturers did not need “memoranda on how to teach” but many were, in Priestley’s
opinion, “very keen to help students, although many are uncertain as to how to go
about it, and most would probably shirk from aggressively imposing themselves on 39
students”. Teaching effectiveness, he argued, could only be increased by introducing
ancillary support services. The economic argument presented to the university was
that a student counsellor – supporting struggling students with adjustment to
university life, problems of learning, studying and so forth – would pay for themselves
if they made a “critical difference between failure and graduation in five or six students
per annum”. The university accepted the report and approved the immediate
appointment of a counsellor with the “same status and privileges as a senior lecturer”
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(Priestley, 1965).
The second mechanism to bridge the gap between students and academics was
the move in mid 1968 to introduce staff-student consultative committees in each
department and allow for student representation on faculty committees and senate.
The submission to the university from the Auckland University Students’ Association
on representation was prefaced with these comments: “It is not our desire to see our
University disrupted as has occurred recently throughout the world. It is rather our
desire to change the University so that such disruption cannot occur either now or in
the future. It is not our desire to see Student Power but rather to see Student
Participation”. Students alleged that course requirements and major course changes
were made without any consultation on how they might impact students. Moreover,
it was claimed that “many students complained” to the association of: poor lecturing,
poor and irrelevant textbooks being prescribed and recommended, difficulties
understanding assessment regulations, no contact with staff, little consideration by
staff of student needs, amongst other grievances (Rudman et al., 1968). Senate in
late July 1968 approved the establishment of departmental committees with elected
student representatives from each year group[9].
Departmental annual reports – a statutory requirement from 1964 – provide more
testimony about university teaching and staff-student relations in general. If heads of
departments were able to feel the pulse of their departments, then these documents
give a yearly stock-take of teaching and student success and failure. The reports
provided detailed breakdowns of student examination performance and to a large
extent this was the teaching section of the annual review. Nonetheless, we do get
numerous insights into teaching matters. These can be broken down into three key
areas: coping with large numbers of students; teaching innovations such as tutorials
and inquiry-based learning; and assessment methods.
There were numerous references in departmental reports to class sizes being too
large for current staffing levels. Engineering, for example, claimed in 1964 that if the
staff-student ratio was not improved then “the choice of action will be between
reducing standards below the acceptable minimum, or else apply exclusion”[10].
Geography on more than one occasion in the late 1960s commented on the logistical
problems associated with taking 300 first-year students on residential field trips[11].
Chemistry had to utilise its entire junior and senior teaching staff to run laboratory
classes to temper the “unavoidable impersonal” character of the large department[12].
The Maths Department report from 1966 is worth quoting at length as the qualityHER of the academic relationships between students and staff and amongst students
40,1 themselves had, in the head’s opinion, demonstrably worsened:
Ten years ago, at least the advanced classes in the department were small, and students in
them were individually known by their teachers; often students would be seen before or after
classes discussing their work with each other. Now these classes have trebled in size, and the
staff to student ratio in them has greatly diminished, so that many of the students are not
40 known personally by any member of staff[13].
Several departments established tutorial classes to ameliorate feelings of isolation.
Philosophy claimed in 1964 its new system of weekly small-group sessions had meant
“students learned to articulate their problems and so have found their feet in the
subject”[14]. Two years later philosophy was pleased with the experiment, noting “the
effect on their [first-years’] work and enthusiasm has been heartening”. But
philosophy’s tutorials – due to student numbers and staffing – had an average of
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16 students in each group whereas the ideal number was eight[15]. History, English
and German attributed better pass rates to tutorial systems, accountancy hoped its
poor exam results in 1964 would be remedied by a tutorial system to be introduced
in 1965 and human biology introduced tutorials in 1969 for students “to discuss and
hear the views of others on the social implications of modern biology”[16].
Tutorials were credited with allowing for more contact between teaching staff and
students. We can also see glimpses of a move away from traditional transmission-style
teaching. The new School of Medicine, in the teaching of its physico-chemistry course,
adopted in 1969 a “student-centred approach” that was “well received by students”.
In the laboratories “the emphasis has been on ‘inquiry’ rather than on ‘verification’ and
ample opportunities for creativity have been presented to the student”[17].
Biochemistry in 1971 was planning a course that “would develop in students the
ability to obtain and interpret scientific information rather than memorising facts.
The emphasis in the course is on seminars and discussions rather than on formal
lectures”[18]. But, as we shall see, from a student perspective such student-focused
innovations were the exception to the rule.
Assessment methods were being altered too with more emphasis on term-time tests
and coursework counting towards end-of-year marks. Engineering in 1966 noted
that student effort was more consistent throughout the year with only 40 per cent
of the grade allocated to the final exam[19]. In art history, the 50-50 split between
course-work and a final exam was credited with reducing “pre-examination tension
and also it improved student morale considerably”. Students in this department also
appreciated announcements in advance of topics to be covered in the exam[20].
