Setting the record straight: the selection,subordination and silencing of Maata Patene,teacher

Maori women teachers in nineteenth‐century New Zealand have been little acknowledged in educational histories, and indeed, in some instances their contributions have been explicitly nullified. Those who have taken leadership roles have been no more visible. This article examines the silencing and exclusion from educational history of a young Maori woman who was both a teacher and a community leader during this period. It identifies the various points at which her role was silenced and suggests that such silencing is a reflection of her position as woman and as Maori, in a missionary/colonial context. In telling her story, this article (re)instates Maata Patene to a position of leadership and agency in the history of New Zealand education.     

A gossip or a good yack? Reconceptualizing parent support in New Zealand early childhood centre based programmes 1

Parental support has been an increasingly essential part of New Zealand early childhood (EC) education services over the last 20 years. This support has taken many shapes and forms over this time period, and has depended on the differing philosophies of the EC education services. What this support ‘looks like’ and how it is delivered is directly connected to the goals and aims of these services. This paper will discuss the results from a small qualitative study that looked at how three New Zealand EC centres—two kindergartens and one child care centre—supported family resilience; that is, the ability of an individual and family to ‘cope’ with and ‘recover’ from significant adversity or stress, in ways that are not only effective but may result in increased ability to ‘respond’ to and ‘protect’ their families from future adversity. From semi‐structured interviews with teachers, parents, and family support services associated with each of the three centres, the concept of planned parent education programmes, as meaningful support, is re‐examined in the light of the ideas of a ‘gossip’ or a ‘good yack’. This research was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development.     

“Fully Equal to That of Any Children”: Experimental Creek Education in the Antebellum Era

During the 1840s and 1850s, members of the Creek Nation rejected schools as a colonial tool and instead experimented with various forms of education to fit their own local and national needs. Diverse individuals and communities articulated educational visions for their nation in conversation with fellow citizens, national leaders, and U.S. educators. Rather than embrace education to assimilate into the American republic, Creeks turned to schools and English literacy as one strategy to shape their own society and defend it from further Euro‐American colonial policies. By the end of the 1850s, they had established a fledgling national school system consisting of both neighborhood and mission schools. These institutions reflected and reinforced changes in race, class, gender, culture, and religion in the antebellum Creek Nation.     

An indigenous and migrant critique of principles and innovation in education in Aotearoa/New Zealand

This paper questions notions of individualism underpinning technocratic approaches to education that marginalise indigenous and migrant peoples?? knowledges in tertiary education. Focusing on New Zealand (Aotearoa) with its colonial and immigrant history, its M??ori and Pacific Islander citizens, the authors ask whether education, as its process is being communicated there, leaves indigenous and migrant people vulnerable and marginalised in the dominant, English-speaking, New Zealand European (P??keh??) mainstream society. The question is whether education refers to capacity-building and strengthening the potential of marginalised students?? language and culture; or whether it is only geared towards sustaining English-language ascendancy and technical virtuosity. Taking on board the cultural heritage of Pacific Islanders (Pasifika) resident in New Zealand, a new teacher training diploma was introduced by the Auckland University of Technology in 2004. Both authors are involved in the panel meetings (Fono) where the papers presented during the diploma course are evaluated.     

Complexity and the Culture of Curriculum

This paper has two main foci: (1) the history of curriculum design, and (2) implications from the new sciences of chaos and complexity for the development of new forms of curriculum design and teaching implementation. Regarding the first focus, the paper posits that there exist—to use Wittgenstein's phrase—‘family resemblances’ between Peter Ramus’ 16th century curriculum design and that of Ralph Tyler in the 20th century. While this 400‐year linkage is by no means linear, there are overlapping strands from Ramus to Comenius to the Puritans to colonial New England to Horace Mann to Ralph Tyler. What unites these strands, all belonging to the Protestant Methodization movement that swept across northern Europe into colonial America and the USA, is the concept of Method. Taylor's ‘time and motion’ studies set the stage for Tyler's Basic Principles of curriculum design—those starting with set goals and concluding with measured assessment.

