Micro-credentials for Secondary School Educators 

The New Zealand Post-Primary Teachers’ Association is a trade union and professional association representing teachers employed in state and integrated secondary schools, area schools, technology centres and community education centres throughout the country. 

The Challenge 
Pūtea Whakawhanake Pouako, PPTA’s Learning and Development Centre, wanted to develop high quality professional development resources to support their teaching workforce and respond to the ever-changing and challenging environments in which they work.  

Objectives 
Building on the under graduate qualifications secondary teachers have, the PPTA was looking to create an opportunity to support their workforce to grow their knowledge together with their career pathway by providing accessible postgraduate level study opportunities.  

The Solution 
Working closely with Education Programme Manager, Elizabeth Craker at Kāpuhipuhi Wellington Uni-Professional, a design workshop brought together Victoria University’s learning design team with secondary teachers from around the country to develop a micro-credential course specifically focussed on effective mentoring within a secondary school context in Aotearoa NZ.

The course runs across 10 weeks of one school term in a blended format and  focuses on developing the mentoring capabilities of middle and senior school leaders in roles where they are responsible for the mentoring of others for example, Heads of Departments, Deans and those in senior leadership roles.

Since this first course was developed and successfully met the objectives of our client, another two micro-credentials have been designed, developed and delivered to this audience. 

The Impact 
A kete of three micro-credential courses is now available to secondary teachers and includes Effective Mentoring Practices, Working Collaboratively and Building Leadership Capability and Contemporary Secondary Teaching Approaches, all delivered across one school term and worth 5-points at Masters level 8.

Stacking the points together enables participants to gain a 15-point Masters paper in Education at Victoria University of Wellington helping to support further study in an Masters of Education (M.Ed) or Masters of Secondary School Leadership (MSSL).

Participant feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about the experience of participating in this type of professional development as it enables them to undertake bite-sized targeted postgraduate study that fits in well with their full-time busy workload.