The main findings from a literature review exploring thinking skills in the early years (for children aged three to seven) are summarised, and some practical recommendations for teachers seeking to further promote thinking skills in the early years are provided.

Emeritus Professor Anne Smith, from the Children’s Issues Centre at the University of Otago, was asked to distil three key ideas from their work over the years.

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 ...

The implementation of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) has posed a challenge for curriculum leaders and teachers in all learning areas. These challenges have been particularly acute for technology departments because of the need for teachers from a range of subject areas to develop coherent, schoolwide technology programmes ...

As we know, a pessimist is someone who sees the glass of wine as half empty while the optimist is someone who sees it as half full. The pessimistic perspective with its emphasis on problems, often gets more attention, and this would be understandable when a new policy such as ...

The Montessori movement recently celebrated a century of international education, spanning from early childhood through to tertiary experience. The first Casa dei Bambini, or children’s house, was opened in Rome, Italy, on 6 January 1907, and within three years the influence of Montessori education began to reach New Zealand shores ...

An interpretive case study approach was used to investigate teachers’ understanding of the purpose and nature of social studies education and how teachers plan and develop their social studies programme. Data were gathered from eight teachers in a Years 3 and 4 syndicate at a large Auckland primary school through ...

This article uses the story of Whakatauihuihu to help describe how the teaching of mathematics in te reo Māori (the Māori language) has developed. It begins by recounting the enthusiasm of the teachers who worked on the development of the mathematics vocabulary in the 1980s, and then moves on to ...

Teachers teach out of who they are (Palmer, 1998), and teaching, or enacting curriculum, is what all teachers do, whether working in teacher education or at some other level of education. When the whole teacher is drawn into a relationship with their students, when connections are established, teaching is then ...