The second focus draws on the new sciences of chaos and complexity to develop a different sense of curriculum and instruction—open, dynamic, relational, creative, and systems oriented. The paper concludes with an integration of the rational/scientific with the aesthetic/spiritual into a view of education and curriculum informed by complexity.     

An evaluation of characteristics of environmental education practice in New Zealand schools

This paper reports on a national evaluation project that investigated characteristics of environmental education (EE) practice in New Zealand schools in 2002–2003. The research included a review of New Zealand and international environmental education literature, a survey of nearly 200 New Zealand schools and case studies of environmental education practice in eight schools. In this paper we describe and discuss key features of environmental education practice in New Zealand schools at the time of the research. We consider the rewards and challenges for teachers, students, schools and the wider school community arising from the schools’ implementation of this non‐compulsory curriculum subject. We conclude by considering what the findings told us about current EE practice and how these findings might inform a greater emphasis towards environmental education/education for sustainability in New Zealand schools at a time of national curriculum policy change.     

Post‐school horizons: New Zealand’s neo‐liberal generation in transition

Dominant conceptions of the world infuse educational experiences for young people in implicit rather than explicit ways—through becoming, as Stuart Hall argues, ‘the horizon of the taken‐for‐granted’. In this article we explore these horizons as experienced by New Zealand’s neo‐liberal generation, currently ‘in transition’ from high school to further education, training and/or employment. As in Britain, further education has become a taken‐for‐granted feature of post‐school horizons for young New Zealanders but it is not a meaningful destination for all of them. The 93 young New Zealanders in our study have grown up during a period of intensive neo‐liberal reform, the speed and scope of which were unprecedented in Western economies. We interviewed these young people in their last year of high school and again once they were well embarked on their post‐school lives. We explore how the landscapes of choice of these young people have been restructured in neo‐liberal times: for some, the influences of parents, teachers, schools, universities and educational policy have come together to construct apparently wide‐open horizons in which university is a taken‐for‐granted destination. For others, however, these influences have remained subject to assumptions about ‘race’ and class that have a long history in New Zealand and the result has been a narrowing of future possibilities for participants. In all cases, we are concerned to explore the costs that are borne by these young people in this new environment.     

Preliminary Findings of the IEA Reading Literacy Study: New Zealand achievement in the national and international context

This paper focuses on the preliminary reading literacy test scores for New Zealand, of students in the grade levels where most 9‐ (Standard 3) and 14‐ (Form 4) year‐olds were to be found. In addition to some within country analyses, New Zealand results are compared with the results for the probability samples of students in 32 systems of education which participated in the IEA study of Reading Literacy. Within country comparisons by gender and ethnicity reveal large differences in favour of Pakeha students at both levels, and gender differences in favour of girls particularly at the Standard 3 level. Between country comparisons of results suggest high levels of reading competence among the New Zealand students in the target age groups.     

“A Liberation of Powers”: Agency and Education for Democracy

In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the “shrinkage” of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency‐focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency — a citizen politics that is different from ideological politics — and citizens as cocreators of political communities, Boyte and Finders explore the technocratic trends that have eclipsed agency. These disempower educators, students, and communities. Using the case study of the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement and its translation into the Special Education Program and partnerships of Augsburg College, the authors conclude with an examination of how agentic practices have survived in “shadow spaces” in schools, how such spaces might be turned into “free spaces” for democratic change, and how teacher education needs to prepare “citizen teachers” as well as promoting pedagogies of empowerment. These suggest grounds for a movement of hope and democratic change.     

Small country,big business? New Zealand as education exporter

This paper discusses New Zealand’s role in the global market for tertiary education. The internationalisation and liberalisation of education markets is progressing rapidly in today’s globalising world, as reflected by the incorporation of education as a service into the GATS framework. Through the example of New Zealand as a case study for the internationalisation of education services, the study depicts the way the government is involved in this process. Commodification of sectors traditionally subject to domestic public policy is often associated with a less interventionist state, but our example of education shows that this is not necessarily the case, at least not in the medium‐term: New Zealand’s government rather appears to be an active facilitator of the liberalisation process in education. We review its recent move towards treating education as an international export good and present data on the growth of this industry. The paper concentrates on the particular ways by which New Zealand’s government is trying to facilitate this process of liberalising the education sector.     

