Three years ago Ruth Round began teaching her Year 4, mixed-ability class in ways that made music central to her teaching while at the same time integrating The New Zealand Curriculum focusing in particular on language learning, poetry and art. Through a theoretical frame based on the ideas of ...

The teaching and learning of languages additional to English (L2) in English-dominant societies has reached a crisis point, with teachers often facing considerable challenges with recruiting, and then retaining, students. This article presents findings from a study in New Zealand, where the introduction of a revised curriculum has provided the ...

Despite statistical literacy being relatively new in statistics education research, it needs special attention as attempts are being made to enhance the teaching, learning and assessing of this strand. It is important that teachers are aware of the challenges of teaching and assessing of literacy. The growing importance of statistics ...

What happens if the local context where a higher education curriculum is being delivered shifts in a dramatic and undeniable way? Would or could the curriculum and pedagogy be adapted to address that shift? If so, how and for what purpose? These questions are addressed through a brief review of ...

Nairn, K., Higgins, J., & Sligo, J. (2012). Children of Rogernomics: A neoliberal generation leaves school. Otago University Press. Reviewed by Jennifer Tatebe

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2012). Literacies.  Cambridge University Press. Reviewed by Rebecca Jesson

Dann, C. (2012). Food@home.  Canterbury University Press. Reviewed by ...

Assessment Matters 4 explores questions of assessment practice and how assessment practices known to support learning might be facilitated. Articles discuss:

• implementing assessment for learning
• maintaining a community of practice around moderation processes
• making overall teacher judgements
• incorporating likeability in low-stakes performance tasks
• assessing learning for summative and accountability purposes ...

Assessment for learning (AfL) has been touted as one of the most promising pedagogical approaches for enhancing student learning. Research suggests that engaging students in AfL helps to improve their achievement, develop metacognition and support motivated learning and positive self-perceptions. However, despite these promises, there have been notable barriers impeding ...

This article uses Wenger’s (1998) theory of communities of practice as a framework to describe the complexities of moderation processes when these processes are intended to support teacher learning in ways that subsequently help lift student achievement. We draw on a case study in which we observed teachers working together ...

Central to New Zealand National Standards is the concept of overall teacher judgements (OTJs). This paper examines the concepts of OTJs and standards through international literature and experiences of a sample of New Zealand teachers in 2010. Standards contain expectations—what is, what could be and what might be desirable— implicit ...

The characteristics of performance tasks that make them appealing to students in a low-stakes environment were investigated with data from the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) of New Zealand. Random samples of Year 4 (8-year-old) and Year 8 (12-year-old) students were assessed using a set of performance tasks in the ...