Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) work with teachers to identify learning and behaviour needs of students who experience barriers to educational success. The language RTLB use can have a significant impact on teachers' response to the inclusion of students with special learning needs and is key to improving educational outcomes for…

In Aotearoa New Zealand, there has been a significant increase in the numbers of infants and toddlers participating in 'out-of-home' care and education settings. While initial teacher education programmes include references to this age group, due to competing priorities in the programmes, space to include the depth of knowledge required is scarce.…

This research paper asks what Maori educators want Pakeha outreach teachers to know when working with tamariki Maori on the autism spectrum with high, complex needs. A review of the literature noted a shortage of specialists who can speak te reo Maori and practice in a culturally responsive way. Three Maori educators participated in…

The focus of this article is the first cohort of academic women who carved out an intellectual space for themselves in the Department of Home Science at the University of New Zealand. I begin with an overview of emerging appointment patterns of academic women against a backdrop of contemporary concerns about the higher education of women. I then…

In 2019, New Zealand advocates for gifted education created a shared position statement on the roles of specialist teachers of the gifted. The statement acknowledges that all teachers are teachers of the gifted, and require formal and informal learning about giftedness; it also outlines teaching, coordination, advocacy, and leadership roles which…

There is growing interest in using comparative judgement to assess student work as an alternative to traditional marking. Comparative judgement requires no rubrics and is instead grounded in experts making pairwise judgements about the relative 'quality' of students' work according to a high level criterion. The resulting decision data are fitted…

This article presents a critical consideration of the ways in which specialist dance teachers in New Zealand state secondary schools respond to curriculum expectations to incorporate Maori arts content into their lessons. Disparity between Maori and non-Maori achievement is evident in the state schooling system. More than 20% of students in New…

Teachers' lives are multi-faceted and their practice is influenced by personal and contextual enablers and barriers to their wellbeing and identity. Current initiatives, including the focus on teacher wellbeing, pose new tensions. This research is timely as it investigates an emerging group of professionals, specialist teachers in Aotearoa New…

This article explores the influential role of planning on recognition-primed decision-making. Considerable prior thinking occurs and there is a need to trace and account for the cognitive processes that precede and guide decisions in dynamic outdoor environments. Seven expert leaders from four countries were interviewed about memorable decisions…

In February 2020, the Ministry of Education asked the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) to examine the curriculum-levelling construct that sits at the heart of "The New Zealand Curriculum" (Ministry of Education, 2007) (NZC). A key goal of the research was to investigate, whether-- and if so, how--the construct helps…

Developing effective teaching skills with culturally and linguistically diverse learners remains challenging for regular class teachers, hence specialist English language (EL) teachers are needed in schools. However, little is known about how these specialist teachers perceive their professional status. This paper draws on research that provides…

Science education has an important role to play in supporting our young people to meet the complex challenges of the modern age. Students need a curriculum that can prepare them to work collaboratively, competently and confidently to address the wicked "glocal" problems of our time. Rangatahi themselves recognise this - those involved in…

In March 2019 the Ministry of Education (MOE) commissioned NZCER to conduct an exploratory study of curriculum levelling in the Science and Mathematics and Statistics learning areas of "The New Zealand Curriculum" (NZC). The study was prompted in part by a desire to probe possible reasons for patterns of achievement reported by the…

The views of recent graduates of a blended learning programme for specialist teachers of children with learning and behaviour difficulties in New Zealand were investigated. Six focus group interviews examined factors that participants considered enabled them to develop programme competencies as well as those that acted as barriers to competency…

This Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) project was a 2-year exploratory study focusing on differentiating the curriculum in response to individual learner differences. The project was designed to explore learning and teaching of differentiated scientific content through observational processes and the expression of that learning…