Connecting Curriculum Linking Learning

Connecting Curriculum, Linking Learning

"Teachers and principals know that students learn best when involved, challenged and inspired. An integrated curriculum offers teachers the tools to engage, extend and enthuse students. Yet today's curriculum seems to be narrowing and becoming restrictive. Assessment-driven teaching, reporting to standards and a pronounced emphasis on individual learning in numeracy and literacy now hold sway. Is it possible to balance standards with innovation? What scope is there for teachers and principals to use their initiative? And what of children's learning as they engage in a curriculum that matters to them? Here, an integrated curriculum - negotiated, issues driven, focused on relevant learning areas, with teachers scaffolding learning - offers exciting potential while still enabling the learning of important skills in literacy and numeracy. But there is a chasm in the literature on curriculum integration. Connecting Curriculum, Linking Learning bridges that chasm. Based on current New Zealand classroom research, this book provides vivid portraits of teachers' practice, and reveals the strengths and weaknesses of an integrated approach. Featuring drama as inquiry alongside other arts-inspired approaches to integration, Connecting Curriculum, Linking Learning reflects the ethos of the New Zealand curriculum"--Publisher's description.

Connecting Curriculum, Linking Learning

Realising Innovative Partnerships in Educational Research

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 research are proposed and practices of teaching and learning are reconciled (or not) with existing education contexts and practices. With contributions from educational researchers and practitioners from New Zealand, and international commentaries provided by established scholars in the field, the book draws together key experiences and insights from students, teachers, community members and researchers in tertiary, community, school, and early childhood settings. The research in this book seeks to address a gap in our understanding, extending knowledge beyond simply the benefits of partnership work, to examine how successful partnerships can be initiated, enacted, and sustained over time. This book invites reflection on the following provocations: Why engage in partnerships for educational research? How has this happened in the past and what needs to happen for the future? What is unique about the New Zealand context and what might researchers in other countries learn from our collaborative and culturally responsive research methodologies? What could be some of the underlying principles that support the development of and engagement in collaborative research? How do we evaluate the effectiveness of research partnerships in education to shift the focus to the future?