The changing role of the visiting teacher : an investigation into the policies and practice of the Visiting Teacher Service

Abstract

This study investigates the origins and evolution of the Visiting Teacher Service in New Zealand over a period of thirty-five years from its inception in the latter years of World War II to 1977. The priorities given to the development of the Psychological Service and, more recently of the Guidance Counsellor Service, combined with the post-war expansion of the school population, are seen to have retarded the growth of the Visiting Teacher Service and to have resulted in the allocation of increasingly larger pupil rolls and numbers of schools for visiting teachers to service. Furthermore, adequate training in counselling and educational guidance skills, necessary to provide the specialist assistance needed by children, parents and teachers, has not been afforded to visiting teachers. As a consequence, the original preventive character of the visiting teacher role has been impaired by the subsequent exercise of "trouble-shooter" and corrective functions. Representative responses to a questionnaire circulated to experienced visiting teachers, serving in 1976, provided documentary evidence of contemporary visiting teacher opinion and role perception as well as of statistical information relating to qualifications and training, and to characteristics of their professional activities. Recent Departmental directives indicated that future visiting teachers are likely to fulfil roles more appropriate to Psychological Service social workers than to educational guidance consultants and counsellors to pupils, parents and teachers of the New Zealand school system.