Michael Fenton is a future-focused educator who teaches to interests and abilities, not age group. Across more than three decades he has taught every science and mathematics subject, plus coding and electronics, at secondary and sub-degree level, and has led the design and delivery of NZQA-approved qualifications from Level 3 to Level 7.
Few teachers can cover the whole of science and mathematics. Michael is one of a very small number in New Zealand able to teach Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth and Space Science, Mathematics and Calculus, alongside coding, robotics and electronics, at both secondary and sub-degree level. With a sustained shortage of qualified and experienced science and mathematics teachers across New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, this breadth lets one person fill several specialist roles that would otherwise require several staff.
The operative framework is low-floor, high-ceiling: entry points open to any learner, with no artificial ceiling on how far the work can go. Authentic tasks, real tools, and genuine questions sit at the centre, with assessment for learning rather than assessment as gatekeeping. Science is treated as something you do, not something you read about. The most fully documented example of this approach in practice is the Nexus Research Group and the learners it produced. Read the Nexus Research Group story. Its practical method is the Build it, Test it, Use it pedagogy.
"Technology should disappear into the learning experience while making thinking visible."
"Science is everywhere" conflates three distinct things: technology, nature, and science itself. Blurring them does not help students become scientists; it helps them stay comfortable bystanders. Better: technology is made, nature is found, and science happens when we wonder why.
Teaching has been delivered face to face, fully online by distance, and in blended formats. Michael is experienced in Universal Design for Learning, experiential and project-based learning, and mentoring in-service teachers through practice-led action research.
Michael has led the design, development, and delivery of NZQA-approved qualifications at secondary, vocational, and postgraduate levels. This work spans curriculum architecture, assessment design, moderation framework development, and quality assurance at national scale. He works with ITOs and PTEs to design and write courses and assessments, and to carry out moderation processes that meet external auditing and review requirements.
"I have been privileged to visit the Open Polytechnic to see their online science and maths teaching courses first hand, and I know how impressive they are. The best thing is that the programme enables teachers to study while working, allowing teachers to put what they learn online into practice almost immediately." - MP Chris Bishop
Michael is familiar with instructional design models including ADDIE, Bloom, Gagne, and Merrill, and has designed and delivered online courses in both the Moodle and iQualify platforms. He works with stakeholders and subject matter experts across foundation, sub-degree, and degree level programmes, and embeds moderation best practice into course and assessment design. Michael is an expert assessment moderator and also a highly experienced assessment writer for unit standards and skill standards, and has been asked to guide other instructional designers across New Zealand who are writing for the new skill standards.
Michael also works with generative AI as a creative and technical partner: a way to fill skill gaps that would otherwise stop a project, while the direction, judgement, and iteration stay with the human. The aim is to support the learner, not to do the work for them. He teaches the critical side of this too, including ethical use in assessment and the caution that AI assistants can state falsehoods convincingly. His reimagining of the classic game Transylvania is one worked example, described on the Game design as a vehicle to teach STEM page.
A further reason to keep learners working with real-world observation is that AI models are increasingly trained on a contaminated scientific literature. Richardson and Amaral (2025), in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, report that fabricated studies from paper mill networks are entering the record faster than legitimate research. A teacher using AI-generated simulation data cannot tell whether the underlying model reflects a real laboratory or a paper mill, whereas a physical sensor reports what actually happened and can still surprise. This makes hands-on measurement not just preferable but, increasingly, epistemically necessary. It also removes the usual defence of simulation: when real instruments were expensive, cost and access were a fair reason to simulate, but when the tools and sensors for first-hand measurement are free or cost only a few dollars, as the free tools and ultra low-cost open-source sensors on this site show, simulation must be justified on other grounds.
An evidence-based look at AI in teaching and assessment: the cognitive risks raised by recent research, the warning that AI models trained on a contaminated scientific literature cannot stand in for real measurement, and the opportunity of using AI as a genuine creative and technical partner when the thinking stays with the learner.
Related: a warning to educators that AI assistants can lie convincingly.
A significant part of Michael's career has been spent raising the capability of other educators: mentoring in-service teachers and principals, facilitating professional development, and designing programmes that translate research into classroom practice. As Programme Leader at the Open Polytechnic (2011 to 2018) he led science and mathematics teacher education nationally, and former students have gone on to leadership roles, Fellowships, and a Prime Minister's Science Teacher Prize. Full workshop and professional development detail is on the Workshops, Talks and Science Communication page.
Michael is available for course and qualification design, assessment design and moderation, STEM teacher professional development, programme review and quality assurance, and online courseware design, through Focus Consultancy.
