How long should a young person continue at school? Should they remain and risk educational failure or should they leave and risk unemployment? Every year in New Zealand thousands of young people face such decisions. What do we know about the common trends in these decisions?

The development of the educational system has been checked or deflected from time to time as the result of crises in the country's economy. What parts of the system were especially affected and to what extent did considerations other than economy, for example, the desire for structural or administrative reform ...

Spelling research is making good progress. Two of the areas it is finding very fruitful are:
1 an examination of the words children write - and subsequently misspell;
2 investigation of how we recognise misspellings and remember correct spellings.
This set item contains examples of recent works, one of each ...

Jean Piaget died, at the age of 84, just over 2 years ago. As with all great contemporaries, a balanced assessment of the long-term significance of his contributions will emerge only gradually over the next few decades as the already considerable amount of Piaget-inspired research builds up, and the implications ...

How can education help to break down unnecessary sex-stereotyping of school subjects? The issue was much discussed in the 70s. The 'Catch 22' situation in the diagram was common and it was realised that you could try to break these circles either by providing the missing classes, or by supplying ...

Starting the year on the 'right foot' is the key to effective classroom discipline. Obviously, of course, naturally - now tell us something new. Well, what's new is that a school can indeed design an in service beginning-of-the-year project that makes a difference in attitudes and actions for teachers ...

Are kids in secondary schools misbehaving more frequently? Do they have less respect for teachers? Do they have less respect for authority? Is what teachers do contributing to the problem? How would students like teachers to handle kids who
misbehave?

A man once owned a dog which was inclined to jump over the back fence and enjoy the delights of the neighbourhood. Deciding that he needed a new fence around his yard, the man was confronted with the problem of determining how high the fence should be. Because he wanted ...

One of the most striking characteristics of classrooms since the Industrial Revolution to the present has been ~he large number of pupils within them. At no other 'stage in their lives will young people occupy such socially intimate settings for such extended periods of time. Buses, football pavilions, and cinemas ...

'Who are you?' said the caterpillar. Alice replied rather shyly, 'I -- 1 hardly know, sir, just at present -- at least 1 know who 1 was when 1 got up this morning, but 1 must have changed several times since then. '
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

Alice's reply ...