If schools wish to be more inclusive by reflecting the communities they serve, paying deliberate attention to embedded values can be helpful. This article describes thinking and actions set in a school with a history of attending to values. It suggests that when consulting on values, the ethics of critical ...

Common approaches to language teaching in many New Zealand schools typically show a lack of attention to students’ own language-learning strategies. This article argues that the success or otherwise of language immersion programmes, in particular within Māori-medium educational settings, depend as much on the skills and strategies of the student ...

The New Zealand Government has announced a change package in response to a recent review of the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA). In this article Charles Darr, a chief researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, outlines several elements of standards-based assessment that can usefully inform NCEA’s ...

Adding Digital Technologies curriculum content into primary classrooms may feel, to many primary teachers, like a new burden and more work—but many aspects of computational thinking can be explored in the context of our existing mathematics programmes. This article highlights the connection between computational thinking and mathematics, and presents examples ...

The PM Benchmark Reading Assessment Resource (PM Benchmarks) provides information about primary students’ level of achievement in reading accurately, fluently, and in understanding unseen texts. As part of the assessment, students have to orally retell what they have read and orally answer comprehension questions. This oral use of language assesses ...

Evaluating information quality is a key skill students need to develop as they navigate the complex information landscape. Students need to develop an awareness of effective ways to evaluate information given the abundance of information (and misinformation) available online. This article introduces the Rauru Whakarare Evaluation Framework, which offers a ...

Socio-scientific issues (SSIs) are real-life problems which have a scientific basis yet require the consideration of social concerns. Using SSIs has been advocated as an approach to engage secondary-school students with science and this study aimed to explore the potential of such an approach in the primary-school classroom. The experiences ...

This article is based on a case study conducted within a newly established Year 7 and Year 8 innovative learning environment (ILE). Drawing on the voices of students and teachers, this article explores ways teachers and students learnt together, collectively moulding a suitable fit for mathematics learning within their ILE ...

Inspired by my research into the government-sponsored Curriculum Review Committee of the mid-1980s, this article considers the possibilities of the Treaty of Waitangi as a “warm idea” for educators. Composed mainly of teachers, the committee was responsible for writing the Treaty into a national curriculum principle for the first time ...