Research into effective pedagogy was a major strand of the science education research programme at the University of Waikato for the 20 years of the 1980s and 1990s, being done in all five Learning in Science Projects and related theses. The research was closely connected to constructivist and sociocultural views of learning, current national curriculum learning goals, and current classroom practice in New Zealand schools. In the main, the researchers were qualified and experienced teachers of science. This research parallelled that done internationally, but as contextualized research it has informed New Zealand curriculum policy, initial teacher education and teacher development.