Technical education by correspondence in New Zealand

Abstract

I became actively interested in teaching by correspondence after 20 years of working at other forms of teaching in virtually every kind of school New Zealand has to offer. My before-teaching experience of five years in the printing industry then helped me to obtain a position as a teacher of English to printing apprentices enrolled at the Technical Correspondence Institute of the New Zealand Department of Education. Certain aspects of teaching technical subjects by correspondence interested me, as I sought to learn more about the subject. I soon discovered that very little printed information existed, as the appendix will show. Most of the material dealt with comparisons between the efficacy of classroom learning and correspondence learning and did not deal with the special difficulties of correspondence instruction itself, the aspect which concerned me as a practising teacher. Certain other considerations, however, entered into the choice of topic. In the first place no detailed account of the work of the Technical Correspondence Institute of New Zealand existed. Because New Zealand uses the correspondence system more widely than most countries, I considered such a study would possibly prove useful to educationists in under-developed countries. In the second place no account of learning technical subjects by correspondence apparently existed. In particular nobody appeared to have studied the differing needs of "ordered" students as compared with voluntary students, or their differing reactions. Yet New Zealand appears to have developed the compulsory system of trade training to a greater proportionate extent than many countries. In the third place very few workers have studied the particular problems of teaching by correspondence, whether technical or academic. Only one book, in Swedish, dealt, according to a brief note in a bulletin with the subject of teaching technique. All the others discussed mainly problems of administration and comparison of the correspondence method with the classroom method.