Assessment News outlines findings from an investigation of inequalities in the current use of special assessment conditions (SAC) in NCEA assessments, along with rising demand for their use. The research also explored the potential of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to help improve assessment accessibility, and to reduce the overall demand for…

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) was asked to carry out research for the Ministry of Education related to the future of Special Assessment Conditions (SAC) in the context of the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA). This report details our findings related to the current application of SAC entitlement…

The policy perspective provides an overview of literature and country approaches in an area where there is presently limited comparative information on national and system-wide approaches. The insights presented will be of interest to many OECD countries and beyond, as they consider ways to monitor and assess the social emotional skills which are…

New Zealand's defined coastal boundaries, isolation and small population were favourable factors to minimise the spread of COVID-19. Decisive governmental leadership and a public willing to comply with high-level lockdown in the first phase, resulted in minimal disruption to assessment. But as the pandemic progressed through Delta and Omicron…

The EU Working Group on Learning for Sustainability (LfS) is currently exploring how policy action can assist in the development and introduction of school curricula and appropriate pedagogies to improve opportunities for learning for sustainability in Europe's schools. This paper brings forward input on how learning for environmental…

Learner agency is often seen unproblematically as an integral aspect of "twenty-first century lifelong learning". Agency and instrumentalist forms of teacher professional development are problematised through this qualitative case study that explores a teacher's inquiry into assessment for learning practices. This article illustrates how…

The purpose of this study was to test the validity of the Teachers' Conceptions of Assessment Scale III-Abridged Version (CoA-IIIA; Brown, 2006), a measure created, validated, and applied outside of North America, in a sample of Canadian preservice teachers (n = 436). This work is important because although we have long known that teachers'…

Author Dr Roseanna Bourke takes the reader on a fascinating exploration of learning: the theory, practice and young people's take on it. What do you say to a young person who tells you her brain is an eighth full? Or to the one who says he only knows he has learned something when he receives a stamp or a sticker? This book is about how learners…

Undertaken during a period when changes in the assessment of English in public examinations at 16+ were becoming embedded in classroom practice, this comparative research explores where poetry is located within the newly aligned examination assessment frameworks of New Zealand and England. It comments on how these frameworks are locally…

Many countries are at varying stages of implementing competency-based education into their schools to equip youth with skills necessary to adapt to a changing world. Very little is known regarding practical approaches to incorporate competencies into school curriculum. This study examines five schools in Auckland, New Zealand from a variety of…

Discusses the findings of a two-year research project on formative assessment in New Zealand among science teachers. The characteristics of formative assessment include responsiveness, sources of evidence, a tacit process, use of professional knowledge and experiences, and an integral part of teaching and learning. (Author/MM)

Identifies a set of linguistic/rhetorical measures which were developed to analyze cross-cultural differences in student argumentative/persuasive writing at the same age level. Compares the writing achievement of students from America, England, and New Zealand to test these measures, and contrasts these results with those produced by holistic…

The Northland Wilderness Experience (NWE) was established in 1985 to provide outdoor therapeutic programs for at-risk youth from the Northland region of New Zealand. The program involved a physically challenging 10-day expedition, followed by an 18-month followup period of group outdoor activities offered every 2 weeks. By the end of 1989, 280…

This two-part paper describes an experiment with an alternative form of evaluation of New Zealand secondary school students' English proficiency. The first part presents a background of the New Zealand secondary education system and a lengthy discussion of the procedures that led to changing from a one-time, three-hour, external examination…

Students in New Zealand and several other countries were tested in writing skills near the end of their formal (secondary) education, as part of the International Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) tests. Among the categories tested were functional letter writing and narrative, persuasive, and reflective essay writing. New Zealand student…