set 1976 : no. 1

In one sentence the National Children's Bureau is an interdisciplinary organization concerned with all aspects of children's needs- health, education, development- in the family, school and society.  But that one sentence leaves very many questions unanswered. Is it necessary? What does it actually do? How is it funded? How long has it existed? How big is it?

In June 1974, Mrs Mary Tagg, then of Auckland Secondary Teachers College and now a Guidance Counsellor at Onehunga High School, Auckland, conducted a survey of slow learner education in state secondary schools in Auckland and North Auckland. The results of this survey will be of interest to all concerned with the education of slow learners in New Zealand secondary schools.

Nowadays people live longer and are less likely to die from lingering diseases; consequently fewer children have a direct experience of death in the family. When tragedy does occur, adult reluctance to discuss feelings and uncertainty about how best to help very often leads to confusion and emotional pain which can mar the childs future development.

"First I look to the right and then to the left and then to the right again - and then I run." This was how typical Swedish seven-year-old coped with traffic in Stockholm. Yet Sweden is streets ahead of most other developed nations in its road safety programmes for young children.

In the first major and impartial evaluation of boarding school education, Royston Lambert and his co-workers have thrown valuable new light on the long-term effects of boarding on a large sample of English school boys. Starting in 1964, Lambert set out to study the different styles of residential education in England and Wales, and to contrast the effects of boarding schools and day schools on pupils from comparable backgrounds.

Developmental psychology is a discipline that proceeds on few facts and many hypotheses, but just about all developmental psychologists agree on two basic assumptions: first, environmental factors help determine how fast or slowly children's cognitive ability -what most of us call intelligence -develops and, second, experiences during the first years of life strongly shape children's relative intellectual functioning in later years.

During the early part of the 20th century the term 'gifted' was a label given to those of superior ability, and it has continued to be used in this general way ever since. However, when used in this manner it is not really a definition, for it defines neither the type of ability nor the degree of superiority. Moreover, while it has always been possible to identify the child prodigies, the Mozarts, the Galtons and the John Stuart Mills, many gifted children are overlooked, their potential… Read more

These scales are designed to obtain teacher estimates of a student's characteristics in the areas of learning, motivation, creativity, and leadership. The items are derived from the research literature dealing with characteristics of gifted and creative persons.

Considering the world wide trend towards co-educational secondary schooling since the Second World War, it is surprising that the question of co-education has remained a subject for research. Over the past 50 years English researchers have shown the most consistent interest in this topic and the movement towards co-educational comprehensive schools in that country, especially over the past decade, has provoked more interest and enlivened the debate.

Television has been in New Zealand living rooms for over 15 years, and many children now spend more time watching the screen than they spend in school. We go to considerable lengths to assess the effects of schooling on our children. Can we also assess the effects of television?