PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) was inaugurated in 2001 as a follow-up to International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's 1991 Reading Literacy Study. Conducted every five years, PIRLS assesses the reading achievement of young students in their fourth year of schooling--an important transition…

The Laptops for Teachers scheme in New Zealand provides teachers whose schools opt into the scheme access to a laptop for their exclusive use. This paper reports on the findings of the three-year evaluation of the impact of the laptops on secondary teachers' work. The findings indicate that school leadership has been pivotal to the provision of…

Research on the nature of and support for systemic sustainable innovation with ICT is converging with research on policy implementation and studies of school change and improvement to highlight the complex interplay of personal and contextual factors that enable and constrain innovation. In each of these fields, leadership has been found to play a…

Utilising Pierre Bourdieu's formula for studying social practice, this study explored the construction of technological expertise amongst a heterogeneous group of New Zealand teenagers. The qualitative study employed observations and interviews with five boys and three girls aged 13-17, who considered themselves to be technological experts; their…

Whilst prior research has identified children as avid users of new technologies, insufficient studies have explored their patterns of use. This paper investigates how New Zealand pre-teens use technology out of school and identifies a typology of technology use. Two hundred and twenty four children between 10 and 12 years of age completed a…

The introduction of computers, the Internet, and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into the school context has proved challenging for many schools and teachers. In meeting these challenges, professional development for teachers has been seen traditionally as a formal process conducted by an expert from outside the school.…

This collection of research and case studies provides snapshots of developments in school networking in seven regions of the world, and focuses on the variety of school networking models that have emerged in different regions and the resulting trends and issues that need to be considered in terms of supporting the learning, teaching, management…

Discusses the impact of information technology and networking on higher education with particular reference to academic libraries, based on experiences in Australia and New Zealand. Highlights include technology and learning; open learning and the virtual campus; network infrastructure; database access; electronic publishing; information…

This paper elaborates on the importance of a strategic foundation when digital learning or knowledge management (KM) solutions are planned and developed. It looks at some key issues of e-Learning and knowledge management (KM) through discussing the various stages (technologies) and potential benefits of e-Learning; the state of the e-Learning…

This study surveyed 240 students in a New Zealand secondary school on socioeconomic (SES) background, gender, time spent using computers, applications, educational goals, keyboard competency, and attitudes toward computers. No differences were found in computer access across ability, gender, and SES divisions; however, females continue to use…

The computer has been in the world's mathematics classrooms for some period of time now, but with varying degrees of implementation in the promotion of student learning. In this paper we describe longitudinal research over seven years which has investigated how primary school teachers actually make use of computers in their mathematics classroom,…

This article provides an overview of Systemic Initiatives in the Australian States and Territories. This updated overview acknowledges the help and information provided by key contacts whom the authors contacted from each of the Australian State and Territory government education systems. In addition, the role of the Ministerial Council for…

Technology in secondary schools has become of increasing interest as the power of the microchip has developed. For the students of Mathematics, computers and handheld graphic calculators need to be accessible to all. They are relevant to the needs of the students' courses and to support and develop their Mathematical learning (Smith, 1997).…