Natural hazard preparedness in an Auckland community: child and community perceptions

Community engagement in natural hazard preparedness is crucial to ensure sustainable initiatives. Children are important members of communities, and can actively contribute to community preparedness. This article presents research undertaken with 11- to 12-year-old students from a school in Auckland, New Zealand, and leaders associated with the school community regarding their perceptions of the role of schools, communities and children in natural hazard preparedness. The findings show that the students believe they can be effective in promoting preparedness in their school, homes and community, and act as leaders in this capacity. Community leaders stated that preparedness actions should be culturally relevant, community initiated and owned and inclusive of child perspectives. From the combined perspectives of students and community leaders, this work concludes that emergency management must engage in culturally responsive ways with Māori and Pacific communities to enable community preparedness initiatives that are tailored to the cultural values and practices of communities most at risk from natural hazards. Further, it concludes that children have an important voice in community preparedness, which could be encouraged through school and community initiatives.     

‘Always the Outlaw’: The Potential for Subversion of the Metanarrative in Retellings of Robin Hood

This paper examines six recent retellings of Robin Hood and concentrates on the representation of class, religion and gender in the texts. The question is asked: ‘what values do the texts implicitly or explicitly arm?’ The idea that Robin Hood retellings are systematic of a socially and politically conservative ideology is interrogated by considering moments of possible transgression of the universalistic metanarrative in the texts.     

Persistence versus withdrawal from the college classroom: A test of four theoretically derived propositions

The purpose of this study was to test the generalizability of results obtained in laboratory research in the area of persistence behavior of students who drop college courses. Four hypotheses that included predictions concerning which students were most likely to drop courses, which courses were most likely to be dropped, and at what point in the semester students were most likely to drop courses were formulated from the results of laboratory research. None of the hypotheses were adequately supported by the data, suggesting that the results of laboratory research in this area are not readily transferable to college course-dropping behavior, at least without taking into account more relevant situational and personal variables.     

Research into the environment of science laboratory classes in australian schools

Existing instruments for assessing student or teacher perceptions of characteristics of actual or preferred classroom psychosocial environment are unsuitable for one of the most important settings in science teaching, namely, the science laboratory class. Consequently, the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), was designed to assess student or teacher perceptions of seven scales:Teacher Supportiveness, Student Cohesiveness, Open-Endedness, Integration, Organization, Rule Clarity andMaterial Environment. An important feature of the design of the study was that the new instrument was field tested simultaneously in six countries: Australia, USA, Canada, England, Nigeria and Israel. This paper is based on a sample of 4643 students in 225 individual laboratory classes, together with the teachers of most of these classes. Preliminary analyses were used to shed light on various important research questions including the differences between Actual and Preferred environments, gender differences in perceptions of Actual and Preferred environment, the relationship between the science laboratory environment and attitude towards science laboratory work, differences between school and university laboratory classes, differences between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the same laboratory classes, and differences between laboratory classes in different science subjects (Physics, Chemistry, Biology). Specializations: Science education, educational evaluation. Specializations: Curriculum, science education, science laboratory teaching. Specializations: Learning environments, science education, educational evaluation, curriculum.     

Situating Skills

The discourse surrounding skills in education and learning has often been dismissed as mere 'skill–talk'. This article seeks to reject this criticism by arguing that much of the criticism of skill–talk rests on an unsatisfactory behaviourist view of skills. Another approach towards considering skills is also considered, an approach deriving from the Aristotelian concept of technē , but this is also rejected. It is suggested that the concept of 'situational understanding' provides the best way of thinking about skills. This approach firmly situates the learning of skills within context: the possibility of all–purpose generic skills is rejected. At the same time, this approach helps to articulate what is needed from the standpoint of agency if skills are to be 'transferred'.