Bronwen Cowie

• Research Director at University of Waikato

In this article, we revisit the contentious history of personification to explore its potential for shifting the aesthetics of science education. We argue that personification can act as a boundary object to open up new aesthetic possibilities for science and education, toward an aesthetics of personhood. Drawing on philosophy, Indigenous knowledge...

Assessment makes visible what we value and reciprocally what is assessed tends to become what is taken to be of value. Building on this, it can be argued that assessment does more than measure what is present rather it ‘makes up’ people. This piece offers a reflective commentary some of the insights to be gained from the Research Analysis and Insig...

International advocacy for future-focused curriculum design often centres on the idea of “competencies” or “capabilities” as potentially transformative constructs for high-level curriculum frameworks. This trend is exemplified by the addition of “key competencies” to the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum. Despite good intentions, this structural change a...

This book explores and builds on the extraordinary work of Professor Paul Black across assessment and pedagogy across the curriculum, including STEM, humanities and social science subjects. This book explores the influence that Black has had within educational settings focusing on interpretations of the work and scholarship he has achieved across a...

The framework outlined in this document was collaboratively developed by a group of science curriculum experts. Its purpose is to inform current thinking about science learning, curriculum, and assessment, and to build a conceptual foundation to help align current and ongoing design work in all these areas in New Zealand.

By engaging students in everyday issues and events STEM education can contribute to the development of citizens who are equipped to make the world a better place. However, students’ STEM learning with this focus requires teachers to identify age and context appropriate issues. Student investigation of local issues and events can be motivating for s...

Increasing diversity in engineering, which is a goal of the profession, education and government, starts with increasing the diversity of those choosing to study engineering. This paper focuses on girls’ engagement in engineering. Data is from a survey of girls attending a university open day, and interviews with practicing female engineers. The no...

This chapter introduces the notion of Puna Mātauranga Kiritoa (PMK) as a Māori name to adequately capture the intent of a Māori Medium Modern Learning Environment (MLE). Puna encapsulates the idea of a spring or source, mātauranga speaks to teaching and learning/knowledge, and kiritoa addresses the concept of resilience or being strong in your skin...

This chapter explores how STEM education might be implemented with a social justice orientation in primary classrooms. The chapter initially explores how knowledge, empathy and action play a role in social justice-oriented STEM education that can support student capacity and inclination to take action for wider societal ‘good’. As illustrated withi...

This research note aimed to highlight the reflections of the researcher while conducting videoconferencing interviews as a part of his doctoral research project. The researcher drew some inferences based on recent literature and two videoconferencing interviews conducted with the doctoral students via Zoom. It was a crucial experience to deal with...

Preparing teachers to support diverse learners to succeed in school is pivotal in addressing inequalities in society. This qualitative study investigated the ways in which future teachers developed their understanding of diversity and inclusion in one course in an Australian teacher education programme. This study analysed students’ learning using...

STEM education has become a global priority as governments realise that there are important economic benefits if students engage in this interdisciplinary curriculum area. Less prominence has been given to the community benefits that STEM education can bring and even less attention has been given to the potential for children’s learning of STEM to...

Governments worldwide are advocating for STEM curricula as essential to economic viability but the opportunity for STEM to create a re-envisioned world where there is equal access to wealth, opportunities, and privileges is less prominent. The literature has also not clearly articulated how the combination of the individual disciplines areas: scien...

Problem-based learning (PBL) helps engineering graduates develop the competencies needed in order to engage effectively with complex and uncertain workplace demands. PBL's effectiveness, however, also depends on students having the ability to manage themselves and to work collaboratively. As these professional competencies are not typically the foc...

Research in New Zealand on museum visits from two culturally different early years education sites has analysed the ways in which a co-authoring by children/tamariki, teachers/kaiako and artefacts/taonga constructs an understanding of the museum as a ‘forum’ for debate rather than as primarily a ‘temple’ in which the aim is for children to accumula...

Software permeates and impact almost every aspect of our lives today. However not much is understood in terms of how software shapes the teaching and learning of disciplinary knowledge in formal learning contexts. This paper reports on the findings from a two-year funded longitudinal study examining how the notion of software literacy is understood...

This article draws primarily on a policy discussion hosted by the New Zealand Association of Research in Education's (NZARE) Science Special Interest Group at the 2016 national conference, arguing that an ecosystem view of science education is a useful metaphor when considering both what is being done to implement the vision for science education a...

This article reports on the teacher development that occurred during a two-year research project on the formative assessment practices of primary and secondary school teachers of science. The teacher development involved the teachers' professional, personal and social development. The project focused on clarifying what it was that served as formati...

During the early part of the twenty-first century, teacher education has been the subject of much change in many countries around the globe. From Australia to Austria, from Norway to Scotland, we have seen reviews, reports and reforms. Within the UK, all four jurisdictions—as well as the Republic of Ireland—have seen major reports that have led to...

Educational researchers, practitioners and policy makers are increasingly recognising the potential of research partnerships as a means for enhancing instructional practice, increasing learning outcomes for diverse student populations and overall systems improvement (Moolenaar & Daly, 2012). The gains are numerous, and as illustrated in the chapter...

Realising Innovative Partnerships in Educational Research examines the underlying principles and actions that support the development of and engagement in partnerships in educational research. With social justice at its core, the work in this book represents various architectures of innovation, whereby new ways of thinking about partnership researc...

This state-of-the-art Companion assembles and assesses the extant research available on teacher education and provides clear guidelines on future directions. It addresses an important need in a collection that will be of value for teachers, teacher educators, policymakers and politicians. There has been little sustained, long-term or systematic re...

