Journal article

The government of Aotearoa New Zealand has recognised the gravity of climate change by adopting a Climate Emergency declaration, passing the Zero Carbon Act (2019), and asking the Climate Change Commission to chart a pathway towards a carbon-zero future. The climate emergency necessitates transformation of the practices and visions of individuals and society towards a sustainable future. We argue that education must be recognised as a key enabler for this transformational process. In this article, we draw on our recommendations to the Climate Change Commission (2021a) for structural changes in our education system to build capacity for the implementation of climate-change education for a sustainable future. Our focus is on building capacity in school leaders and teachers through development of knowledge and skills, provision of time and space, and cultural embedding of education on sustainable living and climate change into the ways we all teach and learn. Our intention is to provide a “think piece” to be considered and discussed by school educators and leaders across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Interested in exploring a form of learner agency that moves beyond a focus on using it to get better results? This article explores what happened when Year 11 students in a cross-curricular course were granted full control of their learning, and offers three strategies for starting out on a creative-agency path.

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) is a flexible framework that can be localised to ensure it is a culturally responsive approach to protect and promote student wellbeing and positive behaviour. One of the downsides is that it requires much paperwork. Teachers need to record behaviour, reward positive and report negative behaviour, and file incident reports. We designed and developed Ka Pai, a gamified mobile application prototype to help. It was evaluated with 10 teachers at an intermediate school in Auckland, New Zealand. Based on user metrics and feedback, the results indicated that Ka Pai supported teachers to efficiently and systematically record, reward, and report students’ behaviour.

Over recent years, innovative learning environments (ILEs) have become the default style of new-build educational architecture in New Zealand. While offering potential benefits, the implementation of ILEs represents a departure from established practice in most schools and therefore requires significant change leadership support in order to succeed. Prototyping ILE practices can help schools transition into new physical spaces by decreasing status quo bias while increasing individual and organisational readiness for change.

Pasifika students bring to school rich cultural resources that offer a strong foundation on which to build creative practice. Bringing cultural awareness to visual arts education provides a powerful platform for Pasifika students to embrace success as Pasifika. The recent introduction of Tapasā—Cultural Competencies Framework for Teachers of Pacific Learners (Ministry of Education, 2018) provides an opportunity to inquire into how visual arts education can authentically reflect cultural competencies. This article seeks to share teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and pedagogical practices that affirm Pasifika students’ success “as Pasifika”. The students themselves also offer insights into their enactment of success through their art works and stories. My experiences as a visual artist and teacher of Tongan descent grounded the research project.

This article presents the thoughts of six teachers asked to reflect on their experiences planning for and delivering school-led learning from home opportunities during Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 Alert Levels 3 and 4 lockdown at the end of the first term and beginning of the second term 2020. What comes through is the efforts that these teachers made to keep connected with their students, the ways in which they prioritised student wellbeing ahead of formal learning, and the support that came from feeling part of a wider community where they could share their experiences and learn from others. The insights are shared in the hope that they inspire readers to reflect critically on their own experiences of learning to teach from home, identifying positive outcomes, insights into their own practice and motivations, and learnings that will continue to shape their professional practice moving forward.

What an intense start to the school year. It has been breathtaking to witness the pace of education’s reponse to COVID-19. I have been especially struck by the caring, commitment, and professionalism demonstrated by teachers across Aotearoa.

Hats off to all teachers and whānau who have adopted and adapted to the new dance of learning. In my home two children began with empty dance cards, soon to be filled by their teachers, parents, friends on Zoom, and online options already in existence or quickly produced by educators and experts both locally and nationally. At a systems level, from government and schools, there has been strong messaging to keep a dual focus on wellbeing and equity at centre stage. Even so, not all students will have been able to fall into step with their peers because of issues related to connectivity or other circumstances. My hope is that Issue 1 will be helpful whether school gates are open or closed, especially for engaging students and whānau during and beyond the pandemic.

School principals were required to engage in crisis leadership throughout New Zealand’s first COVID-19 Alert Level Four lockdown that began in March 2020. Eighteen school principals from a range of secondary schools were interviewed about their experiences and the findings of this study are discussed in relation to the leadership capability framework. This research reveals that principals acted with empathy in prioritising wellbeing over learning, demonstrated community responsiveness by using multiple ways of communicating, encouraged collective leadership, led with optimism, demonstrated resilience, and took opportunities to shift practice in their schools.