Student engagement

The difficulties many students experience in learning to read frequently relate to a lack of strategies and confidence. Learning to read is readily accepted as one of the most complex behaviours we will ever strive to master. Reading underpins much of a student’s education, so experiencing difficulty in this area may lead to negative feelings about school, may reduce self-esteem and may even impact on social behaviour in some cases.

Six UK secondary schools investigated whole-class interactive teaching of mathematics, identified its key characteristics, and put it into effective use in their own classrooms.

A study of how Otago primary school teachers were implementing environmental education investigated the strategies teachers use and the factors that assist them, especially in terms of implementing education “for” the environment. The findings indicate misconceptions among primary teachers regarding environmental education, and point to the need for education in environmental education for all primary teachers.

This paper condenses our conclusions from an extensive review of published evidence concerning teaching strategies used with children with learning difficulties. The review was carried out in 1999–2000 and has parallels with “best evidence” reviews in medical education.

The focus of this article is the strategies that young children use to find the volume of rectangular prisms. Children were observed during teaching sessions and their solutions to follow-up assessment tasks were analysed. Some implications for the teaching of volume to young children are presented.

Which learning experiences promote proportional reasoning? Here is a piece of equipment which can be integrated into lessons when dealing with ideas involving fractions, decimals, and percentages.

Based on a recent evaluation of environmental education in New Zealand schools, this article explores possibilities and challenges for involving secondary school students.
 

Beginning formal schooling is a time of change and challenge for children, families, and educators. This article focuses on one approach by the Starting School Research Project to engage first-year students as co-researchers in a study of what they think students new to school should know.

In three separate research projects involving Māori and Pasifika lower SES students in the Auckland region, the dominant theme to emerge is the critical importance of the relationship between teacher and learner. When a positive relationship exists, students are more motivated to learn, they participate more actively in their learning, and the learning is likely to be more effective. The paper explores the components of the relationship that were common to students from primary through to tertiary study.

This summary of an extensive literature review highlights the different ways in which peers influence learning, and describes classroom approaches that maximise these peer effects. Learning is enhanced when teachers structure the learning environment to allow students to develop their own knowledge and understandings collectively. The continuum of student interaction includes peer tutoring, co-operative learning, collaborative learning, and reciprocal teaching.