set 2013: no. 2

Outdoor education is often perceived as a series of activities involving novel physical challenges in remote settings or at specialist residential camps. Unfortunately, such experiences can be somewhat distant from the everyday lives of students and expensive to conduct. This research investigates teachers’ perspectives on conducting local outdoor education programmes. The findings reveal that this approach is a viable means of outdoor education provision. It is hoped that… Read more

Student-centred approaches to learning are gaining increasing national and international attention. For many teachers, more democratic teaching  designs require a shift in thinking and practice. This article looks at how teachers unfamiliar with these approaches might transition from a position of power to empowerment by exploring small, manageable changes in practice. It draws on a 9-month participatory action-based research project on student-centred curriculum… Read more

Literacy and numeracy are high-stakes, and we do our students a disservice if we do not grow their capabilities in these areas. However, we also do them an immense disservice if we ignore their creative, imaginative, and artistic abilities. Not only do the arts contribute to student learning in other areas of the curriculum, they have innate benefits and teach us things that cannot be learnt from other disciplines. How we teach the arts is also significant. Too much emphasis… Read more

How well is your school student management system (SMS) being used, by whom, and to do what? Principal and teacher responses to questions about this in the 2012 National Survey of Secondary Schools suggest this could be a fruitful area for schools to self-review.

This article reports on a study, funded by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI), which addressed the key area of early career teacher education. The study researched the construction and use of a CoRe (Content Representation) as a planning tool to develop the professional knowledge bases of early career secondary teachers in science and technology. The study was designed to examine whether a CoRe, co-designed by a team of early career teachers and content and… Read more

Picture books are ubiquitous in Western early childhood and primary settings. This article explores how picture books are being used in culturally and linguistically diverse settings, by describing and exploring the practice of two New Zealand teachers who use picture books extensively in their classrooms. Findings from interviews, observations, reflections, and collaborative workshops indicate the power of picture books within a diverse classroom population and the importance… Read more

The Progressive Achievement Test of Mathematics (PAT: Mathematics) provides norm-referenced information about students’ level of achievement in the skills and understanding of mathematics. This knowledge guides teachers’ decisions about mathematics teaching programmes and aligns with the current evidence-based approach to teaching and learning. In practice, these assessment tools are also used to inform overall teacher judgements (OTJs) when reporting to parents and to the Ministry of… Read more

Q: Our school is in the process of targeting writing achievement for students in Years 1 through to 8. Students in my Years 5 and 6 class who were below or well below the writing standard at the end of their previous year have been targeted as a focus group for improvement. These students need to have their achievement accelerated. What strategies do I need to put in place to ensure that this acceleration can happen? Can this accelerated improvement be sustained over a long period?—Lanie… Read more