These days, everyone has a mobile phone, even if they might not have a landline. Vardon School recognised the potential for texting to be an effective way to give parents regular feedback on their children’s behaviour in the school playground. By using texts as part of a carefully planned strategy ...

Teachers are keen to adopt new ICTs to support student learning. This article looks at one example—interactive whiteboards. Skilfully used by the teacher, sequences of magnified images wowed students and engaged their interest. The students enjoyed—and learnt from—interacting with the whiteboard and creating animations of their own.

A group of Waikato University researchers watched as a Year 6 class experimented with Scratch, a child-oriented programming language. The software is designed for children to explore programming—it is easy to “tinker” with but also allows sophisticated programs to be created. Set the task of creating a maths addition game ...

NZCER is committed to developing new assessment tools for use by New Zealand schools. Here we describe three of the development projects that are currently underway that may be of interest to teachers and school managers.

We’ve taken a longer time than usual to prepare this issue of set: Research Information for Teachers because we have been working on updating its look so that the articles are more accessible and readable. We hope you think it has been worth the effort. Key information now appears at ...

From 2005–8 the Mangere Bridge Kindergarten Centre of Innovation research project investigated the transition between early childhood education and school. The research team developed and researched a range of strategies for supporting children’s learning as the children and their families “crossed the border” from early childhood education to school. This article summarises some of ...

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can open up amazing possibilities for early childhood learning, extending children’s worlds and helping them to expand and explore their thinking. Or, it can be an expensive way to teach the same things in the same way as before. Ann Hatherly argues that it’s not the hardware and software ...

Jeanette Clarkin-Phillips and Margaret Carr examine how establishing a Parent Support and Development Centre at a kindergarten strengthened relationships with families and created new learning opportunities for children, parents and whānau.

Wadestown Kindergarten’s Centre of Innovation project investigated multimodal literacies and their roles in communicative competence and meaning. This article explores the powerful insights into children’s literacies that emerged from finding out about the “funds of knowledge” families hold about their child.

In the 1940s New Zealand government reports and policy about early childhood education were written with the assumption that parents were part of a nuclear family consisting of mother, father and children; an assumption that excludes or marginalises families with lesbian or gay parents. Alex Gunn looks at how official writing has changed over ...