This research report draws together findings from new data and more than 10 years of research on current practice and futures-thinking in education. It was commissioned by the Ministry of Education to support its programme of work to develop a vision of what future-oriented education could look like for New Zealand learners. The report has a foreword by the Minister of Education Hekia Parata and a message from Anthony Mackay, Co-Director ...

A  presentation given to the Sport New Zealand Advisory Group, based on the evaluation approach for the Sport in Education evaluation support project.

Travellers is an early intervention programme run by Skylight for students (generally in Year 9) in New Zealand secondary schools.In order to build on existing studies on Travellers, Skylight commissioned the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) to conduct an external evaluation that explored the short- and medium-term outcomes for the young people who took part in this programme in 2008 or 2009. This study began in April 2011 ...

This literature review focuses on international and New Zealand research into the involvement of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small businesses in formal training.

The review identifies a number of barriers to formal training, which are:

• due to proportionally higher financial and opportunity costs
• entrenched in the unstable and low-profit context in which SMEs operate
• related to the lack of clear evidence about the benefits ...

The Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) have been available to teachers since the 1990s. Since then our understanding of assessment has broadened, and the focus today is much more on the ARBs as a powerful tool for assessment for formative purposes. Next Steps is intended to help teachers to use the ARBs to support formative assessment in classrooms.

How can teachers support young people in thinking about and crafting these pathways? Over the period of their working lives, there is a high likelihood that young people will seek (or be required) to develop in changing occupations, to move into many (possibly different) jobs at different times in life, and to manage learning opportunities or requirements (at tertiary institutions, in the workplace) throughout life. In such a dynamic environment ...

Career management competencies have recently emerged in New Zealand and in international policy addressing people’s capabilities to build successful (working) lives in de-industrialised, knowledge societies. This article shows how career management competencies could address three major and long-standing problems with New Zealand school-based career education – inequitable access, marginalisation, and lack of fitness for purpose. It argues for an overall shift from careers information and guidance delivery to longer-term capability ...

NZC at primary and intermediate level: Findings from the NZCER National Survey of Primary Schools 2010

This report is part of our national survey series, which is funded through NZCER's purchase agreement with the Ministry of Education. It focuses on the implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) in primary and intermediate schools. The NZC was published in 2007 and by 2010, implementation was expected to have been well underway ...

NZCER Chief Researcher Cathy Wylie co-edited this book, and chief researcher Rosemary Hipkins and senior researcher Charles Darr contributed chapters. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines, the book explores the indicators of student engagement, the link to motivation, and the impact of family, peers, and teachers on engagement at different levels of schooling. Findings on the effectiveness of classroom interventions are discussed in detail.

The book is available ...