Building on our strengths in education

A stronger focus on our strengths in addition to an understanding of our education system’s deficits could lead the way forward, says Professor Stuart McNaughton in his new book Building on our strengths: Improving education in Aotearoa New Zealand.  

The book draws on McNaughton’s decade-long tenure as Chief Scientific Advisor to MoE, and his 50 years of experience in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. 

McNaughton is the Founding Director of Te Pūtahi / Woolf Fisher Research Centre, which was at the forefront of design-based school change research. He has previously published in the fields of children’s development, literacy and designing effective educational programmes for diverse populations.  

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McNaughton has received national and international acclaim for his work, and consults on curriculum and education interventions in New Zealand and abroad.  

Below, Professor McNaughton answers some questions on his new book, which is available now from NZCER Press.  

1. Your book is titled “Building on our Strengths” – broadly, what are these strengths of the NZ education system? Do you have any examples? 

There are five strengths associated with our system’s effectiveness. They are key to making effective changes, but currently their presence is variable, and at risk of being undermined by some current policy directions. 

The first is teachers acting as local experts, designing instruction and enacting curricula to reflect local contexts. Undermining this with highly prescriptive curricula may reduce the capability to innovate and adapt, as many teachers did during the Covid periods. ‘Learning loss’ during Covid was less in areas of reading and mathematics than some other jurisdictions. 

Secondly, children’s experiences and identity have been at the centre of teaching. Examples include the use of books for teaching reading, and beginning writing approaches, both of which have reflected local language, personal experiences and meaning for many, but notably not all children. These features were present when the system was among the best in the world.  

Another strength is what I call trying to be bicultural. Trying because there is much more to be done. The existing Māori medium schools increase the odds of high achievement for Māori. However, they are not as well-resourced as their counterparts. Additionally, a major impact on Māori students’ achievement in English medium schools is having teachers who are Māori or who are very familiar with te ao Māori (the Māori worldview)  

The system has a strength with partnerships and collaborations. One example is sending reading books home to be read with family members. It is a high value activity for all involved and foundational teaching would be less effective if this practice was reduced, as may be occurring with some new interventions. The self-managing schools model in place since 1989 damaged collaboration between schools, however new forms are being built, exemplified by highly successful clusters of digitally enabled schools called Manaiakalani. 

There is considerable support for innovation, creativity and critical thinking. Manaiakalani schools are a prime example. We are in the top four of 81 countries for promoting creative thinking with 15 year olds. A similar strength is collaborative problem solving on computers. Having teachers who are creative and promote creativity with their students, contributes to system effectiveness, indexed in wellbeing outcomes and by learning in subject areas.   

2. What goal(s) do you believe we can achieve by focusing on these strengths, and how?  

My primary goal is to contribute to a wide, evidence informed discussion about what matters in our system and how better to meet our equity and excellence objectives. I also wish to reduce the polarisation and misinformation in some of the current commentary on education. 

3. What inspired you to write this book?  

The immediate catalyst was a question I was asked when discussing why Finland has been so successful. The question was ‘what are we good at?’ The more I thought about it, the more I realised how important that question might be. I realised that answering that question would help us to make effective changes and avoid changes that could potentially undermine our quality and effectiveness.  

The question resonated strongly with my experiences of providing system level advice as Chief Education Scientific Advisor as well as my background in the optimistic sciences of developmental and educational psychology.  

4. Why is it necessary to focus on our strengths in today’s educational landscape?  

Principles from educational sciences (e.g learning sciences, implementation science) show that effective and sustainable change depends on building from current strengths. This is applicable to a system as much as an individual learner, or a collective of schools. Being aware of our strengths also provides a means for considering how fit for purpose system changes might be, and especially how they might risk on the one hand, or add value on the other, to what we do well.  

5. Who is this book for? What can readers expect? 

I tried to write the book for a wide audience, hopefully making it accessible to colleagues across the education system as well as a more general audience interested in or concerned about the quality and performance of our system.  

Educational issues are often in the media and changes to educational systems matter to all of us in one way or another. I wanted to contribute to an evidence-informed discussion of what should and can be changed and future directions of change. This is why it still has an academic feel, in that I want to back up claims with evidence rather than express opinions. 

6. How did you draw on your time as Chief Education Scientific Advisor to MoE for this book? What challenges and strengths of our education system did you observe during your term?  

Requests for advice often challenged me to think about how best to meet our equity and excellence goals in ways that shore up what we value and aspire to nationally. I quickly learned as the Chief Education Scientific Advisor that defensible and useful advice depended on understanding what enables sustainable and progressive changes in a system.  

A good rule of thumb is to consider what evidence we have from the point of view of what works for whom, under what conditions and at scale. The challenges in our system are not to do with innovation and having good ideas. The challenges are to do with reducing variability, increasing capability, ensuring sustainability of effective changes, and taking what is shown to work to scale nationally with planned adaptation to local contexts. 

7. What research does the book draw on?  

The book draws on a range of research sources. It includes historical record, and documentary evidence, as well as evidence from educational sciences. Because it proposes strengths at a system level there is often reference to the national and international data bases.  

The historical record is important because I try to answer the question from where did a strength come? For example, a long-standing, well-documented strength, which is associated with effectiveness in literacy is how our teachers have been creative and innovative – what enabled that and what are the risks to continuing to be so? At times I also use personal anecdote to flesh out a claim.  

8. What is your hope for the future of NZ education?  

I hope we can ensure strengths are consistently present in our system rather than too variable as they now are. Capitalizing on our strengths requires building more capability to be child-centred with all our students, with greater detail about the local expertise needed across all stages of compulsory schooling and in early childhood. The curriculum refresh process was doing this, but we will need to mitigate the risk of over-prescription undermining capability. 

A critical step is raising the status of teaching, making it highly desirable, highly regarded, and highly selective. The profession is less valued here than in countries like Singapore and Finland and enrolments in Initial Teacher Education programmes are declining at universities. Pay that recognises the highly skilled nature of teaching and its impact on individual, community, and national outcomes—including productivity—matters. Having specialist teaching in primary schools and postgraduate research based ITE programmes would contribute.  

The evidence supports rapidly expanding Māori medium provisions and a much greater Māori and Pasifika teaching workforce. Rapid expansion builds on the strengths of being child-centred, leveraging off the local curriculum, and trying to be bicultural, but crucially depends on attractiveness and supported pathways. 

Finally, AI and ML powered tools have the potential to support existing strengths, for example by reducing compliance and opportunity costs associated with assessment, increasing precision teaching, and freeing up time to be even more child-centred and creative.