Journal article

Listening improvement programmes appear to be rare in New Zealand schools, possibly because listening is something we tend to take for granted. A case of familiarity breeds neglect perhaps? Teachers will say: 'Oh yes, listening is terribly important as a means of learning,' but if you ask what they do to actively foster and develop listening skills they often say: 'Well, no, I don't really do too much about it.' Maybe that is why a recent report on educational standards' in state schools contained some rather gloomy statements on the topic:

Spina Bifida is a congenital abnormality in which the arches of one or more of the spinal vertebrae have failed to fuse together so that the spine is 'bifid' or split in two. The severity of the handicap varies with the site, extent and type of spinal defect, but may include paralysis and deformities of the lower limbs, skin insensitivity, bowel and urinary incontinence and kidney infections.

Parent involvement in pre-school education in New Zealand commonly takes three forms: parent helping, parent education and parent organization and administration.

What do young people think of the urban environment and of the recreational facilities available to them? In order to get some insight into these questions a number of pupils in some Auckland intermediate and secondary schools were asked to write essays on their activities outside the school.

Figures on the extent of violent and disruptive behaviour in schools tend to be unreliable, mainly because of the difficuities of definition that are involved. However, recent studies indicate that behaviour of this kind is more common in secondary than in primary schools, among boys rather than girls, in urban as compared to rural areas, and among low ability, disadvantaged pupils.

Handling children's anger can be perplexing, draining and anger-provoking for adults.

Enhancement in pupils' decision-making skills was chosen as one of the goals of an experimental project because, in 1974, when the project began, increasing interest was being shown in decision-making education but little was known about strategies or outcomes. The Drug Education Development and Evaluation (DEDE) Project was designed to clarify what decision-making skills might mean in relation to legal and illegal drugs, to develop new materials for teaching toward this goal, and to evaluate the materials in use in classrooms to discover their effects.

NZCER's familiar Progressive Achievement Test series will shortly be extended as the Council launches its fifth set -the PAT: Study Skills Tests.
Since the first PAT tests were released in 1969, the demands for the tests from classroom teachers have been very high.
Developed and standardized over a three year period by NZCER's Test Development Division, the latest set of tests has involved a major effort by its staff, Neil Reid, Cedric Croft and Peter Jackson.