Research suggests that engaging with student voice is desirable, worthwhile, and effective. This article explores these claims by describing how two secondary school teachers engage with students’ voices as they inquire into their teaching practice. In doing so, it supports a conversation about the practicalities of engaging with student voice ...

What happens when you take 15 years of teaching and leading at four different fairly traditional, fairly engaging, high-performing secondary schools, add 3 years of innovation incubation as part of the establishment senior leadership team at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, and throw in a bit of Most Likely to Succeed ...

Review of Margaret MacDonald (2016), Elwyn Richardson and the Early World of Creative Education in New Zealand, NZCER Press.

Teachers have so many assessment tools at their disposal today it can be overwhelming at times. In this article I will take you on a journey through the new-look Assessment Resource Banks website and show you some of the highlights I’ve discovered in the last few weeks back at NZCER ...

Set interviews computer scientist Professor Tim Bell to figure out how computational thinking differs from digital literacy, and why both might be important for today’s society. Tim explains his mission to introduce teachers and students to computational thinking, even without a computer in sight. His work with schools—from junior primary to ...

I bet this has happened to you. You are at a dinner party, neighborhood get together, or some other social event, and someone asks you the most dangerous question, “So, what do you do for a living?” If you answer honestly, “I’m an evaluator,” you will spend at least 30  ...

This article is drawn from the personal experience of two evaluators working in a post-disaster context. While the evaluators, also the authors of this article, were both experienced in a range of evaluation settings, they found that little in the evaluation literature prepared for them for working in such a ...

Novice evaluators in Aotearoa New Zealand have few resources to assist them with reconciling the complex philosophical, theoretical, and practice tensions inherent in programme evaluation. This article provides guidelines to assist novice evaluators in their journey to become “thoughtful” practitioners balancing methodological credibility with stakeholder empowerment. The approach is informed  ...

The term developmental evaluation was coined by Michael Quinn Patton in the mid-1990s to describe the role of evaluators in the development of an innovative initiative. Core evaluation skills, such as articulating the initiative’s theory of change, asking evaluative questions, and providing timely information on emerging results, help the initiative ...