This article illustrates the potential of using multiple means to help express and develop ideas.

These days we are keen to make the most of our test data, particularly when it comes to informing next steps for teaching and learning. Sometimes we may examine how students have responded to particular questions on a test. This is good practice. It can be very enlightening to see ...

This article explores how the key competency thinking links with 21st century views of teaching and learning.

This has been an excellent year for set: Research Information for Teachers. We have received positive feedback from our readers; researchers have provided us, often unsolicited, worthwhile and thought-provoking items for publication; and our reviewers have ensured that the usual high quality of articles has been maintained.

The purpose ...

A series in which we ask a leading researcher to distil three key ideas from their work over the years.

At Westburn Primary School, Christchurch, the author worked with Years 1–4 children on a devised theatre work for a formal production. The fundamental principles of devising theatre inform discussion of the process (scaffold) of creation.

The water cycle is an important context for school science, but the uncritical use of diagrams to simplify ideas may lead to misconceptions. Incorporating learning about how representations such as water cycle diagrams function, helps students to explore and understand the complexities of such a system.

Student-centred curriculum integration is inclusive and future focused, enabling students to develop the competencies, values, knowledge, skills, and understandings espoused in The New Zealand Curriculum. To better align schools with curriculum principles, more innovative, student-centred forms of curriculum design are required.

New Zealand’s first secondary school nurture group, at Linwood College, is discussed with reference to Students First (a theme of the Secondary Futures project). Learning is organised around students’ needs rather than year level, drawing on principles that can be translated to a regular classroom environment.

Practical Research for Education, 38, October 2007, pp. 29–33 (reprinted with permission)

This piece demonstrates authentic research in practice.