This paper examines the extent to which there has been a shift towards disciplinary knowledge in recently developed curriculum documents in New Zealand and evaluates whether a new "Understand, Know, Do" structure for the curriculum has the potential to facilitate coherent design of teaching programmes and "deep learning." Using…

Although visual arts pedagogies are considered central within early childhood education programs, teacher self-efficacy has a direct impact on the quality and delivery of visual arts curricula. Until recently, the visual arts self-efficacy, pedagogical knowledge, and practice of in-service early childhood teachers have remained largely unexplored.…

This article draws on the research findings of a case study at Greerton Early Learning Centre in Aotearoa, New Zealand, utilising data from the teachers' research inquiries into their professional practice. Teachers' inquiries included Learning Stories -- a research-based sociocultural narrative assessment approach -- written for children and…

The primary objective of this paper is to present a curriculum design model that extends the 'Powerful Knowledge' ideas of social realist theory. The Model called 'Curriculum Design Coherence' (CDC) hypothesizes an approach in which subject concepts and the subject's epistemic structure are central to the design process to enable deep learning.…

In this paper, we report an exploratory investigation of the types of assessment in a variety of high school subjects that best predicted subsequent success at university in those subjects. In social sciences and the humanities, internal (school-based) assessment was a better predictor of university success than external, examination-based…

This ecofeminist-inspired research study, influenced by an ethic of care, engaged the participants in photo-elicitation and interviews. Ecofeminism originated as a theory and movement related to women and the environment (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia, 2018), while an ethic of care stems from relational ethics that assumes human connectedness in…

Recent research points to the importance of teacher educators teaching "for" diversity in initial teacher education programmes. Teaching "for" diversity is an approach to teacher education in which an understanding of specialist literature and a focus on critical thinking supports a social justice agenda as opposed to merely…

Understanding the nature of science (NoS) is perplexing for young children because it is concerned with not only understanding how evidence is generated but also what kind of meanings can be made from information collected. However, acting as a scientist-in-role, making independent decisions about what information to collect and deciding how to go…

This study embarks on the question in the title with the construct of epistemological status, which pertains to the solver's satisfaction with the way and the degree to which their solution had fulfilled their intellectual and psychological needs in a particular problem situation. The construct is used to hypothesize that a solver's decision to…

A key educational objective for the twenty-first century is developing students' epistemic agency. Epistemic agency is the active process of choosing when, what, where one learns and how one knows, as well as the capacity to create knowledge in a community. The knowledge-building communities model developed by Scardamalia and Bereiter was used in…

The experience of researching as a Maori student within academia will often raise questions about how and whether the student's research privileges Maori world views and articulates culturally specific epistemologies. This study offers some theorising, from the perspectives of a Maori doctoral student and her Maori supervisor (the authors of this…

The theoretical inquiry undertaken in this paper examines the discourse of knowledge equivalence used to justify conflating academic and non-academic subjects in New Zealand secondary school science. The purpose is to open up a critical discussion of the discourse and its influence on curriculum and pedagogy. Using a conceptual methodology, we…

In this paper, we critically interrogate the way in which comparative and international education coursework at two large institutions in Australia and New Zealand embody or challenge teleological, colonial, and Western/Northern-centric perspectives on education and development. Embedded within a broader and introspective examination of our roles…

This research demonstrates that cooperative inquiry (CI) offers authentic opportunities for academics to transform their teaching, paving the way for additional collaborative practices in higher education across a range of disciplines. Using data from cycles of action and reflection, a multidisciplinary group of seven tertiary teachers committed…

What enduring knowledge and understanding from tertiary education study will learners remember most that will contribute to their on-going performance and understanding for effective teaching? This paper is based on research undertaken to identify what third-year initial teacher education students in a course including Technology Education…