To prepare young people for the increasingly complex and fluid world of their future, many countries have begun introducing digital technologies concepts and skills into their curricula. In 2017, the New Zealand National Curriculum was updated to incorporate digital technologies concepts in both the indigenous Maori-medium curriculum and the…

When teaching the multiplicative domain in New Zealand primary schools, teachers tend to spend a greater proportion of time on the meaning and processes of multiplication, to the detriment of a specific focus on understanding the concept of division. When division is taught, it tends to be by reversing the context and turning the division…

Inclusive education is vital for the rights of all children to education to be met and teacher aides are key players in inclusive education efforts. But inclusive education policy aspirations, like other policies, often fail to be fully realised. In this article we focus on the inclusion of teacher aides in educational networks and the extent to…

Specialised Content Knowledge (SCK) is defined by Ball, Hoover-Thames, and Phelps (2008) as mathematical knowledge essential for effective teaching. It is knowledge of mathematics that is beyond knowledge which would be required outside of teaching; for instance, the capacity to determine what misconception(s) may lie behind an error in…

This report presents the findings of a small exploratory study carried out in 2021 by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) for the National Library of New Zealand | Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa. The project is part of a wider suite of six studies commissioned by the National Library as part of their Communities of Readers…

Teachers who read for pleasure can enable their students to become readers as they consciously and unconsciously model the knowledge, practices, values, beliefs, and language (that is, the discourses) associated with being a reader. Such teachers are in the unique position of being able to talk with students about what they are currently reading,…

This project aims to develop primary, intermediate, and high school students' sense of place and science-related possible selves through local curriculum units that focus on plants. We chose plants because, compared with animals, they are often overlooked (hence the phenomenon of "plant blindness") in their part in realising many…

Culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy is an asset-based approach to teaching and learning. In this way, students' identities, languages, and cultures are centered in the learning experience, creating a sense of belonging. The authors observed culturally relevant and sustaining approaches to teaching and learning while visiting schools in New…

Over the past 50 years, research has shown that teacher expectations can influence student outcomes. Many studies have examined within-year effects. There is, however, a paucity of research that has investigated the stability of teachers' expectations across a single year, and there are no studies that have examined stability beyond 1 year. The…

This study analyses the practices of nine New Zealand teachers of upper primary and middle-school students (N = 210) whose classes had consistently shown gains in writing far greater than normative expectations. Data from observations of three writing lessons and related interviews with each teacher, plus interviews with three focus students after…

We administered specially-designed, free-response mathematics tasks to primary students (N = 583, ages five to 12 years old). Our focus was on whether (i) the children's responses could be reliably assessed, and (ii) the responses could provide insights into children's mathematical thinking. We used a contemporary comparative judgement technique,…

Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) allows researchers to determine whether a research inventory elicits similar response patterns across samples. If statistical equivalence in responding is found, then scale score comparisons become possible and samples can be said to be from the same population. This paper illustrates the use of…

As a facilitator of the Incredible Years for Teachers Programme (IYT), I have found that the classroom management strategies participant teachers learned during the 6-month programme period have not been embedded and sustained in their use through time. This inquiry investigated the benefits and barriers to IYT being spontaneously, consistently…

The present study investigated 15 Year 4-6 classrooms in two multicultural schools in New Zealand to understand what opportunities students had to draw on their diverse experiences of texts. A mixed-methods approach was taken, including classroom observations and student interviews. Results suggested that lessons were characterised by a consistent…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how five Year 7/8 teachers of additional languages in four primary/intermediate schools in New Zealand supported their students to develop their intercultural capability in the context of learning a language additional to the language of instruction. The teachers taught a range of languages (Chinese,…