This report is the third in a series of reports carried out for the Ministry of Education and the
New Zealand Teachers Council as part of the Teacher Status Project.
The Project was initially set up to determine the perceptions of, influences on, and effects of
the status of teaching in New Zealand. The overall aim of the Project is to strengthen teacher
quality in the early childhood and school sectors, and the teaching profession. The three core
objectives of the Project are to encourage the general public to regard teaching as a valued
and respected profession, promote teaching as a positive career choice to attract quality
people to the profession, and to strengthen teacher perspectives of the profession.
Identifying Teacher status, Its Impact and Recent Teacher Status Initiatives a working paper
prepared by Marie Cameron, comprised the first stage of the Project. Involving a literature
review, it explored: status in the context of teaching; public perceptions and teachers’ own
perceptions of teacher status; relationships between status and teacher recruitment,
retention, capability and performance; and recent overseas central agency initiatives in the
area of teacher status.
The purpose of the second stage of the Project was to establish the views and perceptions of
key groups about teaching and behaviours in relation to recruitment, retention and
performance of teachers, and how status affects those perceptions and behaviours.
Perceptions of Teachers and Teaching by Ruth Kane and Mary Mallon
(http://www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm?layout=document&documentid=11171&data=l&goto=00)
captures the views of teachers, principals/head teachers and Board of Trustees/Management
Committee Members in schools and early childhood centres, senior students (Years 12 and
13) and student teachers.
The intent of the current report is to provide the same views from the public’s perspective.
More specifically it is how each of the target groups view the status of teachers and teaching,
how and why they form those views, how those views influence their own career decisions
and of others considering or pursuing a teaching career, and how those views may be
influenced over time. The key groups in this instance are young people (aged 12 to 25
years), adults and the business community