TEACHING AND LEARNING
Spotlight on leadership: An interview with Professor Viviane
Robinson
Sarah Boyd
Abusive and inappropriate sexual behaviour among Years 7 and 8
students: A survey of teachers
Marie Russell, Sue Buckley and Cate
Walton with Zachary Gerring and James Black
It’s normal for children approaching adolescence to experiment with sexual
behaviour. With a small proportion of children, though, this behaviour is
inappropriate or even disturbing. This study explores the experiences of Years 7
and 8 teachers in identifying and dealing with inappropriate sexual behaviour,
and asks what additional support teachers might need.
Surviving teaching: Learning from Japanese native-speaker
teachers
Yasuko Okamura and Judi Miller
Starting teaching in a new country and a new culture is like being a
beginning teacher again. If you come from a Confucian culture where teachers are
automatically respected, the New Zealand classroom comes as a shock. How do
teachers from Japan survive, adapt and thrive in New Zealand schools, and how
can principals support them?
Understanding and responding to the tensions between deficit
discourses and inclusive education
Bernadette Macartney
Assumptions about disability play a key role in how disabled students are
treated at school. Using a case study as a focus, Bernadette Macartney argues
that every child has the right to be viewed holistically, because taking a
deficit view creates barriers to their full participation at school.
An unexpected breakthrough for rapid reading improvement: AVAILLL
uses movies so students read it, see it and get it
Faye Parkhill and
Jilaine Johnson
Audio Visual Achievement in Literacy, Language and Learning (AVAILLL), an
innovative reading programme that supplements normal classroom literacy
programmes, has proved to be extremely effective in classrooms within selected
schools in Christchurch. Surprisingly, the AVAILLL programme uses popular movies
to engage students with quality literature. Struggling readers
from both the United States and New Zealand produce similar dramatic gains in
this reading programme in just six weeks. Hollywood movies, often considered a
threat to reading, have proved to be a profound ally.
HE WHAKAARO ANO
The Powerful Learning Process
Sarah Martin
USING TECHNOLOGY
Embracing the power of texting: Eliminating playground noncompliance
and aggression
Kay Petchell and Ted Glynn
These days, everyone has a mobile phone, even if they might not have a
landline. Vardon School recognised the potential for texting to be an effective
way to give parents regular feedback on their children’s behaviour in the school
playground. By using texts as part of a carefully planned strategy for
partnering with parents, Vardon School was able to dramatically improve student
behaviour.
Exploring the use of an interactive whiteboard in a primary science
classroom
Barbara Ryan and Bronwen Cowie
Teachers are keen to adopt new ICTs to support student learning. This article
looks at one example—interactive whiteboards. Skilfully used by the teacher,
sequences of magnified images wowed students and engaged their interest. The
students enjoyed—and learnt from—interacting with the whiteboard and creating
animations of their own.
Opportunities and challenges in technology-rich classrooms: Using the
Scratch software
Kathrin Otrel-Cass, Michael Forret and Merilyn
Taylor
A group of Waikato University researchers watched as a Year 6 class
experimented with Scratch, a child-oriented programming language. The software
is designed for children to explore programming—it is easy to “tinker” with but
also allows sophisticated programs to be created. Set the task of creating a
maths addition game, the students became absorbed in collaborative and creative
problem solving, trying out and sharing ideas and solutions.
ASSESSMENT NEWS
Assessment development at NZCER in 2009
Charles Darr,
Chris Joyce and Juliet Twist
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