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Literature shows cooperative learning has positive benefits for students' learning and social outcomes. Even though cooperative learning studies have been conducted in all areas of the curriculum, few studies have investigated whether there are similar effects for students across several curriculum areas or age groups. Moreover, less attention has been given to how professional learning and development (PLD) opportunities can contribute to changes in instructional practice. We illustrate how research on cooperative learning can be translated into practice, through a one-year University-School partnership. The current study is focused on our PLD work in one large private school based in New Zealand. Analysis of school data (quantitative student data and qualitative teacher data) indicated that, by the end of the school year, students reported experiencing more cooperative learning opportunities in their classes. Teachers believed that the PLD supported change in their practice and noted positive changes in student engagement. Analysis of student data also revealed differential outcomes by subject and age group. Overall, our study showed that PLD opportunities can contribute to the successful implementation of cooperative learning.

School choirs have been stigmatised for adolescent males in New Zealand, resulting in constraints in involvement, bullying, and threat to gender identity. In other national contexts, boys who sing in choirs have experienced a negative stereotype associated with accusations of inferior masculinity, yet little research has probed whether such forces are at play for their New Zealand counterparts. The current study was conducted with a sample of adolescent male school choir members in New Zealand (a country where essentialist gender attitudes have existed). Adolescent male choristers' perceptions of the gender stereotype, its moderation by cultural context, and how the stigmatised choral domain was negotiated, were explored within a framework of critical masculinities. Such a stereotype and wider implications for gendered structures found in society at large were confirmed. Personal and school-based factors enabling the male choristers' endurance in a domain that rendered their construction of masculinity subordinate, are discussed.

Choirs have been stereotypically gendered feminine in many national contexts. When gender-role conformity has been expected in such settings, male choral participation and performance has often been rendered gender incongruent and consequently threatening. Gender stereotype threat was explored as a factor which might instigate a potentially negative experience for adolescent males in New Zealand school choirs. The findings of the present study (a quasi-experiment conducted in a real-world setting across several cultural contexts) revealed that the performance of adolescent males in choirs was negatively affected by gender stereotype threat. Moreover, such threat was triggered by culturally-specific concerns about perceived peer expectations of gender-role conformity. The study also provided impetus to further explore the idea that stereotype threat could spill over from one domain to another. The findings add to the body of stereotype threat literature, and underline the important relationship between adolescent beliefs about gender-role conformity and music education.

This study was designed to investigate teacher expectation effects for intact student groups (rather than individuals) in tertiary settings, which have been little studied in the literature. The participants were 50 teachers and their 4617 first-year undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language at two universities in China. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was employed for data analysis and the major findings were: (1) class-level teacher expectations had significant effects on student year-end academic achievement; (2) teachers who held high (or low) expectations for all students in one class, held high (or low) expectations for all their classes and (3) teacher-level expectancies had significant effects on student academic achievement after one school year. This study provided evidence that the contextual factors of tertiary education and curriculum areas may contribute to salient teacher expectation effects. Furthermore, the findings add weight to the argument that teacher expectation effects are a function of teacher beliefs rather than student factors.