The integration of Number and Algebra into one strand in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) raises questions about the relationship between these two branches of mathematics and about suitable approaches to teaching. This article argues that arithmetic and algebra are intimately linked and should not be taught ...

It is likely that 16 percent of the New Zealand population will be Asian by 2026. Asian secondary school students desire more contact with local students; local students are unfamiliar with Asia. Asian students are a rich and largely untapped classroom resource. Could carefully structured classroom tasks with social and ...

This article aims to prompt discussion about thinking in the school curriculum. It begins with a brief exploration of thinking, in which the difficulty of defining and classifying thinking is acknowledged. The notion that the brain is a complex “living” and emerging system is at the core of this. A ...

The experiences of disabled students and the teacher aides who support them in accessing the New Zealand curriculum form the focus of this article, which begins with an overview of the legislative and policy context regarding students’ educational rights. Participants’ experiences are conceptualised as a continuum, in which students may ...

This article compares the 1997 New Zealand social studies curriculum statement with The New Zealand Curriculum, in terms of the location of Pacific knowledge and experience, and argues that teacher decision making is a political process that has become an even stronger determinant for whether or not Pacific topics ...

ITE programmes are currently in transition, facing changes in society and societal expectations, changing concepts about knowledge and its uses, changing roles for teachers and changes to teaching and learning approaches. These must all be accommodated within the constraints faced by tertiary providers of ITE as they cope with competing ...

In their introductory acknowledgements to this two-volume set, editors Robin Averill and Roger Harvey recall that the initial idea behind the books was to create a suitable text for secondary mathematics initial teacher education programmes, modelling the structure around the very successful editorial efforts of Jim Neyland with Mathematics Education ...

Curriculum is a hotly contested notion, yet it is a relatively new concept in educational thought. Pratt (1980) claims that it was only during the 20th century that attempts were made to describe, analyse and interpret curriculum as a phenomenon. Other writers (for example, Hargreaves, 1994) also claim that it ...

The New Zealand government’s Crusade for Literacy and Numeracy stipulates that national standards will be set in literacy and numeracy; that every primary and intermediate student will be assessed regularly against the national standards; and that every primary and intermediate school will report to parents in plain English about how ...

Welcome to the first issue of Assessment Matters. This new journal provides a forum for discussing, debating and communicating developments and advances in matters relating to assessment in the field of education. It invites researchers, practitioners and policy makers to “push the thinking” in assessment. The goal is to ...