A substantial number of teachers working in Auckland’s poor urban primary schools are highly successful in their practice. They have an expertise that takes children to their academic and personal potential, and they achieve success in a way that does not alienate children from their diverse home contexts. Case study ...

Over the past 6 years, the National Education Monitoring Project has monitored the educational achievement and attitudes of Year 4 and 8 students in New Zealand schools, covering 15 curriculum areas. This article presents accumulated evidence from these assessments on the relationship between school size and student achievement at these ...

Supportive friendships and relationships at school contribute to children’s quality of life as well as their learning. There are some concerns that students with disabilities may be isolated, lonely and have few friends at school, even when they have always been taught in the mainstream. This article explores a range ...

To identify the specific needs of students with respect to literacy in the content areas, 21 students from Years 9-13 were interviewed about their views of themselves as readers and writers, and how their skills affected their learning. While a number of students identified themselves as competent, many felt that ...

The quantity and pace of current learning agendas for staff development mean that time is seriously limited for teachers to share ideas and concerns about their classroom practices. Eight teachers using a quality learning circle approach show how their learning is enhanced through opportunities for structured, focused and regular talk ...

Keith Ballard argues that the commitment to individualism and to a commercial market model has implications for our working lives. The ideological belief that we are primarily motivated by self-interest carries with it the implication that we are not to be trusted, but need “incentives” to make us work. Relationships ...

Two strengths of the ARBs are their links to national curriculum statements and the range and control they give teachers and schools over what is to be assessed. They include a set of 96 writing resources for English, covering poetic and transactional writing. In view of positive feedback from ARB ...

In a study based on a survey of Year 11 students, boys reported a higher level of negative writing satisfaction and less writing enjoyment in the English classroom than girls did. Boys and girls preferred different writing genres. While students did not see writing as inherently gender-biased, they did seem ...

How can research findings can be used to develop specific teaching approaches? This UK article concentrates on the potential of shared and guided writing for improving syntactical structure and grammatical awareness within particular genres, especially in the 7–13 age-range.

We know that children learn better when they are supported during new learning by someone who is more expert than they are. At a multi-cultural school in one of the five most “at risk” areas in Auckland, peer tutors were able to learn and operate paired writing techniques, with the ...