Qualifications frameworks are tools for describing qualifications of an education or training system by classifying them into levels. Each level provides a clear description of what the holder of a qualification knows, understands and is able to do. They are important tools for making qualifications transparent and comprehensible, within and…

Within the growing field of publications on El Sistema and Sistema-inspired programmes around the world, a marked divide can be observed between the findings of critical academic studies and commissioned evaluations. Using evaluations of El Sistema in Venezuela and Aotearoa New Zealand as our principal case studies, we argue that this gulf can be…

Limited attention has been paid to the experiences of Pacific Early Career Academics (PECA) in utilising their culture-specific systems of knowledge in their pedagogical practice. As a cross-section of PECA employed in a variety of disciplines and faculties, we explore how our Pacific identities infuse our pedagogical approaches in a way that…

Many governments have launched the top-down early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms to enhance the accountability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The present discourse analysis of latest ECC policies across four diverse but representative countries -- Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore -- aims to examine the…

In 2014, the University of Waikato launched the Curriculum Enhancement Programme (CEP). As the leaders of this programme we have used autoethnography to reflect critically on our experience. Throughout the course of the CEP some things have gone well; others, in hindsight, have not gone so well and in retrospect we would have done them…

The article analyses the impact of the neoliberal policy framework and managerialism on critical legal education in the context of Waikato Law Faculty, University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. The delivery of critical legal education challenges the ideology and implementation of current tertiary education policy and training because it is…

In view of the recent developments in many countries, for example, in the USA and in the UK, it appears that computer science education (CSE) in primary or secondary schools (K-12) has reached a significant turning point, shifting its focus from ICT-oriented to rigorous computer science concepts. The goal of this special issue is to offer a…

This viewpoint article provides a critical reflection on the gatekeeping and academic language practices of Anglophone universities, evaluating these in light of the promotional claims universities make about internationalization and global reach. I then consider the arguments put forward in each of the main articles in this special issue from…

How do schools maintain momentum with change and enter new cycles of growth when they are attempting to do things differently? This article draws on a two-year evaluation of the "Positive Behaviour for Learning School-Wide" initiative to identify key factors that enabled schools to engage in a long-term and iterative change process.…

This paper explores New Zealand (NZ) physics teachers' and physics educators' views about Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Perspectives of physics teachers nationally indicated that in general, teachers considered themselves not well-prepared in some content areas including electronics, modern physics, and atomic and nuclear physics. This may be…

This article reports on a language learning system and a program designed to help students with academic vocabulary in the New Zealand university computer science department. The system is a learner-friendly corpus-based tool that allows students to look up lexico-grammatical patterns of a given word in academic writing. The program, based on a…

As an early pioneer of market-led institutional reforms and New Public Management policies, New Zealand arguably has one of the most "neoliberalised" tertiary education sectors in the world. This article reports on a recent academic dispute concerning the attempt by management to introduce a new category of casualised academic employee…

This article examines the special nature of "Te Whariki," Aotearoa New Zealand's early childhood national curriculum, as a dynamic social, cultural document through an exploration of two art-inspired imaginary case studies. Thinking with "Te Whariki" retains the potential to ignite thinking post-developmentally about art,…

The Signs of Safety approach to child protection has been gaining prominence around the world and this approach has developed through learning from good practice. Generally, examples of good practice are derived from adults who pose a risk to children, while this paper outlines an example of good practice that engages an adolescent in building a…

The February 2011 Canterbury earthquake was a dramatic reminder of the need for schools to have emergency management plans in place. A number of other disaster and hazard events have historically caused New Zealand schools to close temporarily, and often within a short time frame. At such times principals must act decisively and communicate…