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 ...

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.

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.

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’ ...

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 ...

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 ...

In the course of standard statistical analyses in the third and final phase of the Learning Curves project, questions were raised about the nature of students’ subject choices. We thought that if well-described patterns of subject choice could be found using our data, then we might also question the relationship of these patterns to available student demographics. 

A clustering technique was devised to isolate patterns of subject choice for each ...

A report  from research done in late 2002 to late 2003, in which the participants in the longitudinal research study were now aged 14.  Reports on the continuing effects of pre-school education.  Comments on how early childhood education (ECE) impacts on competencies at aged 14 years.  Examines whether aspects of ECE can make separate contributions to competence at mathematics and reading.

This is a summary of 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, and download the full Competent learners at 16 Technical report 2
Read more about the Competent children, competent learners project

This research reports on the assessment practices of teachers in New Zealand classrooms including:

• the assessment tools and strategies that are being used
• why particular assessments are used
• which assessments teachers find most useful.

While teachers use a variety of assessment tools and strategies as a basis for:

• informing future teaching
• monitoring students' progress
• reporting to parents.

they show a clear preference for teacher- or school-developed strategies for assisting the ...