The Changing Landscape of Teaching and Learning: Sherida Penman Walters, Executive Principal, Pinehurst School

Pinehurst is now twenty years old and has created a unique niche in the New Zealand Education Community as a Year 1–13 school that has successfully developed a strong reputation using the Cambridge University International Education Curriculum.

There are a number of initiatives in teaching and learning that are woven into the tapestry of the School’s philosophy.  Pinehurst has clearly articulated the community’s shared values of Respect for Ourselves, Respect for Others and Striving for Excellence in Everything We Do.

These values form the heart of our student leadership programme and the programmes development.  Over the last four years, we have developed the ethos that every student is a leader in their own life and has the potential to lead others.  The strength of the student councils at Primary, Junior College and Senior College are testament to this.

Our Academic, Sporting, Cultural and Pastoral Councils give the opportunity for our students to participate in leadership activities, learn how to be effective leaders and make a real difference to the quality of their School.

School wide, Pinehurst has always held a strong emphasis on the development of Thinking Skills and Strategies.  Teachers are trained to use Hyerles Thinking Maps, Howard Gardner’s concepts of Multiple Intelligences and Five Minds for the Future, and Art Costa’s Habits of Mind to develop learning programmes for their students.  Their effectiveness in doing this forms part of their performance management processes.

Over the last three years, teaching staff have begun a three-year personal cycle of professional development based on the Assessment by Michael Absolm and his team at Evaluation Associates.  This had led to real excitement and professional growth amongst the staff involved, particularly as they realise how great teachers can continue to improve their practice by fully engaging their students and encouraging them to take responsibility for their own learning.  All teachers now share learning intentions with their students and discuss success criteria.  This also forms part of the teacher’s appraisal.

An area of rapid and expensive change for Pinehurst, like all schools, is in the burgeoning of information technology.  Over three years, Pinehurst has rebuilt a state of the art website, introduced a student management system linked to Synergetic, developed an interactive extranet so our parents can do “business” with us on-line, developed virtual classes utilising the learning management system “Ultranet” and has continued to roll out interactive whiteboards into classrooms. 

Our next step will be to develop a secure, school wide, wireless network so that many “guests” can access the World Wide Web.  We have never been a “laptop” school so this will allow our students and our guests to use their own multifunctional, interactive phones, laptops and iPads at Pinehurst.

In 2002, Pinehurst chose to become a full Cambridge International Education (CIE) School.  Our curriculum is delivered using inquiry learning approaches.  It is structured to ensure appropriate content coverage over thirteen years.  There are specific achievement standards set for each Year level, and at Year 6, 9, 11, 12 and 13 these are externally examined so our students have a globally moderated assessment and comparability across nations. 

Our Year 13 students demonstrate our success by achieving matriculation or access to a variety of universities across the world.  Because of the consistent excellent results, Pinehurst is awarded the accolade of “CIE International Fellowship Centre” dedicating all our resource solely to this curriculum.

Our continued success is credited to a key founding philosophy to involve parents in the Pinehurst Triangle where students, parents and teachers, work together “proud of who we are, what we know and what we can achieve”.