However, student opinion in biology was divided when it came to regular term-time
tests, with some students considering “frequent examinations too reminiscent of
the atmosphere of close surveillance associated with school days; others welcome the
pattern of examinations as a means of forcing them to keep up with their work”[21].
History in 1972 was uncertain what effect coursework had but tentatively suggested
that it led to the narrowing of the mark-ranges: edging marginal failures into marginal
passes and slightly bringing down top examination grades[22]. In 1973, English
thought the initial enthusiasm for coursework was declining with anxiety now
concerning the continuous pressure on students throughout the year[23]. Over in
architecture staff and students were coming to the conclusion that continuous
assessment was “diverting energy from the essential work of studio”[24]. Politics in
1974 felt that continuous assessment “advantages only the already advantaged” andobserving developments in North America believed that the newer system reinforced Academics’
“grade-orientation”. Politics astutely noted that: “No doubt the [assessment] debate will teaching
continue, hopefully in as good-tempered a fashion as in the past”[25].
We can observe individual departments tinkering with teaching and assessment capabilities
methods but improving student performance was problematic. Despite some
promising signs that more attention to teaching was nurturing better quality staff-
student contacts, there was no guarantee that this led to better results. For example, 41
physics, hoping to lift student performance in 1970, introduced tutorials, increased
the number of staff-student contact hours and ensured that senior lecturers taught
large first-year classes. Despite (or possibly because of) this attempt to improve
teaching, pass rates did not increase. The head commented that “weaker students”
were less enthusiastic about the new tutorials than the “stronger brethren”. As far as
physics was concerned, responsibility lay with students: “There is little doubt that the
factor which has the most effect on a student’s progress and understanding is the work
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which he does himself and the way he organises his time”[26].
The quality of the teaching done by individual lecturers and tutors was
understandably glossed over in the annual reports. Heads generally thanked staff
for teaching large numbers of students under trying conditions, exacerbated by
disruptions caused by the building programme. A comment from art history in 1973
that one of the staff’s lecturing had been “efficient enough but perfunctory in spirit”
was a rare admission of poor teaching quality[27]. But when we read the surviving
student records (like the 1968 submission on student representation) we hear criticism.
Richard Gyde, the student association education officer, wrote a piece for Auckland
University News in July 1972 suggesting how teaching and assessment should be
delivered to make “the student’s life much easier and promote greater learning” based
“on comments by students in many departments”. Gyde prefaced his remarks by
acknowledging some of the student-centred approaches he and his fellow students
were proposing were used by some, but not all, university teachers. Students wanted
essay topics to be carefully defined with clear instructions for how they should be
presented and information about the assessment criteria. Help was requested in essay
writing and markers were requested to be both consistent and constructive with their
criticism. Lecturers were also encouraged to be human, personable, enthusiastic and
available to answer student questions. Lectures themselves should be sign-posted and
have some visual element. Students preferred lecturers speaking to the class rather
than to the blackboard or the lecture notes. Finally, and most importantly, lectures
should start and finish on time (Gyde, 1972).
Formal student evaluation of courses at the University of Auckland was discussed
by senate in March 1972 but not seriously considered until 1979 (Auckland University
News, 1972; Jones, 1980). However, the student association took direct action,
publishing a yearly “Anti-Calendar” from 1974 onwards. The aim was to provide
a student perspective on the quality of courses – “assessing the assessors” – to
counterbalance the bland course descriptions provided in the official university
calendar. Editor Max Wallace encouraged students to speak out in lectures and ask
questions; they were only mediocre dictation sessions if students passively sat there
taking notes. Tutorials – the university’s solution to large class sizes – were lambasted
by Wallace as a “flop” in most departments because they were run by senior students
who, “were usually either posers [sic] trying to climb the academic ladder, or goats
who haven’t the nous to care about their teaching technique” (Wallace, 1974). Each
department’s courses and teaching were rated by student representatives withHER brickbats, missives and the occasional bouquet. But the very existence of the widely
40,1 circulated calendar provided further impetus for the university itself to survey
students in a more scientific manner to counter the negative publicity.
Taking stock of the evidence about teaching from both staff and student sources we
can detect conflicting messages about the quality of university education; students to a
large extent were expecting lecturers and tutors to teach them but at the same time
42 were frustrated when they were treated as passive recipients. The performance aspect
of teaching quality – what the teacher did in class – certainly was an issue for students;
however, from a staff perspective the issue was largely how well departments managed
the large number of students and – fundamentally – what the student did with the
teaching given.
John Jones, the university’s first HERO, was ideally placed to bridge the gulf
between staff and student expectations around teaching and learning. Jones surveyed
teaching staff in April 1975 about what kind of support they wanted from him.
