Books by Russell Bishop

A response to the marginalisation of particular groups of students with a way of teaching intended to increase equity in the education system.

This is the inside story of an indigenous education success story. Te Kotahitanga is a theory-based program that has made a positive difference to the educational experience and achievement of M ori students in mainstream schools in New Zealand. It is essential reading for anyone interested in reforming mainstream schools so that quality education and equity is available for all students, especially those who have been historically marginalised.

What is school reform? What makes it sustainable? Who needs to be involved? How is scaling up achieved? This book is about the need for educational reforms that have built into them, from the outset, those elements that will see them sustained in the original sites and spread to others. Using New Zealand's Te Kotahitanga Project as a model the authors branch out from the project itself to seek to uncover how an educational reform can become both extendable and sustainable. Their model can be applied to a variety of levels within education: classroom, school and system wide. It has seven elements that should be present in the reform initiative from the outset. These elements include establishing goals and a vision for reducing disparities; embedding a new pedagogy to depth in order to change the core of educational practice; developing new institutions and organisational structures to support in-class initiatives; developing leadership that is responsive, proactive and distributed; spreading the reform to include all teachers, parents, community members and external agencies; developing and using appropriate measures of performance as evidence for modifying core classroom and school practices; creating opportunities for all involved to take ownership of the reform in such a way that the original objectives of the reform are protected and sustained.