University of Otago College of Education
The University of Otago College of Education is a teacher-training facility in Dunedin, New Zealand, run as part of the University of Otago since 2007. Formerly called Dunedin College of Education (Te Kura Akau Taitoka, also known as Dunedin Teachers' College), the college was founded in 1876, and has the longest continuous history of teacher education in New Zealand. The Dunedin College of Education's motto was maxima debetur pueris reverentia (the child deserves the greatest respect).
The college operates from its own campus close to, but not contiguous with, the main university campus, opposite Logan Park in Dunedin North. Between them, the University of Otago, Dunedin College of Education, Otago Polytechnic, Otago School of Medicine, and Otago School of Dentistry form one large extended campus which covers some 80 hectares of Dunedin North. The college shares some facilities with the polytechnic, which lies immediately to its northwest.
The college's location in Dunedin is significant, as that city has long had a history of education pioneering in New Zealand, with the country's first university, first medical school, first kindergarten, and first single-sex high school for girls.
Initially, the college taught primary teachers, in close collaboration with the university. Teaching students made up a significant proportion of the university's early students, and it started providing its own courses in education from 1905.
Since the 1970s, the college expanded its programmes, inaugurating degree and diploma courses in early childhood, primary, and secondary education. A similar expansion of courses was undertaken by the university, which offered doctoral courses in education as part of its liberal arts courses. From 1976, the university and college offered a joint Bachelor of Education course. This co-operation continued until tertiary education reforms of the mid 1990s, after which the university offered its own B.Ed. degree course.
As a result of these changes, the Dunedin College of Education and University of Otago agreed to a merger, with the college becoming the University of Otago College of Education in early 2007 and the college has full access to The Bill Robertson Library and its major collections.
References
- Keen, D. (2001) In a class of its own: The story of a century and a quarter of teacher education at the Dunedin Training College, Dunedin Teachers' College and the Dunedin College of Education. Dunedin: Dunedin College of Education.
- Morrell, W.P. (1969) The University of Otago: A centennial history. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
- Morton J. C. and Morton, H. (1976) Dunedin Teachers College: The First Hundred Years. Dunedin: Dunedin Teachers College Publications Committee.