In the best of all possible worlds, so goes the myth, students go to university because of their ability and interest, and the subjects they choose they choose for the same two reasons. Because of our egalitarianism and because New Zealand offers equal educational opportunity to ale it is tempting ...

In both Australia and New Zealand there has been a history of tension and prejudice as the English speaking majority has reacted to the presence of minorities. The basic tension revolved around the question (never resolved) of how far minorities should be excluded. What is the role of language in ...

These Initial Vocabularies for Reading have been developed by Brian Thompson of the Education Department of Victoria University of Wellington to help teachers in primary schools.

Children are not failures in the normative sense when they arrive at school but the process of labelling a child as a failure begins early in his school career. The early school years a:re particularly significant for the growth of the child's ability to cope with failure. It is then ...

Maybe your pupils are doing well in science tests and in examinations. But do they really understand the concepts and principles you teach them? New methods of probing reveal that apparent success often masks gross misunderstanding, on a scale not previously imagined. In two set items, researchers, one at Monash ...

This lesson was one of a series of lessons considering the nature of matter. In the immediately preceding lesson the pupils had investigated crystallisation. At the end of that lesson pupils had been encouraged by the teacher to try and grow salt (NaCl) crystals at home. The task of the ...

In a London classroom the teacher and the children share a warm, supportive, and productive relationship. Mr A would be an asset to the staff on any school. The interaction we see here is primarily between the teacher and the class as a whole, but revealed amongst the interactions is ...

In 1972, after four years of using mechanical calculators in my teaching now and again, I tried electronic calculators. It
was incontestable that they were a help in the classroom. They had a highly motivating effect on the pupils, and we could get through more problems than usual. All the ...

Technological improvements are still being made. Choose new performance and convenience, not new gimmickry or styling that is just new casing around old brains. On the whole, the more you pay the more you get, but young children do not need much. Till a perfect school calculator is built there ...

Despite the excellent research of Janet Emig, Donald Graves and others, the writing process itself is still largely a mystery.
We know that it is a very complex process requiring the mastery of a variety of interrelated skills. Apart from the essential inputs of reading and thinking, skills such as ...