Mana Wahine and Washday at the Pā

Abstract

Washday at the Pā (‘pā’ is used colloquially by Pākehā to refer to a Māori settlement) is the title of an old schoolbook, a picture reading book for younger schoolchildren, which was produced in 1964 by the state education system in Aotearoa-New Zealand in 1964, written and photographed by Ans Westra, who later became one of the most famous photographers in the country. Washday at the Pā provoked a national debate when the Minister of Education acceded to protests by the Māori Womens Welfare League against its use in classrooms by withdrawing it completely, and the story of this controversy has remained alive in national consciousness ever since. This research brings Māori feminist philosophy to the Washday debate: I take up Mana Wahine theory as a useful lens on the controversy, understood as an event about, with and for women, in the history of Māori education. The purpose of this article is to reread, using Mana Wahine theory, existing arguments about the book’s withdrawal, and to propose an original resolution of the question at the centre of debate: should the book have been withdrawn from schools, or not?     

Documenting English syntactic development in face-to-face signed communication

The authors explored the face-to-face English competence of five students who were participating in a larger study of teachers' use of English-based signing. Using case studies, the authors report on the students' development of English-based signing at the beginning and end of their involvement in this 4-year study. Grammatical forms similar in English and American Sign Language (ASL) were initially more readily produced when tested for in English, and showed consistently higher attainment levels across all the students, than grammatical forms that are different in English and ASL. The authors found emerging English forms that could be documented (a) between prompted and imitated utterances and (b) within blocks of test items examining the same grammatical constructions. The authors conclude that teachers' concerted efforts to use English-based signing as a language of instruction enhance deaf students' English acquisition. Such signing helps build a bridge between native sign language and the development of English skills necessary for literacy.     

Evolution and the nature of science: On the historical discord and its implications for education

Research in the teaching and learning of evolutionary biology has revealed persistent difficulties in student understanding of fundamental Darwinian concepts. These difficulties may be traced, in part, to science instruction that is based on philosophical conceptions of science that are no longer viewed as adequately characterizing the diverse nature of scientific practice, especially in evolutionary biology. This mismatch between evolution as practiced and the nature of science as perceived by researchers and educators has a long history extending back to the publication of Darwin's theory of natural selection. An examination of how this theory was received by the scientific community of the time may provide insight into some of the difficulties that students have today in learning these important biological concepts. The primary difficulties center around issues of metaphysics and scientific method, aspects of the nature of science too often ignored in science education. Our intent is not to offer a specific course of action to remedy the problems educators currently face, but rather to suggest an alternative path one might take to eventually reach a solution. That path, we argue, should include the use of broader models of science that incorporate these elements of scientific practice to structure teaching and education research in evolution. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 1069–1089, 1998     

Globalisation and education

This paper analyses the links between globalisation and education. The growth of the global economy has increased opportunities for those countries with good levels of education, but has made growth more difficult for countries with weak levels of education. Countries with good human resources, high savings and good economic policies (chiefly in East and Southeast Asia) have attracted foreign investment and technology, and have experienced fast growth in exports of manufactures and in output per capita. Developed countries find it increasingly difficult to compete with such economies unless they invest in good education, training and skills, leading to high rates of innovation and productivity. Countries with weak levels of human resources have found it more difficult to succeed—and many, especially in Africa, have experienced falling per capita incomes. Globalisation has made it more difficult to build up educational levels in these countries, as public expenditure has been cut during adjustment. Hence virtuous and vicious cycles of development have emerged, with a good spread of education leading to high growth and generating resources for further development of education and, conversely, countries with poor human resources having low or negative growth and reduced potential for building up their educational systems.     

General Motion Pictures

Dana H. Hodgdon and Stuart M. Kaminsky BASIC FILMMAKING (New York: Arco Publishing, 1982—$12.95/$7.95)

Stewart Bronfeld WRITING FOR FILM AND TELEVISION (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981—$11.95)

Leonard Maltin TV MOVIES (New York: New American Library, 1982— $4.95)

Alan Frank THE HORROR FILM HANDBOOK (Totowa, NJ: Barnes E. Noble Books, 1982—$24.95)

Richard Dyer MacCann and Jack C. Ellis CINEMA EXAMINED: SELECTIONS FROM CINEMA JOURNAL (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982—$9.95 paper)     

Peabody bimonthly booknotes

Behind the Iron Curtain. Joseph S. Roucek and Kenneth V. Lottich. (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, 1964. Pp. 631. $8.95.)

Year‐Round Education. Clarence A. Schoenfield and Neil Schmitz. (Madison, Wisconsin: Dembar Educational Research Services, 1964. Pp. 111. $3.00, paper.)

The University of Kentucky: The Maturing Years. Charles Gano Talbert. (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1965. Pp. 208. $5.00.)

Montessori for Parents. Dorothy Canfield Fisher. (Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1965. Pp. 240. $5.95.)

The Montessori Manual for Teachers and Parents. Dorothy Canfield Fisher. (Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1965. Pp. 126. $5.00.)

The Montessori Elementary Material. Maria Montessori. (Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1964. Pp. 464. $8.50.)

The Montessori Method. Maria Montessori. (Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1964. Pp. 377. $6.50.)

Spontaneous Activity in Education. Maria Montessori. (Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1964. Pp. 355. $6.50.)

The Concepts of Over‐and‐Underachievement. Robert L. Thorndike. (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1963. Pp. 79. $3.25.)

Handbook of Research on Teaching. N. S. Gage, editor. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963. Pp. 1218. $15.00.)     

如果我们一生只能拥有10样东西?

My 10 choices, in no particular order: 1. Every man's library. If I can't have much, at least this will keep me busy. This collection has all the classics, as well as works by contemporary authors such as Joan Didion and Margaret Atwood.     

Using methodological triangulation to examine the effectiveness of a mentoring program for online instructors

In this quasi-experimental mixed methods study, we examined the effectiveness of a faculty-to-faculty mentoring program to increase student success rates in online courses at an American university. Over one semester, 24 faculty mentees worked with 6 faculty mentors on improving course organization and implementing student engagement techniques. Using methodological triangulation, we found positive results for two of our effectiveness measures (i.e., mentor and mentee feedback and mentors’ ratings of mentees’ courses). However, in terms of our third measure (i.e., student learning data), although institutional data showed that there was a 4.1% aggregate increase in online student success after the intervention, the intervention group made no significantly greater gains than two control groups. Our findings highlight some benefits and shortcomings of these types of university initiatives and also emphasize the importance of using triangulation to integrate participant feedback with formal measures of student success.     

Dissociation of conditioned appetitive and consummatory sexual behavior: Satiation and extinction tests

Sexual responses were conditioned in male Japanese quail using the opportunity to copulate with a female as the unconditioned stimulus (US). The conditioned stimulus (CS) was a 3-D object made of a taxidermically prepared female quail head mounted on a terry-cloth body. Both appetitive conditioned responses (approach and proximity to the CS) and consummatory conditioned responses (mount and cloacal contact directed toward the CS) developed when 2-min presentations of the CS were followed immediately by the US, but not when the CS and US were separated by trace intervals of 10 or 20 min (Experiment 1). Postconditioning sexual satiation suppressed conditioned cloacal contact responses more than conditioned approach to the CS (Experiment 2), and “acute” extinction suppressed both conditioned mounting and conditioned cloacal contact responses more than conditioned approach to the CS (Experiment 3). These results demonstrate a functional dissociation between conditioned appetitive and consummatory responses and imply that the motivational and/or associative mechanisms underlying the two types of behavior are distinct.