Bronwen Cowie

University of Waikato · The Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research

The need to make evidence and implications of educational research widely available has prompted a burgeoning interest in knowledge mobilisation, which is a set of strategies supporting the active and intentional dissemination of research knowledge. For this, it is important to consider who might be the intended audience and end‐users of this knowl...

In the final chapter of this book, the Thinking the Unthinkable Assessment Capacity Framework is revisited and expanded with consideration for how it directs teacher learning and teacher education. The framework invites teachers to question: What am I thinking, feeling, and doing in assessment now? How did I get here? And what else is possible? Lev...

This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the embodied capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpretive a...

Assessment is one of the most complex activities in classrooms today. Every day, teachers need to negotiate and navigate historical, political, social, emotional, ethical, relational, and consequential assessment contexts and decisions to effectively support students’ learning and wellbeing. In this chapter, the challenge of assessment and assessme...

This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the experiential capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpreti...

This chapter outlines the landscape of assessment education across jurisdictions, namely Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Rooted in a Bernsteinian Perspective of knowledge codification (i.e., vertical and horizontal knowledge systems), assessment learning is structured in relation to strongly and weakly classified knowledge. Comparisons...

This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the epistemic capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpretive...

Over the past three decades, policy and professional standards have repeatedly called for teachers to integrate assessment continuously across their practice in various ways to identify, monitor, support, evaluate, and report on student learning. Educational researchers have conceptualised and operationalised multiple constructs to understand teach...

This book presents a novel framework, Thinking the Unthinkable, aimed at cultivating teacher assessment capacity. The framework includes four fundamental capacities: epistemic, embodied, ethical, and experiential. In this chapter, the ethical capacity is explored through literature, preservice teacher reflections and narratives, and interpretive an...

Innovative learning environments (ILE) with open flexible classroom spaces are designed to support collaboration and emphasise responsibility for self-regulated student learning as a partnership between students and teachers. Recent studies of ILE focus more on teachers than students’ experiences, and there is a gap in the theorising of student lea...

In this article, we consider how assessment might reinforce New Zealand curriculum goals of knowing and doing in science for active and informed participation in societies that rely on scientific knowledge to guide decision making. This focus constitutes an orientation towards “sustainable assessment”. Sustainable assessment encompasses the capacit...

In this article, we consider how assessment might reinforce New Zealand curriculum goals of knowing and doing in science for active and informed participation in societies that rely on scientific knowledge to guide decision making. This focus constitutes an orientation towards “sustainable assessment”. Sustainable assessment encompasses the capacit...

This chapter explores the agency of teacher educators in assessment education. Agents mediate the causal powers of structures and cultures, and through organising and engaging in practical activity develop a continuous sense of self for themselves and (pre-service) teachers. Recently, in Australia and New Zealand, new assessment policies have been...

This paper reports on teachers developing their own data literacy and then acting as data coaches for colleagues in their schools. The 13 teachers from 7 schools in the study analysed standardised data using a data conversation protocol to identify students with significant mathematical misconceptions. They then took data-informed action with these...

Variability in education systems is a given. Variability has at once positive and negative implications for the main goal of education which is accelerating learning across diverse contexts and for all learners. In this article, we explain and employ a tight‐loose framing to understand the scope for variability within an education system. A tight‐l...

The ability to understand science is important for productive participation in societies that rely on scientific knowledge to guide decision-making. A challenge is how to motivate and engage all learners in science, and not just those destined for science-related careers. This challenge becomes more acute in senior secondary high-stakes assessment...

In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the impetus to create open learning spaces that afford spatial and pedagogical flexibility have disrupted the nature of teachers’ work. In redesigned education facilities, teachers engage in sophisticated processes of collaboration and ongoing teacher professional learning. Moving from traditional classroom de...

Today’s modern societies are increasingly dependent on digital technologies and the software underpinning these technologies in almost every sphere of professional and personal life. These technologies and software are poorly understood as tools that shape our engagement with knowledge, culture and society in the 21st century. None of these tools a...

This paper illustrates the use of curriculum mapping as a process that can support productive boundary encounters between lecturers in an initial teacher education (ITE) programme as part of curriculum review. Using mathematics as the context, lecturers in a 1-year primary graduate ITE programme developed a curriculum map to identify the mathematic...

