What Does it Mean to be Ready to be a Secondary Health Education Teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Abstract This paper explores readiness to teach secondary health education in Aotearoa New Zealand. We apply Alexander’s (in: Wyatt-Smith and Adie (eds) Innovation and accountability in teacher education: setting directions for new cultures in teacher education, Springer, New York, pp 97–113, 2018) thematic conceptions of teacher readiness: for the classroom, for teaching, and for the profession, in closely reading three purposefully chosen Aotearoa New Zealand documents. From the analysis of these documents, we propose a typology of readiness in context of health education in our country. From here, we conduct narrative analysis of one graduating teacher’s one-year initial teacher education (ITE) experience by creating a story, and we produce analytical thoughts from the story relating to our typology. Our story demonstrates the ability for ITE to contribute to elements of the three thematic conceptions of teacher readiness, but at the same time reveals some gaps in the ITE experience. We conclude by proposing that readers consider how they might work with our typology to further interrogate what it means to be ready to be a health education teacher.