Information for contributors

If you are interested in contributing a post for Ipu Kererū, we would love to hear from you! Email us at melissa.derby@waikato.ac.nz or emma.cunningham@waikato.ac.nz

We welcome posts that provide short summaries of your recent research or publications. Disseminating research findings is a major goal for this blog.

We also welcome posts that offer commentary, critical analysis or reflection on current topics (e.g. responses to policies or discussion of issues or achievements in education in Aotearoa New Zealand).

Posts should be of interest to our intended audience, which includes researchers, teachers, parents / whānau, policy-makers, journalists, and other interested community members.

NZARE Ipu Kererū blog post guidelines:

  • Around 700 – 1000 words
  • Written in English and/or Te Reo Māori
  • A single focus (e.g. one research project, publication, or topical issue)
  • A compelling title that ‘hooks’ the reader
  • Written in clear, easy-to-read language (avoid jargon, dense language, and academic referencing)
  • Inclusive, respectful language
  • Web links provided for important sources or publications
  • Use of structural devices such as subheadings, bullet points and bold/italics to help signpost the text (since online readers often skim and scan)

Why write for Ipu Kererū?

Traditional academic journals and conferences mostly allow your work to reach other academics. Blogs like Ipu Kererū allow you to share your work with a different audience and, in particular, help ensure that your educational research reaches classroom practitioners.

By writing for Ipu Kererū, you can draw wider attention to your scholarly publications (e.g. by linking to the full publication or providing a DOI), ultimately increasing the impact of your work. Ipu Kererū is also accessible to a global audience, and we use tags and keywords to help people locate relevant posts. Blog posts are also frequently shared through other social media channels, travelling across the world as they are ‘liked’, ‘shared’, and ‘tweeted’. Ipu Kererū is tracked by Altmetric, a service that measures online engagement with research outputs. Learn more about altmetrics here.

In accordance with the aims of NZARE, Ipu Kererū also provides a valuable forum for postgraduate students and early career researchers to communicate their research and contribute to public scholarship. We welcome contributions from those at all career stages.

Tips for writing an effective blog post:

There is no right way to write a blog post. However, a good post will immediately grab a reader’s interest and, at the same time, tell a reader what you are posting about.

Blogs are personal, so don’t be afraid to use first person (that is, use ‘I’ and ‘we’ when talking about your work or your ideas).

Your blog post will be more effective if you ‘hit out’ with your main comment in the first paragraph. Whether readers agree or not, they will read on to see how well your opinion is justified and explained.

Academic writers usually leave the best bits and the strongest wording for conclusions. Bloggers usually do the opposite! Think about the most interesting part of your research (or the most compelling argument for your commentary / opinion piece) and start with that.

For more ideas and examples, check out: