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This study explores teacher perspectives on a government policy that seeks to integrate Indigenous knowledge into mainstream foreign language education in New Zealand schools. Based on in-depth interviews, the study found that language teachers generally support this educational change because trans/languaging involving English and te reo Māori (the Māori language) has become an ordinary practice in their teaching and school lives. However, foreign language teachers expressed a need for discipline-specific materials and professional development to help them integrate mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge of Māori) into their teaching. Their concerns can be understood as a lack of support in interpreting "what," "how," and "to what extent" the policy will be implemented. The study suggests using a decolonising approach to help teachers affirm the relevance of Indigenous knowledge in their discipline. It recommends that policymakers adopt a pluriversal stance to ensure that diverse knowledge systems can coexist and interact harmoniously rather than compete with one another in the new National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) is the main secondary school qualification in New Zealand. This paper uses a study of New Zealand's secondary school assessment system as a point of entry into examining the gap between what is claimed for the assessment system and what the results for students reveal in terms of intractable ethnic and socioeconomic differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Zealand education system is culturally diverse and is guided by the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi to produce equitable outcomes for Māori students. The reporting of national educational outcomes is broken down by ethnicity to monitor educational performance of different ethnic groups and to identify ethnic disparities. The Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Qualification Authority use a system of ethnic priority ranking to expedite the statistical analysis of educational outcomes for students who identify themselves as belonging to more than one ethnic group. This approach may inadvertently distort reported ethnic disparities in key outcomes of our education system. The study investigates the impact of the method of ethnic labelling on reported national outcomes of the education system and recommends an alternative weighted ethnicity approach. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of the current ethnic classifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical information pervades everyday life in the twenty-first century. Research shows, however, that the skills needed to be able to understand and critically evaluate statistical information must be specifically taught. In 2013, an externally assessed National Certificate in Educational Achievement standard in statistical literacy was introduced for the first time in New Zealand. A small exploratory study investigated a possible teaching approach designed to enable Year- 13 students (aged 17-18) to critically evaluate media reports. Findings suggest that the learning trajectory required several key components including media reports as both a motivational and conceptual development tool. In addition, computer visualizations and procedural scaffolds appeared valuable tools for facilitating conceptual understanding of the margin of error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings of a study into patterns of literacy achievement and teaching in Year 12 biology, English and mathematics classes from 22 low socio-economic status (SES) secondary schools in New Zealand (NZ). We hypothesised that patterns of literacy teaching in specialised subject areas might contribute to well-documented inequities in education achievement for Māori (indigenous), Pacific Islands and low-SES students in NZ. We analysed participation and pass rates for sets of achievement standards that contribute to the standards based National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), the main national school qualification (http://www.nzqa. govt.nz/qualifications-standards/qualifications/ncea/). These analyses showed that the rates at which students in the low-SES schools in the study participated in, and attained, key high literacy achievement standards were markedly lower than for schools nationally. Literacy instruction data were derived from observations of 104 teachers working with Year 12 (approximately 17 years old) students comprising 28 biology, 39 English and 37 mathematics teachers. Results from the classroom observations indicated that students had comparatively few opportunities to read longer, more complex subject-area texts and that instructional approaches commonly cited in the literature as effective in raising students’ subject area literacy, strategy instruction and extended discussion, were infrequently observed in this study. Infrequent too were teaching about language features (such as nominalisation) in mathematics or biology lessons and teaching to develop students’ critical literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]