This working paper describes a series of recent “student voice” projects undertaken by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER). Although these projects varied in terms of their specific contexts and processes, each sought to elicit young people’s perspectives (about learning, education and/or other aspects of their lives), and support the young people to represent their perspectives and insights in forums that included adults, such as teachers, parents, policymakers ...

School-based careers advisors have been given a key role in assisting young people in transition from school to work and further education. Their role is especially significant in light of the strategic importance attached to career development for workforce preparation and development policies. However major changes in the nature of work and in contemporary transitions from school, as well as shifts in career education theory and delivery, mean that careers ...

NZCER’s Families and Communities Engagement (FACE) project investigated ideas and practices involved in bringing together teachers, families, local communities and students to contribute to collective conversations and decisions about education.

This report concerns a sub-project of FACE that aimed to develop and research a process to engage small groups of secondary students in becoming critical and informed contributors to curriculum and education design. We developed workshops to support small groups ...

The guide presents a set of four high-level principles for developing and maintaining good assessment structures and systems for Industry Training Organisations (ITOs). The guide is a resource based on the best available evidence from a research project involving an analysis of New Zealand and international literature, a survey of ITOs, and focus groups with ITO assessors and ITO staff. The primary intended audience for the guide is quality assurance ...

A Curriculum Updates article published in the Education Gazette in March 2010, promoting dialogue and develop understandings about the role of the curriculum principles in designing and reviewing the school curriculum.

This exploratory study was carried out for the Enviroschools Foundation. It aims to represent some of the important ideas, processes, points of view and outcomes that we noticed as researcher-participants in ReGeneration ’09, a four-day hui held in February 2009.

ReGeneration brought together young adults and secondary-school-aged youth with an interest and involvement in sustainability and environmental issues within their schools, workplaces and communities. A long-term goal was to help ...

A journal article in the New Zealand Annual Review of Education.

Abstract:

In 1989 the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms brought in self-managing schools as the unit for educational administration. The government’s stated aims included a mix of outcomes and processes, which were to: improve educational opportunities, meet Māori needs more effectively, give local knowledge real responsibility, and encourage flexibility and responsiveness. The system was to be more efficient, and provide greater accountability ...

This background paper was written to provide some background about national standards. It was completed in late 2008, at a time when the incoming National Government had said it would introduce national standards in literacy and numeracy in New Zealand schools. A number of NZCER researchers contributed to the thinking in this paper. It sets out the principles NZCER believes are key to any discussion of national standards. It then ...

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 ...

This paper explores some of the theory underpinning the Key Competencies and what this tells us about possible ways of measuring progress in, and assessing, the Key Competencies.

Download paper: Documenting learning of the key competencies: What are the issues? A discussion paper.