Journal article

Assessment in schools is often concerned with generating student-achievement information in specific learning areas. However, we can use assessment techniques to collect a wider range of information that might reveal important prerequisites for learning or educational outcomes that are important in their own right.

Talk about Books is an oral language programme that involves intensive work by teacher aides with individual children. The results of the study outlined in this article show that it effectively enhances oral language development in young learners from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

In the last 10 years subsidised laptops have been rolled out to classes at all levels and ICT has become more common in the classroom. How are teachers using ICT to teach junior science and what is supporting them to do this?

In literacy learning situations, teachers frequently fix errors before helping children find errors. This can be a source of confusion for students, especially when they are experiencing difficulty or when a task is hazy. This article describes a process of self-monitoring that helps children identify errors. It is based on three crucial steps—noticing, questioning and judging one’s own concrete behaviour in relation to a current task.

There are many children who have interpersonal difficulties at school which affect their enjoyment of and achievement in learning. The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) recognises the critical role that schools have to play in supporting the development of students’ competency in relating to others. This article discusses a junior primary class intervention programme that targets children’s self-control and assertion behaviours.

Few studies have ever shown the improved results of an intervention project continuing after that programme has finished. Is it possible to achieve sustainability and what factors would contribute to it? This article looks at one programme that sustained gains and how it was done.

In a recent “Assessment News” we wrote about an impending new series of standardised science tests for Years 7–10. The tests, Science: Thinking with Evidence, have now been published and were launched earlier this year with a series of information afternoons around the country.

Reprinted from Practical Research for Education, 41, 2009
The British Gaining Ground project aimed to develop a fresh approach to engaging young people excluded from mainstream education. Media practitioners introduced media skills to young people in Pupil Referral Units over two school years. Cathy Poole evaluates the project and reports on the results.

The aim of any subject-choice process should be to provide better educational outcomes for all students. This study, however, found that many students do not understand the full implications of their NCEA course choices or course allocations. Māori, Pacific and lower decile secondary school students are particularly at risk of ending up with inappropriate choices if their academic potential is not recognised early enough and they do not receive clear guidance about the best course choices.

NCEA course choices matter, especially where students or their parents have aspirations to follow an educational pathway beyond school or even just to leave their academic options open. This study, conducted in four mid–low-decile schools in Auckland and Northland, found that reaching academic aspirations requires careful and planned navigation of NCEA courses. It suggests that informing and engaging parents in their children’s NCEA educational pathways may contribute to better educational outcomes.