Background
Tegan.
Tararua College, Pahiatua, is a decile 4 school with a roll of approximately 428 students. Bush Primary Schools' Technology Centre provides technology education to years 7–8 students from 14 primary schools. It was located at the college since the technology suite was constructed.
Building relationships
Diana Eagle (teacher in charge – food technology, Tararua College) and Jacquey Neilson (food and soft materials technology, Bush Primary Schools' Technology Centre) established a working relationship.
Aligning programmes of learning
The two teachers worked together to ensure that students use the same routines, terminology, and technological processes through their year 7–13 food technology. A student taking the subject at college level would add new skills and depths of knowledge, based on the learning established at year 7. The "seamless transition" approach was successful and year 8 students entered the year 9 class with a food technology background and expectation already developed.
Using local experts
Diana contacted food technologist Carol Pound to help her develop a trial programme of learning. Their collaboration has continued since. Carol was able to advise her on how to incorporate industry-oriented food technological practice into her programmes of learning. Diana has gained a wide base of knowledge in the subject. Carol in turn has gained understanding of how much students could be expected to learn from the vast amount of knowledge available.
Improving practice for better progression
"I felt ready to look at progression because I had the technological practice fairly well under my belt and was looking at how to get more substance into the teaching programme. To do that I realised that something had to give; that meant you can't just keep churning out one project after another –you've got to do some planned teaching."
Diana Eagle
Diana was concerned that her year 12 students were finishing with good technological practice but with their food technology skills, techniques, and knowledge a bit of a "hotchpotch". She wanted to provide better progression through from years 9 to 12. Her association with Jacquey provided an opportunity to include years 7 and 8 in this.
See: Pre-planning for how they went about creating the Food Technology Toolbox