Effective teachers

Three schools in the Te Kauhua initiative – Hillmorton, Lincoln, and Hornby High Schools - opted to cluster together for purposes of their research inquiry. They worked from a common research question, but tailored their inquiries to their individual school contexts. The cluster schools met regularly over the duration of the project, sharing findings and challenging one another’s practice and thinking. The following case study highlights the approaches and findings of Hillmorton High School. 

Lincoln High School investigates how, as part of a cluster arrangement, a school can foster the development of an effective professional learning community that is focused on teaching as inquiry and premised on three underpinning principles: ako (reciprocal learning), culture counts, and productive partnerships.

Approaches to conceptualising, identifying and providing for gifted and talented Māori students are dual faceted: they may emanate from Te Ao Māori; a Māori worldview on the one hand, and have significant connotations to Te Ao Hurihuri (the global world) on the other.

The success of teaching and learning is founded on the quality of the relationship built between the teacher and the student.

Curriculum Updates support school leaders and teachers as they work to design and review their school curriculum, in line with the New Zealand Curriculum and with current knowledge and understandings about effective classroom teaching.

This snapshot article from software for learning was contributed by Carla Uereta, an extension Te Ao Māori teacher at Firth Primary School, Matamata.

Kia Mau is a multimedia resource focusing on two waiata and two haka that have an association with the Māori Battalion. Kia Mau explores a number of themes associated with social sciences – including customs and traditions, social justice, leadership, bereavement, and spirituality.

Ako Panuku is a professional development suite supporting Māori secondary school and wharekura teachers with particular emphasis on te reo Māori teachers.

Home–school partnerships are shared relationships and initiatives between schools and whānau. Students are part of both groups, which together make up the wider school community.

In her paper presented at the Now is the Future Conference, Auckland, October 2000, Jill Bevan-Brown shares a number of stories illustrating what schooling is like for many gifted Māori learners.