New Zealand Journal of Teachers' Work
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365 research outputs found
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From strain to partnership: How governance can safeguard principal wellbeing in rural schools
No full textIn rural, small New Zealand schools, principals are stretched by governance gaps that blur the lines between strategic oversight and day-to-day management. Where board members lack training in education and have a limited understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, well‑intentioned involvement can slide into operational interference. The result is predictable: intensified workload, less time for leading learning, and increased stress for those at the heart of their schools. The evidence suggests that principal wellbeing in rural schools is, fundamentally, a governance issue, and that targeted board capability, cultural competence, and role clarity are the fastest and most cost‑effective levers for change (Education Review Office [ERO], 2021; Wylie, 2012)
From resistance to responsibility: Te Tiriti o Waitangi professional development in higher education
No full textThis opinion piece examines how professional development initiatives in higher education can facilitate transformation grounded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Drawing on experiences at Massey University, we explore how resistance, relationality, and contextual approaches can advance meaningful engagement with Te Tiriti o Waitangi beyond compliance frameworks. We argue that resistance offers productive entry points for deeper dialogue when met with pedagogical approaches centred in manaakitanga and whakawhanaungatanga. Tuakana-teina relationships provide essential relational structures that honour both experienced voices and emerging perspectives, creating communities of practice where treaty literacy evolves through reciprocal exchange. Context-specific approaches that connect treaty principles to disciplinary practices and institutional systems foster sustainable transformation across research, teaching, and leadership domains. This work moves beyond simplified interpretations toward an understanding that centres both the provisions and principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, acknowledging its political, cultural, and legal significance. These insights contribute to global conversations about decolonising education, supporting Indigenous rights, and reimagining higher education as sites of relational justice where collective responsibility replaces symbolic gestures and compliance checklists
The right to be heard: the missing voices of students with learning disabilities
No full textSet within the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this article interrogates the extent to which the right to be heard is afforded equally to all children and young people. It shows that despite widespread global commitment to these conventions, the voices of children and young people with learning disabilities continues to remain largely unheard. Attention is drawn to the ways in which limiting assumptions contribute to this on-going breach of rights. Research approaches that take a more inclusive approach to listening to the ‘voices’ of children and young people with learning disabilities are shared. These show that while the gap between policy intent and reality remains considerable, there is much that can be done to honour the right to be heard. Presuming competence, being attentive to different communication preferences, allowing time, and providing multi-modal input and response options, are each essential if the current gap between policy intent and reality is to be closed
Exploring the Leadership Practices of Women teacher leaders in Mathematics and Science: Significance of addressing Equity and Inclusion in New Zealand’s Schools – A literature review
Full text linkThis literature review serves as the foundation for a doctoral research project that examines the intersection of educational leadership, gender, and equity in education in New Zealand’s context with specifical focus on women teacher leaders in math and science disciplines. Despite the growing recognition of the significance of leadership in fostering equitable learning environments (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2017), our understanding of the practical implementation of equity on school level remains underexplored. Particularly, little is known regarding the use of leadership abilities by women teacher leaders within school context in science and math subjects. Grounded in both positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990) and equity-oriented leadership (Theoharis, 2007) frameworks, the below literature review discusses how women teacher leader’s identities, professional agency, and institutional cultures contribute to transformative educational practices towards achieving equity in their disciplines. Through this approach, this article aims to extend the existing discussions about teacher leadership by highlighting how women teacher leaders engage with equity related concerns in math and science education
Teachers’ work in Aotearoa New Zealand’s changing policyscape
Full text linkIt is not easy to be an educator in 2025 in Aotearoa New Zealand. Amidst a variety of pressures, many educators continue to see their role as not merely a job but rather a privilege to guide, support, and empower future generations. However, while teaching is never ‘easy’, it seems that attacks on education, educators, and widely shared values in education such as equity, fairness, and a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi have been relentless in the policyscape over the last 12-18 months. Looking back at the past two editorials in Teachers’ Work, we critiqued the progressing privatisation and commercialisation of education (Couch et al., 2024), and the ongoing attempts of the current government to undermine Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a foundational document of our government and society (Jones et al., 2024). As Alwyn Poole opines in The Post (Poole, 2025), our education system appears to be in decline on multiple levels and none of the recent successive governments have made any substantial inroads that would address key issues, such as “an overworked and under-appreciated teaching profession; a general over-reliance on market-driven policy; a culture of testing, measurement and accountability; ongoing equity and access issues; and a lack of urgency in preparing students for the 21st century” (Baker, 2023, p. 14). Although one can argue that much has changed in recent years, these issues remain or indeed are being exacerbated
Nevertheless, we persisted: supporting taiohi voice, agency and leadership on climate change in Porirua
