Rosemary (Rose) Hipkins MNZM

Rosemary (Rose) began her working life as a science and biology teacher, followed by several years working in teacher education. Rose joined NZCER in 2001 and over the last 20+ years she has led, and supported, a wide range of research projects. Most of her work has broadly related to curriculum and/or assessment innovation in New Zealand.  

Currently Rose is working on several projects supporting the review of the NCEA (New Zealand Certificate of Educational Achievement). She is co-editing a collection of papers being written by members of NZARE’s Science Education Special Interest Group, exploring the intersection of curriculum and assessment in the science learning area. She is also working with a small group of colleagues to explore the implications of decolonisation for the wider work of NZCER’s team. Ongoing contributions to NZCER’s National Surveys of schools are another area of her work.     

Teaching for Complex Systems Thinking  is her most recently published book. This work draws together practical and philosophical challenges for ensuring that both teachers students are equipped with the knowledge and insights they will need to respond constructively to complex issues we all face in our futures. The book is written as a personal learning journey and includes an explicit discussion of parallels between complexity science and indigenous knowledge systems (specifically mātauranga Māori in the New Zealand context). In many ways this work continues previous research carried out by a small NZCER team, culminating in the 2014 publication of Key Competencies for the Future. This book draws clear lines of connection between the in-principle idea of key competencies and the future-focused nature of the teaching and learning changes key competencies were intended to foster. 

Rose’s research has contributed to the development of a “capabilities” approach to weaving a coherent local curriculum from its many pieces. The overall approach is summarised here. This paper explains the approach for an international audience. Most recently, Rose led the team that developed a design approach intended to unify curriculum and assessment design work in the science learning area. The report is titled Enduring competencies for designing science learning pathways.   

NCEA has been another consistent focus for Rose’s research. Her concern with maintaining the fidelity of the curriculum in high-stakes assessments is reflected in the book NCEA in Context, co-authored with two colleagues from Victoria University of Wellington. The three authors also published an article exploring the effect of high-stakes assessment on the representation of epistemic knowledge in the enacted curriculum. Rose continued this exploration of the senior secondary curriculum by co-publishing an article that compares the Israeli and New Zealand approaches to curriculum and assessment. 

In 2018 Rose led a review of future-focused assessment literature to prepare the report Trends in assessment for the Ministry of Education. Other recently completed projects include: an exploration of curriculum integration; and a study of senior secondary students’ subject choices in relation of the future of work. 

Rose serves on the editorial boards of several journals and particularly enjoys helping teacher-researchers shape their experiences and insights for formal publication. She also supported a number of TLIF (Teacher Led Innovation Fund) projects over the years of this fund’s existence. 

In 2019 Rose was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science education. In 2022 she was awarded Life Membership of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE).