This working paper was written as part of a 2010-11 project called Changing Minds, which was funded by NZCER's purchase agreement. The paper discusses NZCER’s research in the broad area of future-focused public and community engagement with education. It questions our role as researchers, asking whether we should be in the business of knowledge building, or using our research knowledge to actively support and sustain change. In the past we ...

This report is one of a series written for the Ministry of Education as part of the Curriculum support for science strand of the Science in the Curriculum projects. It  places two decades of science curriculum reform in New Zealand in the context of international debate about the “nature of science” (NOS) as a driver of change. It outlines the sort of changes that the NOS focus was expected to ...

This report documents the results of a short online teacher survey that asked about teachers' access to, and use of, a range of resources that could potentially support teaching and learning in science.  The survey drew on responses from 343 teachers in New Zealand primary and secondary schools. The findings helped inform the ongoing work of the three projects within the Science in the Curriculum programme of work. 

This paper draws on findings fromn the longitudinal Competent Learners study which has tracked  500 students from when they were in early childhood education to age 20. It focuses on those students who, despite being in the lowest quartile for reading and numeracy competencies at age 8, nevertheless succeeded in gaining a Level 2 or 3 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) award. The paper analyses the  learner qualities that ...

This report looks at how Year 9 students experience civic and citizenship education in the school curriculum, and the opportunities they have to develop citizenship competencies through participating and contributing to various aspects of school life. This includes co-curricular activities, which are those undertaken in the school environment but beyond formal classroom teaching and learning. It also includes decision-making about how things happen in their school. The report also looks ...

This report analyses findings from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), which was undertaken in New Zealand in 2008, around the time of the general election. It explores how students perceive responsible adult citizenship and looks at their current interests and abilities. The students were also asked to look to their futures and say which of a range of social and political activities they will be most likely ...

This paper reports preliminary findings from NZCER research designed to explore the following questions:

• How difficult is it for teachers acculturated in 20th century ways of thinking about education and its purpose, to "shift their paradigm"?
• Do today’s teachers have the dispositions and competencies they are being required to develop in their students—given that their schooling was not designed to develop these?
• What kinds of learning environments would teachers need ...

This summary report was carried out by NZCER for Learning Media Ltd. This is what Learning Media had to say about the project:

"Learning Media Ltd Te Pou Taki Kōrero is a learning organization. What drives us is our commitment to making a tangible difference for all learners, of all ages, This project reflects our interest in how curriculum materials can be designed to impact on learners in ways that ...