Governments expect teachers to be able to make sense of and take action on data at various levels of aggregation. In our research we collaborated with 13 teachers from six primary schools and one intermediate school to use a Data Conversation Protocol to analyze and act on mathematics assessment data generated through a standardized assessment tool...

This paper provides both a summary and plenary paper for a Special Issue of papers that build on the findings of a research project that investigated formative and summative assessment methods to support and to improve inquiry-based science teaching and learning. The paper aims to unravel some of the complexity that underpins classroom assessment p...

There has been a global trend toward increased accountability and assessment in schools over the past several decades. Across policy and professional standards, teachers have been repeatedly called to integrate assessment throughout their practice to identify, monitor, support, evaluate, and report on student learning. This professional capacity to...

In this chapter we are interested in problematizing the notion of material and materiality and what this may mean for teaching in science. We are interested in doing this because science frequently uses and produces explanations that are different from common observations. In science education a variety of materials are used for different purposes,...

This paper reports findings from a Fijian study that engaged secondary mathematics teachers in a two-day professional development workshop on the use of portfolios as an alternative means of assessing student learning in mathematics. Utilising an action research approach with a view to involve teachers as key stakeholders in mathematics education,...

Over the past decade, there have been a number of shifts in the expectations we have for student learning, of student teachers on graduation and of teachers. University-based teacher educators need to be able to support teachers to respond to these changes, while simultaneously meeting the expectations associated with their university roles. In thi...

This report describes the findings from an exploratory study to evaluate the impact of using mobile makerspaces and digital/electronic learning kits to foster community awareness and engagement with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) activities within a library setting. Three questions guided the study: 1. To what extent...

This chapter considers how the Interpretive Framework was applied to Waikato University’s Community University–School Partnership (CUSP) program, retrospectively. As a well-documented partnership program, the Interpretive Framework was applied to the aspects of the project to see how these aligned. As well as highlighting the synergies between the...

Assessment for learning (AfL) practices are commonly recommended as effective classroom strategies for providing teachers with information about student understanding. For teachers, the substantive potential of these AfL practices to inform student learning actions depends on what teachers notice and select as a focus and how they interpret and act...

This chapter reports on the strategies that first year engineering students used to supplement and extend their laboratory and lecture learning about a 3-dimensional computer-aided design (3D CAD) software, SolidWorks. A capacity for self-initiated and self-directed learning as part of developing lifelong learning capabilities is widely recognized...

This chapter challenges the distinction between informal and formal science learning in the context of learning science from online resources, arguing instead for consideration of intentional and incidental science learning. The New Zealand Science Learning Hub (sciencelearn.org.nz) is used as an example to demonstrate how both intentional and inci...

In this paper, we report on a project conducted in a New Zealand primary school that aimed to enhance the writing achievement of primary school boys who were achieving just below the national standard for their age or level through the use of peer feedback and information and communication technologies (ICTs). The project involved a teacher collabo...

Background: Successful engineering graduates need to have a flexible understanding of engineering principles and practices and to be able to collaborate, communicate well, and work in contexts that can be risky and uncertain. It is crucial that tertiary educators develop curricula that enable students to develop these capacities and enhance student...

University-industry partnerships are vital if universities are to prepare work-ready graduates. However, there is limited research to understand how to maximise student learning through such linkages as a way to enhance graduates’ competencies especially in the New Zealand context. This paper examines the essential competencies sought by New Zealan...

This chapter (as with Chap. 3) details the findings from a two-year funded empirical study aimed at understanding tertiary students’ development of the understandings and skills needed to use software as forms of software literacy. Two case studies were developed. A case study of engineering students’ software literacy development is the focus of t...

This chapter outlines the role and significance of software in contemporary society. Drawing from the new field of Software Studies, it sets outs key concepts relevant to the study of software, including affordances, agency, human-machine assemblages, and performance to explain the ways users co-create with software. It proposes the notion of softw...

This chapter outlines a broad genealogy of two areas within software culture: Digital Non-Linear Editing (DNLE) and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software. Emerging from distinct institutional environments, their respective historical developments and the implications these have generated within their professional domains provide a broader context fo...

