Professional learning

Founded 47 years ago, the Australian Council for Educational Research has grown from a staff of two in 1930 to about ninety today. Under its first two directors, Dr K.S. Cunningham (1930-1954) and Dr Wm. C. Radford (1955-1976) it has established a reputation as an independent national organisation that offers a valuable research and development service to education in Australia -and has made significant contributions to New Zealand education through its test development programme.

One of the most interesting and remarkable developments in education during the 1960s and 70s was the growth of the teachers' centre movement. A British invention, it almost immediately attracted a great deal of interest from educationalists in other countries, so much so that during the 1970s, it became, according to Robert Thornbury, one of Britain's major invisible exports.

A study of the classroom management problems and strategies used by both pre-service and experienced teachers of physical education, which provides guidelines for establishing a learning environment where disciplining can be kept to a minimum.

A discussion of four major issues confronting health education teachers and their tertiary lecturers: role, education, assessment, and networking.

This article explores how two pairs of secondary content teachers drew on their knowledge of language and second-language acquisition to plan and implement a language-focused lesson sequence in their subject areas. The mathematics and social studies teachers were surprised at the extent to which this language-focused approach engaged their students and developed their cognitive academic language ability in the respective topics.

In January 2005, during my induction into Te Kotahitanga, I was challenged to consider my role, as a non-Māori teacher, in addressing the disparities that exist for Māori within our education system. Thus began my learning about, and through, a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations.

This article critiques a recent professional development course for history teachers that explored how students could use memorials and heritage sites to engage with the concept of significance and how this could contribute to them developing expertise in historical thinking. The course challenged teachers to consider historical significance in terms of disciplinary characteristics (as opposed to memory-history), to move away from the teacher transmission/storytelling model and to incorporate the key competencies in their teaching.