Ownership and governance: the privatisation of New Zealand universities

Following the Learning for Life (Ministry of Education 1989) reforms in New Zealand, enacted in the Education Amendment Act 1990, and the development of an equivalent full‐time student (EFTS) funding system and student loan scheme, a taskforce was established to investigate the feasibility of a capital charge scheme for tertiary institutions, with responsibility also for examining the issue of governance. In late 1995 the New Zealand Vice‐Chancellors’ Committee in 1995 ‘became concerned that there were proposals for change in the relationship of universities to Government being developed at the officials level’, decided to be proactive in reviewing proposals on governance and commissioned Graham Scott, former Secretary to the Treasury, to write a paper on the ownership and governance of New Zealand universities. In essence, Scott in association with his colleague Simon Smelt (Scott and Smelt 1995) argue that the Crown is actively seeking ways to contain or reduce its financial risk. On this basis they argue for a private ‘not‐for‐profit’ trust model which, they maintain, would reduce the risk and performance concerns of the Crown while at the same time increase the commercial freedom of universities. This paper reviews current debates on governance and ownership of New Zealand universities, commenting upon the trust model and recent attempts to develop a model of ownership monitoring for TEIs (tertiary education institutions). It begins by contextualizing the discussion in terms of both structural adjustment policy and New Zealand's model of public management, before focusing on two opposing models of devolution. The paper then proceeds to review the governance of higher education in New Zealand against the background of the shift from so‐called ‘state control’ to ‘state supervision’, focusing on public sector reform, the contitutional consequences of privatization, and the issue of ‘representation versus technocracy’ arising out of the consideration of the ‘not‐for‐profit’ model of governance.     

THE CO‐OPERATIVE SCHOOL OF RELIGION IN PRACTICE

A report of a conference of leaders, both men and women, in the fields of secular education, religious education, community and social work, and business and professional life. In the group are Protestant, Catholic, Jew and those having less formal attachment to organized religion—the Ethical Culturist, the New Thought adherent, the pure humanist and the scoffer at man‐made schemes for personal and social salvation.     

University continuing education in a neoliberal landscape: developments in England and Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper explores the impact of changing higher education policies and funding on university adult and continuing education in England and Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses some of the contextual factors contributing to sustaining continuing education in New Zealand, against the tide of developments elsewhere, and in spite of its subjection to the influence of neoliberal policies since the 1980s: an ethos of public knowledge dissemination, acknowledgement of the universities' role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society, a broad commitment to educational equality and a strategic as well as pragmatic approach. The paper describes developments in one New Zealand continuing education department as it experiences institutional and political change. The author concludes that, in spite of demonstrating considerable resilience, the structures and activities of continuing education departments in New Zealand are as fragile as they have been in England. ‘Radical hope’ is advocated as the university‐based adult educator's response in difficult times. It involves challenging the assumptions of neoliberalism, and reaffirming the political nature of adult education.     

“There Is No Substitute for a Sense of Reality”: Humanizing the Humanities

Do the humanities have a future? In the face of an increased emphasis on the so‐called practical applicability of education, some educators worry that the presence of humanistic study in schools and universities is gravely threatened. In the short‐term, scholars have rallied to defend the humanities by demonstrating how they do, in fact, advance our practical interests. Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that the humanities uniquely support democratic citizenship by cultivating critical thinking and narrative imagination — two skills needed for the development of sympathetic and autonomous judgment. Defending the humanities in this manner, however, puts practitioners of the humanities in an impossible position. In this essay, Megan Laverty explains that while arguments such as Nussbaum's, which defend the instrumental value of the humanities, are persuasive and strategic, their use is double‐edged. They belie the fact that the humanities are valuable for their own sake. Such arguments imply that the humanities derive their value from their ability to provide extrinsic benefits such as critical thinking and narrative imagination. Moreover, they can prevent individuals from discovering that the value of the humanities is revealed over time and from the inside out. In fact, having to answer the question of why the humanities matter puts us in an impossible position precisely because humanistic study is what Laverty describes, drawing upon the work of Talbot Brewer and R. F. Holland, as a form of dialectical activity: one in which the activity's constitutive ideals and internal goods are progressively clarified by means of the individual's ongoing engagement in the activity itself. Having redescribed the humanities as intrinsically valuable, Laverty goes on to distinguish humanistic study from other forms of dialectical activity, arguing that the humanities call upon students to imagine alternative linguistic and conceptual possibilities — thereby connecting us with others. It is in the pursuit of this question about the nature of our humanity — not its answer, but the question itself — that the meaning of humanistic study continues, indefinitely, to unfold.     

