Sera, the eldest of four, was born in Fiji and moved to Wellington when she was six. She is from the villages of Gau (dad's village) and Lau (mum's village).

“My mother was the first in our family to graduate from the University, and so set the standard for me to strive for.”

Her experience at school, as a person with English as a second language, led her to study Education. She enjoyed learning to cope with new challenges and reflecting on her progress.

“What I enjoyed most was the journey of learning how I coped with everything, from obtaining the information in lectures and translating it to my own understanding, to producing an essay that made sense and answered the question.”

After Sera graduated she joined the university team as a Pacific support coordinator, helping Pasifika students succeed at university. Her advice to anyone considering studying Education is “go for it!”.

“What I have gained from Education overlaps many facets of life, both personal and professional. There are challenges, but over the duration of your study you develop a resiliency which pushes you through.”

Dr Wood is leading a team exploring implementation of the 2013 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) social studies assessment requirements for ‘personal social action’, where students take on a social issue.

This often begins at Level 1 with fundraising and raising awareness. As students progress through NCEA they often move to critiquing existing policy.

Dr Wood has been looking at the different strategies teachers use to provide guidance and freedom in the assessments. Some teachers preferred to allow their class to choose their own social issues and social action, and students her team interviewed were “really flat” if they didn't engage with the issue.

“The interesting thing is that the assessment doesn’t measure their social action but rather their refection on how it went. So the social action could fail but students can still pass the assessment. This is a real strength of the assessment itself. Students are quite pleased to say ‘the social action failed but this is what we learned’.”

Bronwyn says her research has revealed that New Zealand’s inclusion of social action in its curriculum and assessment holds great potential for building a can-do attitude in youth and developing critical and active citizens.

“In other countries, students take actions such as volunteering at a food bank, whereas we have New Zealand Year 13 students writing submissions on the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s draft climate change strategy, or lobbying for an increase in the refugee quota.”