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Volume 5, Issue 2, 2008
National Editorial Board and Editorial Committee
EDITORIAL
Promises, Sweeteners and the Teacher Vote
JOHN O’NEILL & PAUL ADAMS
Every three years politicians make a special effort to be nice to teachers. 2008 is no exception. It’s election time and teachers are once again part of the solution, not the problem. We should enjoy the respite while we may ...
TERTIARY EDUCATION
The Value of Enabling Teachers to Research Their Practice
LINDSEY N. CONNER AND JANINKA GREENWOOD
This paper reports a project in which teachers used small action-research projects to investigate how they were responding to the diversity of their students in terms of planning and teaching. The project, funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education through the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative fund (TLRI), involved teachers investigating self-chosen issues related to the diversity within their own sphere of practice ....
MONTESSORI EDUCATION
Personal Reflections on Professional Practice: A Portrayal of Nora
BIRGITTE MALM
This article focuses on ways in which teachers’ conceptions of their professional roles reflect their own personal values, beliefs and convictions. Eight Swedish Montessori primary school teachers participated in this study. However, this article will focus mainly on one teacher. By presenting Nora’s story I hope to be able to illustrate, through a personal portrayal, the complexities involved in coming to terms with personal values and professional roles. ....
THE COMPULSORY SECTOR
A Critical Review of Curriculum Mapping: Implications for the Development
of an Ethical Teacher Professionality
LEON BENADE
This paper investigates the impact that the implementation of the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum could have on the development of an ethical teacher professionality. In contrast with the notion of ‘teaching as a profession’, which suggests some passivity on the part of the members of a profession who are ascribed by that profession, that of ‘professionality’ allows the possibility that a teacher self-consciously makes and creates an identity through praxis ....
Unlocking the Formative Potential of NCEA
PETER RAWLINS
This article examines the formative potential of New Zealand’s exit qualification from secondary school, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). Drawing on findings of a study conducted in a senior mathematics classroom it asks the question: To what extent can high-stakes assessment be used to formatively direct and influence students’ learning? ....
The NCEA and How We Got There: The Role of PPTA in School
Qualifications Reform 1980-2002
JUDIE ALISON
The NCEA, like many other government policies, tends to be seen by teachers as something imposed on the profession, and introduced without due recognition of the realities of teachers’ work. This article argues that the NCEA could instead be seen as the fulfilment of decades of advocacy by NZPPTA, the secondary teachers’ union in New Zealand. It concludes by proposing an explanation as to why a policy with such a long union history would continue to be received with ambivalence or outright rejection by a significant proportion of secondary teachers ....
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