Contesting forces: The political and economic context of curriculum development in New Zealand

In the 1980s and 1990s many countries felt the impact of new right economic ideology on their social policies: New Zealand was no exception. Education was seen as the key to improving economic competitiveness and to this end it was deemed necessary to upgrade the system. The reforms arising from the adoption of this position were to take two paths: administrative and curricular. This paper focuses on the curricular reforms and the development of two key national curriculum statements within their political and economic context. The curriculum for compulsory schooling became centrally controlled, subject-based, and achievement oriented. In contrast the early childhood document outlined a child-centred, thematic and experiential curriculum. This paper explores how such divergence arose out of the same socio-political context. The content of the documents is analysed using a theoretical model after Bernstein (1971).     

Lesson study for accessible science: Building expertise to improve practice in inclusive science classrooms

The Lesson Study for Accessible Science (LSAS) project created middle school teams comprised of both science and special education teachers who engaged in collaborative work to improve instruction in inclusive classrooms. The intervention is based on Lesson Study, a professional development approach that originated in Japan, which supports the systematic examination of practice and student understanding. Using an experimental design, teams of teachers were randomly assigned to the LSAS intervention or to a wait‐list comparison group. The results of this study suggest that science and special educators in the LSAS intervention were able to generate more accommodations for students with learning disabilities, and they increased their ability to set an instructional context and adapt an instructional plan to meet science learning goals for all students in an inclusive classroom. They did not, however, show significant increases in their knowledge of science content or learning disabilities. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 1012–1034, 2012     

The role of schools in disaster preparedness,response and recovery: what can we learn from the literature?

In order to contextualise the articles in this special issue, this introductory article surveys the relevant literature from recent disasters in mostly developed countries in order to explore the wider role of schools in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. The first section argues that as schools are hubs of their communities, it is important to understand the literature on communities in disaster contexts. This is followed by recent examples of school experiences of disasters, particularly in Japan, New Zealand and Australia. The final section synthesises the literature on children and young people in disaster contexts. The article closes with a set of recommendations for integrating schools into disaster planning.     

Assessing Children Who Cannot Be ‘Tested‘

The Scottish Low Birth weight Study was set up to follow the developmental progress of all children born in Scotland in 1984 weighing less than 1750 g. At 4.5 years, 636 children (71%) of the original cohort were still alive and 611 (96%) of these were assessed by a team of community child health doctors. Some children were found by them to be impossible to test using the standardised tests selected for the project. This paper describes adaptations which were made to the standardised tests to render them more accessible to children with specific difficulties. The modifications made enabled 27 children who could not initially be tested to complete some or all of the assessment procedure. It is suggested that inclusion of the assessments of children who retain intact skills despite being constrained in specific areas affords a more accurate measure of long‐term developmental handicap.     

A journey towards sustainable feedback

Meeting students’ expectations associated with the provision of feedback is a perennial challenge for tertiary education. Efforts to provide comprehensive, timely feedback within our own first year undergraduate public health courses have not always met students’ expectations. In response, we sought to develop peer feedback activities to support the development of ‘self-evaluative strategies’ that would acknowledge the centrality of students in the feedback process. We describe these activities, their staged development and the qualitative and quantitative data gathered from students and the teaching teams to evaluate this. Our first steps towards embedding peer feedback with first year students indicated they are willing to engage in the process and appreciated the opportunity to provide and receive feedback, but the quality and extent of the peer feedback was largely superficial. Students’ reflections on the feedback received were also shallow. Supporting students to develop self-evaluative skills cannot be achieved in the short term, but must be embedded in courses and consistently reinforced, with greater emphasis placed on the development of a dialogue around feedback that connects students with peers and educators.     

Creativity beyond the formal curriculum: arts-based interventions in post-disaster trauma settings

ABSTRACT

Schools regularly find themselves dealing with the aftermath of family, community and national tragedies. In this article, two university-based educators share their experiences of working with schools to engage children in arts-based activities to support the processing of the traumatic events they endured. In both cases, children in local schools had been traumatised by natural disasters and needed support to enable them to make sense of what had happened and to begin to absorb these events into their own personal histories.

The article summarises the relevant literature on the importance of post-traumatic processing and the use of arts-based methods for this purpose. The two case studies, one from the 2010–2011 New Zealand earthquakes and the other from the 2009 Samoan tsunami, are described separately before common themes are drawn from both cases. The joint findings are discussed using a framework that brings arts-based interventions and post-trauma processing together. The article concludes with the lessons learned from these experiences that might have broader applicability in other pastoral care contexts.     

Information management: A challenge for business education

The paper argues that too much of the focus of attempts to integrate IT into the business curriculum has been on either the acquisition of IT skills or on attempts to use IT to support the teaching process. Whilst accepting that these are necessary developments, it is argued that more attention needs to be placed on the meaning of information. This argument is developed through a review of the potential impacts of IT on the role of the manager. From this review it is argued that more emphasis is needed on embedding information management in the curriculum and that a fundamental underpinning for this is the notion of information literacy. A number of areas for further research and development are outlined.     

The New Zealand earthquakes and the role of schools in engaging children in emotional processing of disaster experiences

The earthquakes that rocked the city of Christchurch and surrounding districts in Canterbury, New Zealand, were to take their toll on families, schools and communities. The places that had once represented safety and security for most children were literally and figuratively turned upside down. Rather than reinforce the trauma and continue to frame children as passive victims, the study reported here aimed to help children reframe their experiences through active engagement in participatory research projects. This article reports on three schools drawn from a UNESCO-funded project in which schools recorded their earthquake stories. While children were the centre of each of the school’s earthquake stories, schools engaged children to different extents in their chosen projects. These three schools exemplify different places along a continuum of children’s engagement in research on their own experiences. In one school, children, families, teachers and the principal all contributed to an illustrated book of their experiences. In another school, children created a series of mosaic panels to record the community’s story before, during and after the earthquakes. In the third school, children became documentary makers and interviewed other children about their earthquake experiences. In all cases, children found their projects positive and helpful activities, enabling them to put their experiences into a broader context. This article argues that schools have an important role to play in providing emotional processing activities which help children gain perspective and distance as part of their recovery from large-scale disaster events.