No full textClimate change presents an immediate threat for children living today, and a long-term burden for those living now and in the future. In Aotearoa New Zealand, tamariki Māori (Māori children), Pacific children, and children born into poverty are among those most exposed to climate risk. Taiohi (young people) have a right not just to be treated as a vulnerable group in need of protection from its impacts, but as active agents in crafting solutions. Yet, with the exception of the recently released Health National Adaptation Plan, our national climate policies have to date lacked any reference to children’s rights, participation or leadership. Teaching critical literacy and cultural responsiveness, key to understanding issues of identity, values and perspectives, and the drivers of climate change, is simultaneously being rolled back. In the face of these challenges, this article offers a story of hope. Drawing on a case study of a Tiriti (Treaty) based citizen’s climate assembly in Porirua city – the first of its kind in Aotearoa – we document our experience as a group of educators who came together, with little lead time and limited resources, to support and empower young people’s voice and agency in the Porirua Assembly process. Drawing on early findings from the lead author’s doctoral research, we recount the challenges we encountered, actions we took, and the critical role of relationality, creative practice, and culturally congruent ways of working in empowering taiohi voice, agency and leadership. We conclude by considering what may be learnt from our experience to help inform future practice
Children’s Rights or Settler Sovereignty? Rights Declarations, Curriculum Policy, and Settler Colonial Governance
No full textThis paper interrogates the coloniality of (human) rights and inclusion by tracing their function within Aotearoa New Zealand’s education policy. Beginning from the global frame of Gaza, where human rights instruments are mobilised to obscure rather than prevent mass violence, the analysis demonstrates that rights frameworks are never neutral. In settler-colonial contexts, they operate as technologies of governance that both promise protection and reproduce dispossession. In Aotearoa, curricular and policy discourses of diversity, biculturalism, and inclusion similarly depoliticise the foundational violence of colonisation. By collapsing the distinct realities of Māori, Pasifika, refugee, and immigrant communities into state-managed categories, the education system sustains the hierarchies it claims to redress. For immigrant children, rights are extended only conditionally, tied to neoliberal benchmarks of economic utility and assimilation, while Māori rights remain constrained within Crown-defined parameters. Drawing on Wolfe’s theorisation of settler colonialism as a structure of elimination and decolonial theory, the paper argues that both Māori dispossession and immigrant conditionality are relational components of a single settler-colonial project. Education, rights, and inclusion thus function less as emancipatory frameworks than as instruments for managing populations and consolidating white settler sovereignty
"They are individuals, they can make choices": ECE teachers from migrant backgrounds understandings of children's rights in Aotearoa New Zealand
No full textThis article explores how beginner early childhood education (ECE) teachers from migrant backgrounds in Aotearoa New Zealand understand and enact children’s rights. Drawing on narrative inquiry with twelve newly qualified teachers, the study examines how participants’ culturally shaped “images of the child” influence their pedagogical choices and professional identities. Findings highlight the tensions between culturally familiar models of childhood, often grounded in authoritarian or protectionist traditions, and the participatory rights-based ethos embedded in Te Whāriki and the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child. Three themes emerged: the impact of cultural and political contexts on teachers’ understandings of children’s rights, shifts from control-oriented to agency-focused disciplinary practices, and recognition of children as individual rights holders. By foregrounding the voices of migrant teachers, the article contributes to wider conversations about diversity and the enactment of children’s rights in ECE
Onsite Mentoring: A case study on supporting mentor teachers with a contextualised digital platform
Full text linkThis article presents a contextualised case study developed in response to the persistent complexities of supporting mentoring teachers. Recognising the multifaceted challenges inherent to mentorship, this study trialled a digital platform (pataka.ac.nz) designed to alleviate pressures such as time constraints and professional isolation. The platform provided a digital collection of resources to support mentoring conversations and fostered connection among mentors through collaborative resource generation and sharing. Additionally, student teachers played a key role in distributing resources, enabling mentors to access materials as needed. The findings emphasise the importance of accessibility, collaboration, and coordinated actions in addressing mentoring challenges and strengthening professional practice. While no single solution exists, this case study highlights the potential of interconnected research and practice initiatives, including digital platforms, to positively support mentor development and enhance mentoring relationships
Ahakoa he aha te rākau he hua kei roto: Reviewing the Teaching Council’s draft Inclusive Teaching Practice Guidance through a children's rights oriented lens
No full textIn this article we review the Draft Inclusive Teaching Practice Guidance (ITPG) from the Teaching Council (2025a). This is the Council’s third guidance book, after providing Tātaiako for Māori learners, and Tapasā for learners from the Pacific. The main focus of the ITPG for registered kaiako/teachers is strengthening their inclusive practice, and while it is very much about disabled learners, it also views inclusion in the broadest sense. We review the ITPG against the opportunities for supporting active participation of all learners, and where it sits alongside the revised Standards for the Teaching Profession released in 2025. The ITPG does not take an explicit rights oriented approach like many previous inclusive practice frameworks, but instead works to provide an interpretation of the Standards for kaiako working in Aotearoa New Zealand to use. However because of this lack of an explicit rights orientation, there is a very real danger that kaiako will view embedding the ITPG in practice as something they can opt in or out of doing as they feel fit, rather than this being an important professional obligation grounded in the inalienable right that all tamariki and rangatahi possess to an equitable and inclusive education. Without this obligation, it is possible for teaching practice to be overwhelmed by other institutional and policy drivers of practice. Thus in a more rights focused, mana enhancing political context, the ITPG could become a critical means for transforming inclusive practice. However, so too could it easily be made irrelevant by marginalising, discriminatory, exclusionary policy and power dynamics in play within Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system, such as we collectively find ourselves navigating at the moment