Schooling for the future

This New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) research project explores the ways five diverse secondary schools shaped their timetables to support innovation in teaching and learning. The timetable is often a taken-for-granted presence in schools even though it plays an important role in how teaching and learning are experienced. This report identifies key factors that schools may find useful to consider when making changes to their timetable.  

This report presents findings from a case study of Owairaka District School's collaboration with their community as part of the Garden to Table programme and other initiatives.

The term Education 3.0 is used to signal the shift from traditional schooling to more appropriate models for the 21st century. This work was carried out for Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu - the Correspondence School - to scope possible new metrics they could use to document student learning and teacher practice to support that learning.

The full report is available here.

This  2015 report updates the findings from a large multi-method study of environmental education in New Zealand schools, done in 2002-2004. The update report will be of interest to schools and environmental education providers and stakeholders who support schools.

This working paper sets out some of the early findings from a pilot project to explore the qualities that future-oriented teachers might need and how those qualities might be developed.

This new free "rapid prototype" resource will be of particular use in school staff professional development workshops, and can also be used or adapted for use with students, parents, school Boards of Trustees, and anyone with an interest in what and how young people learn, and how education could be organised in the future. It invites groups to explore their current thinking and to imagine alternatives that provoke new questions about knowledge, and the roles, relationships, and structures that are needed to support future-oriented learning. 

How can educational research could contribute to the development of a more future-oriented learning system? This article discusses an attempt to synthesise ideas from the “21st century learning” literature with current knowledge about practice issues and future possibilities for innovation in New Zealand education, in order to distil a set of principles for a more future-oriented system. We hope this synthesis might provide a platform for educators, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders in education to engage in ongoing discussion about how to develop “next practice” and achieve system change.

You can read the full text for this article for free.

This paper makes the case for deep and radical change to New Zealand's approach to science education. It discusses the implications of recent science education research and policy work, and argues New Zealand still has a long way to go to developing a future-oriented science education system.  It explores what needs to change and contains suggestions for some first steps.

Albany Senior High School (ASHS) is a new senior secondary school intent on developing a curriculum for the 21st century. At the end of 2009 and 2010, its first two years of existence, it surveyed students on the learning approaches at the school. In this report, NZCER analysed the responses.