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 ...

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 ...