English-medium schools often find successful engagement with their Māori hapori and whānau challenging. This article endeavours to provide guidance to schools wanting to successfully and authentically engage with their Māori hapori and whānau. It suggests that adopting the pōwhiri ritual as the foundation of their whānau engagement strategy can considerably ...

The website of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience (NZIWR) states that it is dedicated to increasing wellbeing for communities and organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand. Within education, its mission is to build whole-school wellbeing. Set contacted NZIWR to help give our readers insight into the research underpinning ...

Ongoing research-practice conversations between teachers and researchers have identified a practical tension faced by teachers of upper primary/early secondary students whose progress has slowed. Teachers report that a researcher-led push to develop more sophisticated readings of complex texts results in less reading mileage, potentially impacting negatively on students’ skills. This ...

COVID-19 relevance: Engaging learning activities that could translate to home

Play is very “on trend” in the primary sector, but is it a suitable pedagogy for secondary students? Based on research into play-based learning in a Year 11 English class, this article provides an overview of play theory, describes a ...

COVID-19 relevance: Digital learners / online

Digital games are responsible for turning my pedagogical practice on its head and landing me in New Zealand. My journey down the digital games “rabbit hole” started in 2007. Not having a map to follow ended up being revolutionary as I learnt to follow ...

COVID-19 relevance: Engaging learning at home / cultural setting

Harko Brown is an expert on traditional Māori games and play. He has written several books including Ngā Taonga Tākaro II: The Matrix (2016), and Te Mara Hupara (2017), co-authored by his teenage daughter Yves Tennessee Brown. In 2015 Harko was ...

COVID-19 relevance: Digital learners / online

In June 2016, Paraparaumu College and Kenakena School, from the Kāpiti Coast, investigated the use of digital technology in supporting a personalised learning framework. This article presents three case studies of how personalisation was used, and explains the development of markers of personalisation for the two ...

COVID-19 relevance: Supporting students' metacognition

In Q&A Pam Hook reflects on what drew her to SOLO taxonomy and why she is so motivated to develop its classroom-based use to enhance student learning. She explains what SOLO is and how it can help students to articulate their learning outcomes, understand the learning ...

COVID-19 relevance: Decreasing inequities

The focus on teacher inquiry to enhance student learning is a key feature of The New Zealand Curriculum and in New Zealand’s approach to teacher professional learning. This article examines how a collaborative inquiry team comprising two teachers (one each from two Auckland primary schools) and a ...