Professional development of teachers as autonomous learners is crucial to the transformation to 21st century teaching and learning. Hornby High School invited a Teaching and Learning Research Initiative project to participate in their programme to establish “teachers as learners”, including holding a professional learning day that challenged teachers to reflect ...

Student teachers face a set of complex challenges, particularly in their work in schools, where they have to work closely with associate teachers and the students they teach. The study described in this article sought to examine the teaching experiences of a group of student teachers through their eyes, with ...

Over the last two years researchers at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) have been involved in a complete revision of the Progressive Achievement Test of Listening Comprehension (PAT:Listening Comprehension). Last reviewed in 1992, the tests have been a trusted part of the New Zealand assessment tool kit ...

Despite New Zealand being a water-loving nation, we do not have a good track record when it comes to water safety. Last year the New Zealand Council for Educational Research surveyed schools to gather information about their pools and aquatic education programmes for Water Safety New Zealand. This article looks ...

The theme for this final issue of set for 2010 is “Teachers as learners”. Rhys Hill and Alison Sewell addresses the question: How can teachers change their engagement from traditional one-sided pedagogies to include a sociocultural approach? Their article describes one teacher’s journey as he engaged in collaborative action research ...

When one student was personally touched by the 2009 Samoan tsunami, Omanu School in the Bay of Plenty launched an aid project that galvanised students into learning that was integrated across many curriculum areas. The students researched, negotiated and problem solved as they sought to make a difference to an ...

If literacy learning needs to change for the 21st century, when students need to deal with new formats, such as blogs, sound clips and YouTube, what does this mean in practice in the classroom? This article gives a possible framework for thinking about multimodal literacy skills and shows how it ...

Some teachers lack confidence in teaching art. With teacher advisory service support for visual art teaching reduced this year, schools need to find new ways to help teachers gain confidence. This article explores the benefits of a collaborative inquiry approach within schools.

What could we be looking for in student work when it comes to summative assessment? This article explores some of the challenges related to assessment in social studies. It then traces some of the recent resource developments in the New Zealand social sciences learning area, with a view to working ...

Pasifika students do not generally achieve as well as other students in school assessments of literacy and there are concerns about their comprehension of text. This article examines the out-of-school literacy experiences of 14 Pasifika students, with a view to enabling teachers to link to and build on them. Church ...