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Completed by 201 (one-third) of the university’s lecturers, the findings validated the
need for an induction workshop for new teaching staff complemented with short
courses. The most popular short-course topics were assessment and small-group
teaching, followed by lecturing, using and producing audio-visual equipment, graduate
supervision and structuring courses. The vast majority of respondents (174) believed
some organised teaching activities were required at the University of Auckland. When
asked how frequently they would attend teaching courses if offered, we can discern a
core group of enthusiasts, a large middle group who “might intermittently attend” and
a sizeable minority who would not attend. To complicate matters further for Jones,
some staff liked the idea of attending sessions with colleagues from across the
university while others wanted discipline-specific workshops only or a combination
of generic and targeted provision. Jones concluded from the survey: “Insofar as likely
attendance at courses/workshops was concerned, the short, intensive courses which
aimed to deal with limited aspects of University teaching/learning were by far the most
popular”. Lecturing staff also commented on what they thought the core functions
of HERO should be. Based on the results and in order of priority these were: collecting
and disseminating information about university teaching and learning; offering
teaching-related workshops, seminars and courses; acting as a constructive critic of
established university educational methods and providing alternative solutions;
conducting specific research projects around assessment, student success, assessment
and the effectiveness of small-group teaching; and, finally, one-to-one “consultancies”
with individual lecturers or departments ( Jones, 1975a).
Jones addressed students in June 1975, taking up the mantle of constructive critic.
His comments were published in the student magazine Craccum under the headline
“Dr Jones prescribes”. Jones identified six realities of university education: universities
were teaching, rather than learning, orientated; universities were content, rather than
process, oriented; universities were selection, rather than criterion, oriented;
universities were research, rather than teaching, oriented; universities were
individual, rather than co-operative, oriented; and universities were not conducive
to co-operative learning. Jones reminded students that academics were unlikely to
challenge the status quo; research was their primary function and, although teaching
practices could be altered, it was unrealistic to expect staff to sacrifice research time
to devote to student education. Lecturers were “an important resource in the total
learning environment” on campus. Jones’s prescription was for students to be
instigators of reform: “If University educational practices are to change significantly(other than on a time-scale which approaches geological proportions) then it must Academics’
be because students – the consumers – want it” ( Jones, 1975b). Irrespective of the teaching
assembled students’ response to Jones’s diagnosis and remedy, his speech encapsulates
a profound shift in attitudes from the Victoria teaching seminar. Here was a frank capabilities
admission to students from an academic specialising in higher education of how
teaching and research were prioritised in the modern university, and then
subsequently encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning in 43
collaboration with academics. It is difficult to imagine such a public demystifying of
university teaching practices in 1959.
Conclusion
By the mid 1970s university teaching in New Zealand was no longer private and
students were finding their voice. However, Morton’s belief that there was no such
profession as the university teacher held true; academics were researchers who taught.
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The quality of teaching certainly affected students’ perceptions of the university
experience but no clear-cut answer had been found to how student performance was
affected by poor (or good) teaching. Nonetheless, the environment in which university
teaching took place was more amenable to improvement than professionalising
university teaching. We find a new sub-group of professionals like Jones – student
learning advisors and educational and staff developers – on the side supporting
teaching ventures and conducting research into an age old conundrum: is it what the
student does or what the teacher does?[28]
Notes
1. Morton, “Teaching and research”, p. 4. Morton continued: “But we should perhaps not use
these arguments too widely among ourselves, for we may not be immune to self-deception”.
2. Dr T.H. Matthews quoted in Layton (1968).
3. Lacey (1972). It is axiomatic to point out that the overwhelming majority of lecturers during
the 1960s and early 1970s were male. For a discussion on the position of female lecturers in
the New Zealand university system, see Fitzgerald (2007).
4. A seminar on teaching was held at Otago in early 1960. Two of the papers, H.N. Parton,
“Teaching a large first year science class” and were published in Horsman (1961a, b)
respectively.
5. George Currie quoted in Parkyn (1959).
6. Report of the Committee on New Zealand Universities, December 1959, p. 25.
7. “Department of English: report for the year ending 31 December 1967”, University of
Auckland Special Collections Library (SCL).
8. Keith Sinclair, A History of the University of Auckland 1883-1983, pp. 241-69.
9. “Minutes of Special Meeting of Senate 29 July 1968”, (Senate Minutes, University of
Auckland, 1968).
10. “School of Engineering Annual Report 1964”, SCL.
11. “Department of Geography Annual Report 1970”, SCL.
12. “Department of Chemistry Annual Report for 1968”, SCL.
13. “Department of Mathematics Annual Report 1966”, SCL.
14. “Department of Philosophy Annual Report for year ending 31 December 1964”, SCL.You can also read
