The ways that gender and sexuality are included within secondary school teaching has implications for students' understandings and ongoing wellbeing. In this research we interviewed nine educators who work in secondary schools in Te Wai Pounamu (the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand) about how they approach gender and sexuality within their…

This article presents New Zealand school counsellors' narratives of counselling adolescents from a strength-based perspective. Strength-based counselling encompasses several counselling modalities including positive psychology, narrative and solution-focused brief counselling and promotes adolescents' strengths to enhance wellbeing. Using…

A refugee crisis is taking place as an unprecedented number of people, half of whom are under the age of 18, become displaced following conflict and persecution in their home countries. In the Aotearoa New Zealand context refugees will continue to be welcomed, so it is important for schools and the wider education system to support inclusion of…

School leaders have a significant impact on student outcomes; however, there has been a shift from viewing school leadership as the actions of an individual, to seeing leadership as a collaborative endeavour, including in Aotearoa New Zealand. The traditional heroic model of leadership is making way for a new leadership paradigm which considers…

Embracing Fa'a Pasifika within New Zealand schools helps students of Pacific heritage to feel that their culture is valued. If transformational change is to happen for Pacific students, then Fa'a Pasifika needs to be weaved through everything that the school does. This article looks at one school's journey to achieve that.

This paper provides a review of recent empirical research investigating middle leadership practices in New Zealand secondary schools. Eight academic articles and one report are included to establish an analysis of the recent evidence of practices of curriculum middle leaders. The majority of the research utilises mixed methodology and aligns…

The contexts in which Aotearoa New Zealand leaders learn and work have improved in some respects from 30 years ago and deteriorated in others. The improvements include a significant shift away from heroic, often dictatorial, models of leadership towards a greater focus on the many layers and types of leadership required for secondary schools to be…

Despite the Ministry of Education Statement of Intent 2021-2026 to focus on improving equity for Maori and Pacific learners and ensure education opportunities and outcomes are within reach for every learner, these groups remain a concern in the New Zealand education system. Inequity still exists for Maori and Pacific learners. This article…

This article aims to report on research that explored the role of perceptions of Directors of Religious Studies (DRSs) in Catholic secondary schools in the Hamilton Diocese, Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ). The DRS position was established to preserve the Catholic special character of these schools after integration with the state education system with…

Are teachers and principals aligned in their perceptions of the core components of the theory of Leadership for Learning across countries, or are there subgroups of schools in which there is misalignment? The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a congruency-typology model of leadership for learning is distributed across…

Mathematics anxiety is a global phenomenon that has generated research interest over the past four decades. Many researchers have suggested that girls display higher levels of mathematics anxiety than boys. This article explores that conjecture in the New Zealand context. It reports on the prevalence of mathematics anxiety in adolescents and…

This research, which is the first part of a two-part study, was commissioned by the New Zealand Productivity Commission to inform their study of the future of work in New Zealand. The main research question asks, in essence: In what ways are secondary school subject-choice systems, and students' subject choices, positioned to respond to future of…

New Zealand secondary school principals were required to make changes to their leadership practices when schools were closed as part of a national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 situation in early 2020. Eighteen school principals from a range of secondary schools were interviewed about their experiences. The research found that principals…

Schooling territories are bounded spaces where policies, bodies, practices, and discourses meet and collide. It is well documented in assessment literature that students who are active decision-makers understand their learning processes and have the necessary wherewithal to access support across schooling spaces. These spaces are co-produced…

The OECD Career Readiness project makes use of quantitative evidence to investigate how teenage career-related activities and attitudes are associated with better adult employment outcomes. Review of multiple national longitudinal datasets confirms 11 indicators of better outcomes linked to the ways in which teenagers explore, experience and think…