It has been 21 years since a literature review by Helen Shaw established the conceptual foundations for the development of health education as part of the curriculum for New Zealand schools. Using the lens provided by the schooling improvement literature, this article reflects on the development of health education in New Zealand schools to ...

The New Zealand Government’s National Science Challenges have recently generated renewed activity on how education, science and the public can better engage with each other, for the benefit of Aotearoa New Zealand society now and in the future. This work resulted in a key document: A Nation of Curious Minds—He Whenua Hihiri i te ...

This article begins by making the case that the New Zealand curriculum component known as the Nature of Science (NOS) has generally not, thus far, achieved its stated intent of helping students think differently about science and its relevance to their lives. We argue that NOS components in curricula have tended to become positioned ...

The recent revision of a national writing assessment tool, e-asTTle: Writing, is viewed from theoretical, design and implementation, and practice perspectives, and considered in relation to the original assessment concept and design. Aspects of the revision are questioned. These include a reduction in the scope and complexity of writing, with fewer functions or communicative ...

Proponents of National Standards in New Zealand have argued that a key benefit of written reporting against New Zealand’s National Standards will be parents who are fully informed of their child’s achievements and thus better placed to support their learning. Using an interpretive, qualitative methodology and drawing on the perceptions and experiences of eight parents ...

This article reports on a research project that investigated the connections between early childhood teachers’ visual arts pedagogies and children’s engagement in the visual arts as a tool for learning. The journey of how one early childhood education centre had developed visual arts practices that were informed by sociocultural/constructivist theories, and how this played out ...

Computer-based testing is on the increase, especially for large-scale assessments where there are advantages for manageability, administration, and reporting. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, NZQA has announced plans to move NCEA examinations to an online platform, with a dual-assessment model available for selected levels and subjects from 2016. The dual-assessment approach appears ...

A qualitative approach was used to investigate Year 12 secondary school students’ experiences, understandings and uses of written teacher feedback in classical studies. Participants in this small-scale study were eight students from two schools in a large metropolitan city in New Zealand, all of whom were undertaking a Level 2 ...

There is little research that relates formative assessment to writing, particularly in a foreign-language context. Furthermore, few studies have investigated processes of change when teachers and students use a tool to enhance their skills in formative assessment practices. This article reports on an intervention study where portfolio was used to ...