set 1974 : no. 1

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research Act, 1945 (amended and revised 1972) requires the Council not only to foster study and research into educational matters but also to furnish information, advice and assistance to persons and organisations concerned with education and other similar matters.

Several of the research reports summarized below have been published by the National  Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales (NFER). This research organization, which was set up in 1945, is directly comparable, in many ways, with NZCER in its functions and services. In recent years, the NFER research programme has expanded very rapidly and the Foundation is now producing an attractive range of publications, including paperbacks, many of which will be of direct interest… Read more

This is only one of the questions underlying a continuing enquiry into the teaching of 'gifted' children in primary and intermediate schools in the Hawke's Bay Education Board's district. As a result of a workshop held during three weeks in the third term 1972, a group of parents, school principals, teachers, administrators, and 15 Form 1 children, with outstanding ability in art, had an opportunity to answer the question for themselves, and, in particular, to see what they liked about an… Read more

The project outlined here was a major investment of the Schools Council, but there is no suggestion that such a project defines a wholly appropriate humanities or social studies curriculum for New Zealand schools and colleges. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Humanities Curriculum Project is concerned with a range of ideas similar to those suggested in the Social Studies Draft Syllabus, Forms 1 to 4, issued, in December 1972, by the NZ Department of Education, Curriculum Development Unit… Read more

The growing demand for more extensive use of discussion in secondary and higher education reflects something deeper than a desire for trendy informality in education. Probably, the most important influences in the change of focus from instruction to discussion have been...

Instead of burdening his memory with a mass of facts and figures the student of tomorrow will store these in his computer and will be free to analyse the whole, make useful comparisons and draw appropriate conclusions.

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider  themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as  their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students, alienated… Read more

Do teachers talk too much? I'm afraid we do. Much too much. From the time we enter the school in the morning till we leave it at night, we hardly stop talking. We only realize how much we talk when we come to school with a sore throat.

Modern education has given little place to the lecture in the high school. Some declare that it has no place in the college or university, its time-honored strongholds. Few textbooks on secondary methods within recent years acknowledge that it is sufficiently important to devote a chapter to the lecture, while some ignore it entirely. The trend has been undeniably in the direction of other forms of classroom methods, with the increased emphasis upon student activity in learning.

Usually the major objective of discussion methods is to teach students to think. To achieve this the tutor must achieve a number of subsidiary objectives to get the discussion group going. Discussion methods are among the most difficult teaching techniques in higher education. They require a wide knowledge of the subject matter, an ability to attend to detail while keeping an eye on the overall view, an appreciation of different viewpoints, receptivity to new ideas, tolerance and respect for… Read more