Journal article

Drawing on secondary teachers’ experience of standards-based assessment for NCEA, this short article discusses moderation challenges that will face primary teachers as they make overall professional judgments of each student's progress against the new National Standards. Moderation potentially offers rich professional learning possibilities—but only if teachers feel safe to learn, have the time needed, and are given access to robust examples to inform their debates.

The of use mobile technologies such as cellphones offers unique capabilities to help facilitate social interaction between students and support collaboration between home and school. This article reports on research into the use of cellphones to support student learning in a low-decile urban primary school. The school used the phones as an innovative way to provide formative feedback to parents. The initiative is having significant benefits for students and is enhancing the relationship between home and school.