The place of theory: locating the New Zealand ‘education’ Ph.D. experience, 1948–1998

The year 1998 marked 50 years of doctoral study in New Zealand, and in 1999 I embarked on a history of Ph.D. theses in Education. Influenced by Foucaultian genealogy, this employed a fusion of bibliographic, archival and life‐history interview methods. One hundred and eighty‐three Education theses were identified and 57 of these graduates interviewed. How has New Zealand’s ‘corpus’ of Education Ph.D. thesis production been enabled and constrained by its temporal/spatial location? To address this, I draw on geographical debates on ‘space’ and ‘place’. The first part contextualises thesis topics, theories and methods in discourses of international scholarship, New Zealand politics and social change. The second part narrates a parallel history of the changing circumstances and sites of thesis production—biographical, domestic and institutional. It integrates students’ accounts of thesis work’s epistemological, methodological, spatial and technological dimensions to suggest a history of New Zealand doctoral candidates’ experience.     

A People Torn in Twain: Colonial and Indigenous Contexts of University Education in New Zealand

This paper examines the development of the university system in New Zealand and explores the impact of colonisation on the development of research priorities.The paper covers four main areas. The first area discusses the question of identity and location in the early settler colonies and how early contact between Maori and Pakeha led to significant shifts in cultural codes; the second area concerns the historical foundations of higher education in New Zealand and the establishment of Victoria University of Wellington. It includes a discussion of colonial and indigenous identities in the academic context; the third area deals with the contemporary university with particular reference to Victoria University of Wellington; the final section offers some reflections on the ways in which colonisation and local identity are presently influencing educational research priorities.     

新西兰中小学新教师“入职指导计划”述评

新西兰被认为是拥有世界上最好教育体制的国家之一,特别是在教师教育制度方面另有一套完全独立的教育体系。"入职指导计划"是新西兰教师委员会为新教师的专业学习提供实践支持的一项教育指导计划,旨在提高教师专业发展能力,促进新西兰教师教育职前培养、入职指导和在职专业发展的一体化进程,以推动教师终身教育体系的形成与完善。     

Globalization,innovation, and the declining significance of qualifications led social and economic change

This paper raises questions regarding the ability of new qualifications frameworks and assessment systems to promote innovation and social inclusion. Of interest in this paper is the centrality of tacit skill in promoting innovation. Tacit skill is central to innovation, although its positional character is not well understood by policy‐makers. It is argued that the relationship between tacit skill and innovation throws doubt on the relationship between assessment led change, and on the social and economic objectives of New Labour (in the UK) and the Labour‐led Coalition (in New Zealand). This paper also reviews recent changes in the funding of higher education in New Zealand and in the UK, and explores the impact of economic change on the competition for advancement through education. This paper concludes by arguing that innovation and social inclusion are not compatible.     

‘To teach the natives English’: James Pope’s 1880 native schools code

From their inception in New Zealand in 1816, until the end of the century in some cases, most mission schools in the colony maintained instruction solely in the Māori language. However, from the 1840s, successive colonial governments promoted a secular schooling system in which English would be the language in which students were taught, principally because Māori was seen as an impediment to the governments’ assimilationist ideology. The 1880 Native Schools Code, devised by the first Inspector of New Zealand’s Native Schools, James Pope, was one of the final major steps in this era in advancing this assimilationist ideal through the country’s education system. Pope’s initiative was partly a continuation of state policy that had existed in some form since the 1840s, but it also served as the most explicit statement to that time of how the government intended to use schooling to incorporate Māori into colonial society.