Community development research suggests that positive partnerships and connections between groups can result in stronger, more resilient and productive communities. Despite community connections featuring increasingly at a curriculum level in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, research is only beginning to explore the nuanced processes…

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 explores the potential of queering as a mode of critique by problematising the ways in which liberal politics of race shape normative understandings of health in a high school classroom. Drawing on findings from an Australian and New Zealand (NZ) research project designed to respond to religious and cultural difference in school-based…

This paper draws on a case study undertaken by an English teacher in a rural school with a Year 12 English class, most of whom had been singularly unsuccessful in terms of NCEA achievement. The case study was undertaken as part of a two-year project, directed by the first author, entitled: "Teachers as writers: Transforming professional…

Literature that discusses transformative change in schools typically draws on experiences of renewal and change in existing schools. This report explores the shaping of a new school with the intent, established at the very outset, of offering a curriculum for the 21st century. The report discusses four key aspects of curriculum innovation at this…

This paper reports on degrees of awareness and use of specific metacognitive strategies by 16 students in a final-year high school biology class in New Zealand. The aims of the intervention were to broaden students' thinking about bioethical issues associated with cancer and to enhance students' use of metacognition. Cues and prompts were used in…

Background/Context: Theorists of civil society often view civil society as a site for democratic education. Civil society is supposed to assist democratic practice by offering people contexts in which they practice promoting the common good. This article, following Nina Eliasoph's intervention, takes this to be a claim requiring ethnographic…

Summarizes trends in New Zealand's Sixth Form Certificate assessment, explains teacher views about it and a sixth-form major subject area (science, represented by National Standards Syllabus biology, chemistry, and physics), and discusses findings in the context of the National Qualifications Framework. Official scrutiny over this exam has…

Identifies how policy implementation might be improved by informing policy formulation with a more detailed understanding of local conditions. Conceptualizes policy as a response to conflicting local and national requirements. Presents a case study, a New Zealand high school's implementation of a national performance-management policy. The…

From the late 1860s, when they were established in New Zealand, the district high (now area) schools have sought to provide academically able rural youth with the opportunity to study a high status, abstract, examination-oriented curriculum. This curriculum enabled them to pursue clerical and professional careers in the towns and cities. However,…