Professional learning

Retaining early career teachers and enticing promising teachers to become teacher leaders are issues of international interest not only because large numbers of teachers will retire from the profession over the next five to 10 years but also because the strongest teachers are the teachers most likely to leave the profession during their early years in the profession.

 NZCER carried out an external evaluation of Accent Learning, a division of Victoria Link Ltd. It looked at the positive changes which participants described as a result of working with Accent advisers; how they linked those changes to the support provided; and what advisers could do to enhance the impact and effectiveness of their work with schools. It is a "success evaluation" because the researchers contacted only those schools the advisers believed had made substantial shifts in practice.

*Ako is a Māori Language term for both teaching and learning

This article uses a specific curriculum innovation—a focus on the nature of science—to illustrate the complex dynamics of curriculum change.

Snapshots from the professional learning of two teachers, one primary and one secondary, are used to discuss why teachers’ personal learning may not translate into changes in their taught curriculum unless additional support helps them to rethink traditional teaching and learning practices.