Set 2024: no. 2

E ngā kaipānui o Set: Research Information for Teachers, kia ora, kia kaha, kia māia. Ko tēnei te wā o Whiringa-ā-Nuku. The sun is trying its best to warm the ground, still with a chill in the air. This issue aims to provide some warm support to teachers who have received crisp directions over the winter months on how to structure teaching and learning.

Cat Lunjevich responds to Set’s questioning about how her understanding of social emotional learning deepened along the journey of making the Oho and Ata cards, which are now readily available to New Zealand teachers.

Teachers can respond to the climate crisis through deliberate choices about what and how to teach. We suggest that, for history teachers, this requires stepping outside traditional topics that often focus on political change. Instead, they need to select contexts for learning that illustrate how global forces of colonisation impact the ecology of local places and how iwi and hapū resist these changes. While this learning can begin in the classroom, it is not enough on its own. Wherever… Read more

Worldwide, academic procrastination is a prevalent concern in schools because it hinders students’ achievement, health, and wellbeing. Academic procrastination refers to students voluntarily postponing, initiating, or completing assigned learning tasks despite knowing they will be worse off for the delay. Research provides strong evidence that students procrastinate learning tasks when they lack motivation and/or have insufficient emotion regulation skills. This article builds upon the… Read more

When teaching the multiplicative domain in New Zealand primary schools, teachers tend to spend a greater proportion of time on the meaning and processes of multiplication, to the detriment of a specific focus on understanding the concept of division. When division is taught, it tends to be by reversing the context and turning the division scenarios into multiplication problems. While this article stems from wider research based on teaching division in Years 5 and 6, it is relevant to all… Read more

Trauma-informed schools are deeply responsive to the trauma experiences of students and address their primary need for safety and connection as a foundation for emotional, social, and cognitive wellbeing. Trauma-informed schools have systems in place that provide trauma awareness, knowledge, and skills as part of their school culture, practices, and policies. This article draws on a literature base to explore what it means to be trauma-informed and shows ways that schools can play a key role… Read more

The last issue of Assessment News (Darr & Cosslett, 2024) outlined NZCER’s position on possible assessment policy directions that had been signalled by parties within the new coalition government. Since then, the Government has released a plan for consistent assessment, which requires all primary schools to use standardised assessment tools twice yearly. The PATs are one of three choices of assessment tools that schools can use for progression monitoring in Years 3–8. This edition of… Read more