Inspired by the emerging field of Software Studies (Fuller, 2008; Kitchin and Dodge, 2011; Manovich 2013) this book aims to introduce the notion of ‘software literacy’ as an emerging area of research and practice for educators, researchers, and policy makers. As a cultural artefact, software plays a role in re-producing, reinforcing, and augmenting...

This chapter (as with the next, Chap. 4) reports on the findings from a two-year funded empirical study (2013–2014) exploring how tertiary students in media studies and engineering develop the understandings and skills needed to use software as forms of software literacy. Two case studies were developed. The case studied experiences of media studie...

This chapter reports the comparative analysis of the two case studies on media studies software (see Chap. 3) and engineering software (see Chap. 4). Common themes emerged across the cases such as students’ tendency to draw from informal learning strategies to supplement formal learning approaches, the diversity of student background and software a...

Current strong emphasis on literacy and numeracy in New Zealand educational policy, as elsewhere, reverberates in different ways in institutions charged with children’s and adults’ learning. A common response is to locate literacy and numeracy centrally in programmes aimed at preparing children for and enhancing adult participation in 21st century...

Research with children involving their use of digital and mobile technologies either as a methodological tool or in relation to their learning foregrounds emerging ethical issues and practices. This paper explores some of the ethical and practical challenges we faced in studies involving the recruitment of young children as research participants, a...

This book explores the notion of software literacy, a key part of digital literacy which all contemporary students and citizens need to understand. Software literacy involves a critical understanding of how the affordances and conceptual approaches of everything from operating systems, creative apps and media editors, to software-based platforms an...

This paper introduces sigmoid or s-curve as a metaphor for describing the dynamics of change. We first encountered the s-curve as a description of a possible growth trajectory whereby populations become established, begin to flourish and the numbers increase rapidly until they reach some limit. At this point, the growth rate slows rapidly then stop...

This study investigated the responses of 531 preservice teachers to a “Beliefs About Assessment” questionnaire in China. The questionnaire focused on understanding the purposes, practices and principles of assessment for and of learning. Using factor analysis, an inter-correlated two-order model fitted well to the responses. This model comprised fo...

In this paper we discuss the methods of auto-photography and photo-interviews. The benefits and disadvantages of using these methods with young children are examined in relation to a photographic study we conducted in a rural two-teacher primary school (years 1-8) to explore children’s perceptions of science and technology (Moreland & Cowie, 2004)....

A number of trends are converging to drive the need for more informed teacher data use. These include advocacy for formative assessment and the need for teachers to account for student learning. In this context, assessment literacy and data literacy have emerged as a focus in research and professional development. Problematically, research signals...

This paper reports how New Zealand teachers used digital videos from an educational website in science classrooms and how teachers and students viewed the use of videos. The study involved lesson observations in nine different classrooms, student and teacher interviews, and teacher focus group discussions. Multiple qualitative data were analysed us...

International interest is growing in how threshold concept theory can transform tertiary teaching and learning. A facilitated practitioner action research project investigating the potential of threshold concepts across several disciplines offers a practical contribution and helps to consolidate this international field of research. In this article...

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the broad field of curriculum change, with the focus being on school curriculum. The first part of the paper provides a brief overview of curriculum change in New Zealand at the national level. In the early years of a state system of schooling, curriculum revision was highly centralised, giving...

Science education has an important contribution to make in the promotion and service of an informed and engaged citizenship. To achieve this, students need opportunities to productively connect science classroom ideas to their everyday world. Their school experiences need to prepare students to be ready, willing and able to make science-informed de...

This research brief is investigating the extent to which a flipped classroom model enhances student learning of threshold concepts (TCs) in an undergraduate engineering course at a New Zealand university. This project extends the team’s previous research confirming the effectiveness of the TC theoretical framework across multiple disciplines includ...

Studies of disciplinary work have converged with studies of classrooms to highlight the social and cultural nature of disciplinary knowledge and practices, and of classroom learning and assessment. For students to become discerning and autonomous/authoring learners, classroom assessment needs to ensure students experience what it means to exercise...

Our research team has explored the notion of 'software literacy' within two disciplines at the University of Waikato (Media Studies and Engineering) and how this form of literacy develops and impacts on the teaching, learning and student experience within these disciplines. This presentation outlines our approach (derived from software studies, a r...

