We Know What Isn’t Working In Education—What We Are Good At Is Key To Improving

Being local, learning from children, bicultural aspirations, partnerships and creativity are highlighted as strengths of Aotearoa New Zealand’s education sector in a new book from Professor Stuart McNaughton.

Building on our strengths: Improving education in Aotearoa New Zealand broadens the focus of the education conversation from the challenges to include strengths. The book draws on McNaughton’s wealth of experience as Professor of Education and former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Education.

McNaughton acknowledges our education system’s high overall quality but stark deficiencies in equity. He argues that focusing on five key strengths will enhance educational success:

• Being local
• Learning from all children
• Being bicultural aspirations
• Partnerships
• Creativity and innovation

“We have lofty goals when it comes to excellence and equity in our education system – and in a time when many might consider these strengths ‘nice to haves’, I would argue they are absolutely key to improving outcomes,” argues Professor McNaughton.

“Every policy shift, every practice shift should be tested against these. The creativity and innovation we see in our teachers, for example. Do our system-level changes build on this, and if they don’t, how can they?”

Building on our strengths: Improving education in Aotearoa New Zealand is now available via NZCER Press.

About the author

Stuart McNaughton ONZM is Professor of Education at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. He has published extensively on children’s development, the design of effective educational programmes for culturally and linguistically diverse populations, and cultural processes in development. He was the Founding Director of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre | Te Pūtahi, which pioneered research in design-based school change. His current research focuses on designing and testing digital tools to promote online resilience and social and cognitive skills.

He is a recipient of national and international research prizes, consults on curricula and educational interventions nationally and internationally, is a member of a number of academic bodies, and is Senior Research Fellow at East China Normal University (Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Learning). In 2011 he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and from 2014 until 2024 was Aotearoa New Zealand’s inaugural Chief Education Scientific Advisor.

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