Future focus is one of the eight principles of the New Zealand curriculum. However, the term is sometimes conflated with the more-expansive term 21st-century learning, which, this article argues, accepts uncritically dominant assumptions that New Zealand’s future is as part of a hyper-globalised, fast-paced, capitalist world. This article insists on future focus ...

Future-oriented pedagogies should focus on supporting students to be creative, innovative, and capable of creating knowledge, both individually and collaboratively, at the community level. This article discusses how a group of teachers have come to understand and use the knowledge-building model developed by Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006) to support secondary students to develop as knowledge ...

Future-oriented theorists argue that if we want students to be future builders, we need to provide them with opportunities to do things with existing knowledge, rather than just reproduce it. In this article I consider the implications of this argument for English. I describe some theory-driven learning opportunities that may enable students to build ...

We can no longer predict knowledge needed for the future, which has significant implications for contemporary literacy programmes. In this article we argue that reconceptualising current literacy approaches will support teachers to develop future-focused literacy teaching. We suggest that a critical multiliteracies lens can provide rationale for a future-focused literacy programme (the “why”), and that ...

Professor James Dator has spent nearly five decades in the discipline of future studies. In this article, he suggests that all images of the future can be described within four categories that he calls continued growth, collapse, disciplined society, and transformational. He argues that four big variables—energy, the economy, the environment, and government—have ...

I’ve been teaching since 1973, some in area schools, some in intermediates, but mostly in secondary schools. Throughout my career I have enjoyed studying part-time, and in 2004 I was privileged to spend the year as an e-Fellow. I’m still studying, still reflecting on education in general and teaching in particular, and still very interested in ...

Now is an exciting time to be involved in educating our next generation. The way we think about education and our approach to teaching is continually evolving, and our libraries are also undertaking a parallel evolution. They are no longer dusty, silent spaces where the main function is to store and catalogue books. Today’s libraries are ...

Relationships between children’s preschool and school educators are regarded as an important influence on children’s transition to school. This article reports on a study which investigated the nature of communication between preschools and schools in Australia. The strengths and weaknesses of communication reported by educators indicate elements which build positive relationships between settings ...

This article reports findings from an ethnographic study aiming to deepen the understanding of the transition from preschool into school, with special regard to participation and learning, from the perspective of students and teachers involved. The results show that, although children appear well prepared and comfortable facing school, a system that requires two ...