Assessment for learning [AfL] is bound up with students becoming autonomous lifelong learners who are active participants in the classroom and beyond. This book explores teacher and student experiences of AfL interactions in primary science and technology classrooms. Working from a sociocultural perspective, the book's fundamental premise is that A...

This chapter on induction programs reviews recent research, Economy policies, and promising practices based on surveys filled out by Economy researchers participating in this international study

This chapter reports on a pilot administration, primarily in Singapore, of an innovative methodology to assess future science teachers’ (1) content knowledge in the area of the nature of science; and (2) pedagogical content knowledge using a novel but highly reliable approach of Content Representations (CoRes). The survey questions and coding schem...

The successful implementation of an e-networked and information and communication technology (ICT)-supported science inquiry learning approach in secondary classrooms is dependent on a range of factors within the milieu of teacher, school and students. The teacher must have a clear understanding of the goals of the activity, the school leadership m...

All forms of learning are increasingly embedded within, informed by and inevitably shaped by software. This assumption is the basis of a two-year funded project exploring the significance of ‘software literacies’ in tertiary teaching and learning. We define software literacy as involving the expertise in understanding, applying, problem solving and...

This paper reports on findings from a two-year funded research project exploring software literacy-how it is understood, developed and applied in tertiary teaching-learning contexts and how this understanding serves new learning. The project has looked at MS PowerPoint (a widely used application) and software specific to two disciplines (Media Stud...

This paper reports on findings from a two-year funded research project exploring software literacy - how it is understood, developed and applied in tertiary teaching-learning contexts and how this understanding serves new learning. The project has looked at MS PowerPoint (a widely used application) and software specific to two disciplines (Media St...

Professional standards require teachers to be assessment literate - to construct, administer, and score reliable, valid assessments, communicate interpretations and use evidence to adjust teaching to support students. This project investigates student-teachers’ assessment literacy throughout teacher education into the first years as teachers acros...

Mediated conversations are an innovative method for the generation of rich qualitative data on complex issues such as researchers often face in education contexts. The method draws from the sociocultural paradigm, which highlights the role of artefacts and audience in mediating participants' actions and thoughts. Mediated conversations were develop...

In this paper, we explore the relationship between student success in acquiring software literacy and students’ broader engagement and understanding of knowledge across different disciplines. We report on the first phase of a project that examines software literacies associated with Microsoft PowerPoint as a common software package encountered and...

In this paper, we explore the relationship between student success in acquiring software literacy and students’ broader engagement and understanding of knowledge across different disciplines. We report on the first phase of a project that examines software literacies associated with Microsoft PowerPoint as a common software package encountered and...

Time takes on a different character when online teachers take advantage of the possibilities for interactions occurring over different scales of time. Online teachers’ pedagogical link making can help students see links between ideas across individual postings so that meaning making becomes cumulative and progressive. This article reports on a qual...

This paper reports on the findings from a two year research project that explored the potential of digital tools in support of teaching–learning across different disciplinary areas at a New Zealand university. Two courses (in History and Tourism) are case studied using data collected through interviews with lecturers, tutors and their students, and...

Networked learning environments that embed the essence of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework utilise pedagogies that encourage dialogic practices. This can be of significance for classroom teaching across all curriculum areas. In science education, networked environments are thought to support student investigations of scientific problems, in...

“Learning to learn” and “lifelong learning” are often conflated in practice. In this chapter we argue that these twin terms, while obviously related, are differently focused, and each is deserving of explicit attention. Learning to learn implies that there are aspects of learning process to which attention should be directed in the moment. There is...

In this chapter we draw on our classroom-based research on assessment for learning (AfL) to develop a practical explanatory theory (Nuthall, 2004) for student engagement in learning and how it might be supported. Our practical explanatory theory has three dimensions: disciplinary agency, material agency and student conceptual agency.

The successful implementation of an e-networked and information and communication technology (ICT) supported science inquiry learning approach in secondary classrooms is dependent on a range of factors within the milieu of teacher, school and students. The teacher must have a clear understanding of the nature of inquiry, the school must provide eff...

This paper reports on the findings from a two-year funded research project exploring software literacy - how it is understood, developed and applied in tertiary teaching-learning contexts and how this understanding serves new learning. MS PowerPoint was selected as an initial focus as it is widely available and commonly used. Two disciplines (Media...

