Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. This includes being the Associate Dean (Academic) of the University’s School of Education for the last 3 years.
Prior to his time at Victoria, Dr Johnston was the Senior Statistician at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, a position he held for 6 years. Before that, he held positions at Melbourne and Latrobe universities.
Dr Johnston holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne.
He lives in Roseneath, Wellington, with his wife and two young children.
Phone: 044990790
The New Zealand Initiative hosted a symposium on literacy education practice and policy yesterday. The attendees numbered about one hundred and included teachers, representatives of literacy advocacy groups and a representative from the Ministry of Education. Read more
There’s a crisis that everyone’s talking about. Far too many Māori and Pacific young people are not thriving in our education system. Read more
Like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, Elon Musk is fond of impossible things. And not content with simply believing them, Musk likes actually to get them done. Read more
The government’s Te Hurihanganui sketches a radically different version of education in New Zealand. But what is it based on? Read more
Michael Johnston told Newstalk ZB Heather du Plessis Allan that we've seen in the PISA results over the last 20 years a continuing decline in the proportion of New Zealanders that at 15 can do basic literacy tasks
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At the general election in 2023, New Zealand will mark 30 years and ten elections since it adopted the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) electoral system. A criticism of MMP is that the party list system allows party hierarchies essentially to appoint their apparatchiks to parliament. Read more
Ben Craven interviews Dr Michael Johnston about his recent presentation at The New Zealand Initiative Members’ Retreat. The pair discuss the disturbing trends of cancel culture and the erosion of academic freedom. Read more
There was once a place called the University. I knew it well – in fact I grew up there. Read more
New Zealand has a major problem with educational inequality in its school system. The reasons are complex and not all of them are in the control of the education system. Read more
“Because there is no time for thinking and no rest in thinking, we no longer weigh divergent views; we’re content to hate them.” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that back in 1878, but he could easily have been describing the early 2020s. Perhaps it was ever thus, but I can’t help feeling the problem Nietzsche was describing has recently got a lot worse. Read more
Do you fear and loathe mathematics? If so, you are far from alone. Read more
The Department for Education in England recently issued guidance to teachers to remind them of legal requirements to be politically impartial when they teach sensitive topics such as the legacy of the British Empire. Commenting on the guidance, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said “contested theories and opinions must not be presented to young people as facts”. Read more
I am excited to have commenced work at the New Zealand Initiative in early March. I come from ten years as an academic in the Faculty of Education at Victoria University of Wellington. Read more
We recently announced the appointment of new Senior Fellow, Dr Michael Johnston to lead our education programme. Michael joins us from Victoria University of Wellington, where he was most recently Associate Dean (Academic) in the School of Education. Read more