While there has been considerable research on doctoral examination there is little that examines the various roles of the oral component and what issues one might consider if introducing or revising that aspect of the thesis examination process. This matter is of particular importance in Australia where it is not usual to have an oral component as…

Psychologists working in education in Aotearoa/New Zealand work in diverse educational environments making day-to-day decisions informed by evidence-based practice. As a relatively small professional group with a complex work programme, they contribute to the assessments and decision-making processes of children and young people across multiple…

This article reports on an exploratory two-stage sequential mixed methods research study that investigated the views of university educators on the introduction of assessment methods other than essays, exams and dissertations within taught Masters programmes. In the first stage, interviews were conducted internationally with 45 participants and…

This research explored the biliteracy experiences of three kohanga reo children as they started school in one of three school settings: a bilingual unit, a mainstream classroom, and kura kaupapa Maori. A Kaupapa Maori approach underpinned this research and guided the case study methodology employed. The children's literacy experiences were…

This study compares the stances of practitioners, parents and the quality assurance authority on the assessment of learning in New Zealand (NZ) early childhood education (ECE). The phenomenographic interview participants include practitioners (24) and parents (11) from 11 ECE settings. The reports issued by the Education Review Office (ERO) on all…

Narratives that capture children's learning as they go about their day-to-day activities are promoted as a powerful assessment tool within early childhood settings. However, in the New Zealand context, there is increasing concern that learning stories--the preferred form of narrative assessment--currently downplay domain knowledge. In this paper,…

There is an identified and growing need for a levelled diagnostic basic facts assessment tool that provides teachers with formative information about students' mastery of a broad range of basic fact sets. The Individual Basic Facts Assessment tool has been iteratively and cumulatively developed, trialled, and refined with input from teachers and…

In early childhood settings narratives that capture children's learning as they go about their day-to-day activities are promoted as a powerful assessment tool. However, in the New Zealand context there is increasing concern that learning stories currently downplay domain knowledge. Data from teacher interviews and samples of learning stories…

Open Polytechnic is a single-mode provider of distance education with a rich history of print-based provision. Strategically, the institution is rapidly adopting an online-only approach, with some exceptions for programmes that require student contact. A recent and internal review of Moodle, the Open Polytechnic's learning management system (LMS)…

Practicum is the cornerstone of teacher education. Triadic assessment of practicum is an established model in early childhood initial teacher education in New Zealand. Based on a phenomenographic study on assessment of practicum, this paper presents a new perspective on triadic assessment. Interview data are collected from 35 participants (20…

Existing research shows that high school students do not possess information literacy skills adequate to function in a high-tech society that relies so heavily on information. If students are taught these skills, they struggle to apply them. This small-scale intervention focused on helping Geography students at a low-socioeconomic high school in…

In this paper we describe a method for exploring young children's views of illness causality in social context. Studies of children's conceptualisation of illness have predominantly focused on the nature of children's knowledge rather than locating that knowledge within socio-cultural contexts. Adopting a socio-constructivist perspective we sought…

Blended synchronous learning involves using rich-media technologies to enable remote and face-to-face students to jointly participate in the same live classes. This article presents blended synchronous learning designs from seven case studies that were part of a project funded by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching and…

This article describes the work undertaken by a cluster of Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) to ensure that annual effectiveness reviews were more than a compliance exercise but a genuine attempt to improve their service to schools, hence the title of this article of "Going Beyond Audit". Historically, the cluster had met…

This paper draws on a study of academic chairpersons' experiences in one research-intensive university in New Zealand. The research goal was see if there were recurring threads in chairpersons' narratives about their experience and management of conflict and challenge. The research revealed that one of the most pervasive stories concerned a set of…