This book is the first book to explore assessment issues and opportunities occurring due to the real world of human, cultural, historical, and societal influences upon assessment practices, policies, and statistical modeling. With chapters written by experts in the field, the book engages with numerous forms of assessment: from classroom-level form...

This chapter draws on insights from education policy sociology to explore the dynamics between international, national, and institutional arenas of assessment and assessment systems. It interrogates the interactions between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and explores the enabling constraints at different levels of the assessment system. Attent...

How we understand learning has implications for the learning outcomes we value and how we seek to achieve them particularly when we want to do something about learning. In this paper I outline, albeit briefly, the implications for the relations between teaching and learning, for teacher roles and responsibilities, and for the goals of education and...

Family and whānau can play a productive role in assessment, but this requires teachers to establish relationships that facilitate the reciprocal exchange of information for the benefit of student learning. The extent teachers achieve this exchange for and with different students and their families is a matter of fairness and equity. In the article...

Validity and reliability have traditionally been considered the cornerstones of quality in assessment. These criteria were developed in the context of testing to select students for limited opportunities and when learning was viewed largely as an acquisition of knowledge. When learning is viewed from a sociocultural orientation, and the role assess...

This report provides a summary and synthesis of the findings of the data collection component of the Continuity of Early Learning: Learning progress and outcomes in the Early Years project. The report addresses the five research questions set by the Ministry of Education to do with assessment practices around learning outcomes information in ECE se...

The Continuity of Early Learning: Learning progress and outcomes in the Early Years project arose in a policy environment in which the government is investing significant funding in early childhood education (ECE) and the early years of schooling. This investment is in response to New Zealand and international research that has shown the positive b...

The benefits of connecting school students with scientists are well documented. This paper reports how New Zealand teachers brought scientists into the classrooms through the use of videos of New Zealand scientists talking about themselves and their research. Two researchers observed lessons in 9 different classrooms in which 23 educational videos...

This chapter focuses on learning and assessment as social and cultural practices situated within national and international policy contexts of educational change. Classroom assessment was researched using a conceptualization of knowing in action, or the ‘generative dance’. Fine-grained analyses of interactivity between students, and between teacher...

In this chapter we use an empirical investigation of the changes in assessment beliefs of preservice teachers to inform a discussion of what it might take to build a professional workforce to implement assessment to promote student learning. The findings demonstrated that significant changes in preservice teachers’ beliefs (as well as their knowled...

Given worldwide concern about a decline in student engagement in school science and an increasing call for science for citizenship in New Zealand Curriculum, this study focused on a butterfly unit that investigated how students in a year-4 primary classroom learnt about New Zealand butterflies through thinking, talking, and acting as citizen scient...

Starting with the Learning in Science Projects in the 1980s, New Zealand science educators have had a strong tradition of considering children's ideas about and explanations for the natural world. In construing these ideas as 'children's science', this early work took a non-deficit view to student ideas and experiences (Freyberg and Osborne 1982)....

This article reports on a classroom study of a unit on New Zealand birds that focused on adaptation and conservation in a Year 7 class. The unit used a ‘context as social circumstances’ model. The researchers observed the nine lessons and interviewed students, the classroom teacher, and three other teachers who had taught the same unit. The student...

In response to recent social, economic, and pedagogical challenges to tertiary-level teaching and learning, universities are increasingly investigating and adopting e-learning as a way to engage and motivate students. This paper reports on the first year of a two-year (2009-2010) qualitative multiple case study research project in New Zealand. The...

This paper reports on two case studies (in Earth and Ocean Sciences and Engineering) that explored the potential of ICT/ eLearning in first-year university courses. Findings from the research supported the value of adopting three dimensional visualization software and eLearning tools to scaffold students’ emergent visual spatial thinking and concep...

This paper reports on the findings of a 2-year research project into the process of formative assessment in the science classrooms of 10 teachers. Formative assessment is defined as the process used by teachers and students to recognise and respond to student learning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning. The findings indicate tha...

This paper reports on an on-going case study project to explore ICT/ eLearning across several disciplines and with students from diverse backgrounds at tertiary level in New Zealand. The project has been designed to address issues of tertiary-level pedagogy, epedagogy, and research with the goal of building eLearning capacity, leveraging pedagogica...

Many educators concern whether students can learn better from e-learning and whether they face more challenges in blended courses. An interpretive paradigm with quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted to explore the benefits and challenges of e-learning from a student perspective. This paper outlines the findings from a survey of nearly 40...

The implementation of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) has posed a challenge for curriculum leaders and teachers in all learning areas. These challenges have been particularly acute for technology departments because of the need for teachers from a range of subject areas to develop coherent, school-wide technology programm...

This chapter presents findings from research into the nature of successful, onlinetertiary teaching and learning. The project is part of a larger study aimed at estab-lishing guidelines for the ongoing design and development of online courses withinthe authors’institution. The research findings, from interviews with tertiary onlineteachers, identif...

This article draws on data generated through interviews with Years 7 to 10 pupils in New Zealand to propose that pupils experience assessment for learning as embedded in, and accomplished through, interactions with peers and teachers. Pupil commentary indicated they perceived assessment for learning as having cognitive, social relationship and affe...

Increased understanding of the link between learning and assessment combined with a shift to view learning as more a social than an individual process have contributed to an appreciation of the role that classroom assessment can play in enhancing student learning and achievement. Nonetheless, very little is known about student experience of classro...