Publication year
2007

This is a report on a one-year action research project aimed at encouraging and strengthening children's Samoan language and literacy learning within an a'oga amata. 

It reports on:

  •  the beliefs teachers held about language acquisition and early literacy
  • the action research process
  • the changes that occured in the teachers' pedagogical practice

The main approaches to making pedagogical change to strengthen laguage and literacy learning were:

  • developing an environment saturated in the ...
Publication year
1995

How can we help our children to develop their thinking?

This report outlines an early part of the Competent Children project: an action research study of six months in the lives of 10 children aged between 4 and 5 years. Using recent advances in theory about how children learn to think, researchers worked with the children's parents and early childhood education teachers to help them observe the children and ...

Authors
Publication year
2008

This is one of three reports from NZCER’s second national survey of the early childhood education sector, carried out in late 2007. The others are:

The survey reports the views of teachers/educators from education and care centres, kindergartens, playcentres, and home-based services, and from a small number of köhanga reo ...

Publication year
2007

This is the second technical report from the Competent Learners @16 project. It examines the associations between early childhood education experience and young people's competency levels. It finds some aspects of early childhood education still have a statistically visible contribution, 11 years on.

Read more about the Competent children, competent learners project

This research project evaluated "Notebook Valley", one of four "Digital Opportunities" initiatives facilitated by the Ministry of Education, which aimed to increase the access and use of ICT in low-decile and/or remote New Zealand schools.

In the Notebook Valley project, three low-decile urban high schools were given laptop computers, Internet access, and a range of software tools for senior secondary math and science students and teachers to use.

The evaluation ...

Publication year
2006

A report from research done in late 2002 to late 2003, in which the participants in the longitudinal research study were now aged 14. Examines: cognitive competency levels; attitudinal competency levels; curiosity; perseverance; self-management; self-efficacy; social skills with peers; social skills with adults and communication. Reports on the technical aspects of associations between the competency measures; the predictability of age-14 competency levels and predictability of high and low performance.

Publication year
2008

This is a thematic report drawing together responses from our 2006 survey of secondary schools, and the 2007 survey of primary schools.

Each survey questioned principals, teachers, board of trustee members, and parents. The areas covered in the report include curriculum priorities in primary and secondary schools, use of ICT, innovation and barriers to innovation, and views about national standards.

Publication year
2006

This paper surveys recent work on school ICT projects.

It looks at the ideas that are informing this work and surveys some of the strategies being used in the drive to turn schools into 'ICT-rich learning environments'.

In order to illustrate how these ideas play out in 'real-world' situations, the paper also profiles one New Zealand school-based ICT initiative as a case study - the Tech Angels project at Wellington Girls’ ...

Publication year
2002

Report on an investigation into what the public thinks, knows, and feels about science.

The research involved a telephone survey of 800 members of the New Zealand public, and small-scale focus group discussions with four different groups.

The research identified six sectors of New Zealand society, each with a different profile of attitudes towards and beliefs about science. These sectors showed many similarities to the sectors that were found in similar recent UK ...

Publication year
2007

This report provides evidence of the extent of course innovation in the senior secondary school, as at July 2007. This evidence has been gathered to inform the work of the Ministry of Education as they make wider policy decisions about senior secondary education.

The report documents the findings of a web-based survey used to take a snapshot of the extent of subject and assessment innovation in the senior secondary school in mid-2007 ...