Kura kaupapa Maori provide a unique primary school education system that immerses children in Maori language and culture. Interviews with founding members from the first Auckland kura give a critical sense of the aspirations that guided them in their struggle to set up the kura kaupapa Maori initiative. The desire to provide suitable schooling for…

This 2-year collaborative research project focused on young children's working theories about identity, language, and culture, how early childhood teachers can nurture and encourage this learning, and how this in turn impacts on children's participation in early childhood education (ECE) communities. The project builds on a previous Teaching and…

This summary report describes a project built on prior national Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) research investigating teaching and learning episodes between teachers and child during their everyday interactions (Carr, et al., 2008; Davis & Peters, 2008). With these prior studies as a foundation, the current project aimed to…

The collection of papers contained in this special issue was elicited by a worldwide call for papers to explore settings that provided nature experiences for young children, with attention given to the effects that these initiatives have on the holistic development and environmental awareness of the children, as well as impacts on the teachers and…

Inspired by Joshua Fishman's lifetime dedication to the revitalisation of minority languages, especially Yiddish, this paper presents my personal story of the loss of the Maori language in my family in New Zealand/Aotearoa and our attempts to reverse this decline over several generations. The paper includes a description of several policy reforms…

This study compared 120 Chinese immigrant parents and 127 non-Chinese parents from New Zealand preschools on their level of involvement in preschool-based activities, as well as key predictors of parental involvement. Results showed that Chinese immigrant parents had a lower level of involvement than non-Chinese parents across three forms of…

A gender-diverse workforce is becoming the global goal for high-quality early childhood programming. Having a balance of female and male early care and education (ECE) professionals supports greater flexibility in the gender role expectations of young children and helps girls and boys avoid stereotypic assumptions about gender. This article lists…

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…

This paper reports on the experiences of the Evaluation Team, comprised of experienced librarians from the Christchurch City Libraries and primary teacher educators (from Canterbury University) as they planned and implemented interventions working with the children of teen mothers (one marginalised cohort within a wider study). In particular it…

This study investigated the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Change in speech, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling skills were examined. A controlled multiple single-subject design was employed. Twelve children aged 4-7 years with…

This paper and the four commissioned works on which it is based are guided by the important question: How can we start valuing practices and outcomes of teaching and learning that are difficult to reduce to numbers? As the process of developing indicators for the Post-2015 education targets unfolds, some of the targets are at risk of being dropped…

The purpose of this article is to describe the New Zealand experience of second language acquisition as it applies to learning the Maori language and also to new immigrants learning English. The article describes the te kohanga reo movement and also outlines the government policy as it relates to the learning of English as an additional language…

This report was produced for the 2012 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Mauritius. Its main purpose is to track the historical progress and likelihood of attainment of Education For All and education-specific Millennium Development Goals while also critically reviewing the methods used to track this progress. The analyses…

The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments related to the development of indicators of educational progress in the context of the Post 2015 deliberations to generate a new international architecture for educational investment through to 2030. There have been a plethora of suggestions and several parallel consultation processes…

This report reviews the conceptual debates and existing data sources that relate to three ambiguous and controversial targets included in the post-2015 education framework: Relevant Learning Outcomes; Knowledge, Skills, Values, and Attitudes (for education for global citizenship and sustainable development); and Teachers and Safe, Inclusive, and…