This paper reports on the findings from a two-year funded research project exploring software literacy - how it is understood, developed and applied in tertiary teaching-learning contexts and how this understanding serves new learning. MS PowerPoint was selected as an initial focus as it is widely available and commonly used. Two disciplines (Media...

The chapter focuses on how time and the temporal aspects of the affordances and constraints of the online environment can be leveraged as a resource in online learning community development. It provides an analytical case study account of the experiences of a lecturer and his students in a fully online research methods Masters level graduate course...

This article draws from the findings of the secondary school Digital Horizons: Laptops for Teachers research study, to discuss the impact of a policy tool intended to assist teachers use information and communication technologies (ICT) for administration, communication, collaboration, lesson planning and preparation, as well as for classroom lesson...

In this chapter our specific aim is to show how the time teachers and students spend together can be constructed and used as a resource within and for AfL in science and technology. As we explained in Chapter 2, our sociocultural stance drew our attention to the complexity of how learning takes place over time (lessons, days, weeks, months and year...

In chapter 1 we presented our aspirations for this book. We set out to make a contribution to practical and theoretical understandings of AfL including how AfL can be used to constructively shape learning and students’ identities as active and informed learners.

Before we meet the InSiTE teachers and students, we want to deepen our discussion about AfL. We begin by setting out our working definition of AfL and then we detail our understanding of the key elements of AfL as it plays out as part of classroom practice.

In this chapter we focus more directly on how AfL practices can provide opportunities for students to develop identities as capable and independent learners who are aware of and able to employ the accountability systems for knowledge generation and legitimation in a discipline. To do this we step back to consider how the classroom culture for learn...

In Chapter 5 we focused on the multimodal nature of interaction. In this chapter we direct our spotlight more closely on material artefacts. Our reasons for devoting a chapter to material artefacts are both practical and theoretical. At the beginning of the research, in line with much of the literature at that time, we took for granted students und...

In this chapter we outline the New Zealand assessment context as well as science and technology education in New Zealand in order to elaborate the context of the book. We also present the InSiTE project through detailing the research aims and the ways we worked in partnership with our teachers. Finally we introduce our students and teachers.

In Chapter 4 we unpacked the planning the InSiTE teachers devised to prepare for teaching and assessing. In this chapter we turn to how this planning and preparation played out in science and technology classrooms. What was interesting for us was that the planning and preparation our teachers undertook did not prescribe exactly what then happened i...

While the notion that assessment can inform teaching and enhance learning seems to have an intrinsic appeal, a number of studies have illustrated that the practice can be challenging—all the more so for primary teachers in science and technology (see for example Atkin, Coffey, Moorthy, Sato & Thibeault, 2005; Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam...

This book is about developing teacher and researcher understandings of, and ways to enhance, assessment for learning (AfL) interactions in science and technology classrooms. We illustrate that used wisely and with sensitivity to student needs, concerns and strengths, AfL interactions can contribute to classroom cultures for learning and also positi...

The purpose of this study was to enhance the teaching and learning of matter and its properties for grade 6 students. The development of a conceptual change approach instructional unit was undertaken for this purpose. Pre- and post-concept surveys, classroom observations, and student and teacher interviews were used to collect data. The teaching ac...

The New Zealand Curriculum [NZC] document states that information and communication technology [ICT] and e-learning have considerable potential to support the teaching approaches recommended in the curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). In this special issue, we explore the potential for ICTs to support innovative assessment practices that compl...

In New Zealand and internationally claims are being made about the potential for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to transform teaching and learning. However, the theoretical underpinnings explaining the complex interplay between the content, pedagogy and technology a teacher needs to consider must be expanded. This article explica...

Socio-cultural conceptions of learning shift the focus from what is in a student’s mind to student actions and interactions within the classroom setting where particular goals and actions are valued above others. This chapter explores the implications of this view for teacher and student engagement in classroom assessment in order to highlight its...

Could the challenge of mastering threshold concepts be a potential factor that influences a student's decision to continue in electronics engineering? This was the question that led to a collaborative research project between educational researchers and the Faculty of Engineering in a New Zealand university. This paper deals exclusively with the qu...