Reimagining Science Education in Aotearoa: A Pākehā Perspective on Connecting Mātauranga Māori and Science in Year 11

Engagement and success are prominent in education discussions, research and policy in Aotearoa New Zealand and globally. Yet, little is known about how successful Tongan science learners define engagement, enjoyment or success, and which teaching and learning experiences have enhanced or detracted from their engagement, enjoyment and success during their studies. This article shares the stories of 26 successful Tongan science learners who participated in talanoa (open discussion without an agenda) about their engagement, enjoyment and success in secondary and university science education in Aotearoa, and, for some, their schooling in Tonga. The Manulua framework (Fonua, 2021) informed how their stories were gathered, analysed and woven together. The article presents the Fata ho poto model to demonstrate how engagement, enjoyment and success are considered by successful Tongan science learners. This model is useful for those increasing Tongan and Moana/Pacific learning achievement. It offers important insights related to the role of education policy and practice in shaping notions of engagement, enjoyment and success among Tongan and Moana/Pacific learners.

Editorial

This article examines the opportunities, challenges, and risks that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) poses for science education in elementary and middle schools. Four areas of science education—standards, instruction, teachers, and curriculum—are discussed in the present context of NCLB accountability. Attention is given to how the current policy agenda affects science education and how this agenda may influence the teaching and learning of science for years to come.

Science teachers' practices and the use of resource materials in teaching science in year eight classes in Samoa.

With the globalisation of education, large numbers of students with interrupted schooling and low English literacy levels represent both a quantitative and qualitative shift in the kinds of students faced by teachers in classrooms. In Australia, after a year in an intensive English language programme, immigrant and refugee students are placed in the mainstream, where they face enormous challenges in content areas such as science. The complexity and specificity of science terminology pose a serious barrier for students. This article reports on a research project to support vocabulary learning in mainstream science for Year 8 refugee students (n = 23) in one high school. Data sources included teacher interviews, student journal writing, and the science text itself. The author demonstrates why science content language is inaccessible to many students through an extensive review of the literature, and then juxtaposes the views of students and teachers with the actual demands of one chapter from the Year 8 Science textbook on states of matter. The final section presents the response of the researchers to help scaffold vocabulary learning for this topic and a trial of the materials. The study highlights the links between conceptual and linguistic understanding. Given that students identified vocabulary as a major barrier to learning, and that the science teacher tended to assume rather than to explain new terminology, the language‐focused approach outlined to support vocabulary was seen as one way to address an urgent problem. Implications for professional development and teacher education are also addressed.

In 2012, the European Commission published the Horizon 2020 strategy which identified the ‘blue growth’, or the sustainable use of the oceans, as a core societal challenge not only in Europe but other regions as well [1]. However, according to Guest et al. [2], the health of the marine environment continues to be threatened by human activity, despite the fact that the value of the ocean has long been recognized. They argue for the need of a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to ensure the sustainability of ocean resources. People's poor understanding of marine science and ocean issues is identified as an obstacle to individual behaviour changes in many countries. Guest et al. [2] also recognize that the low levels of understanding about ocean science are evident among students in a number of countries, while there is 'growing awareness that formal education curricula do not adequately communicate ocean science to young people'. Furthermore, given the difficulty of understanding complex systems like the ocean, the use of models, computer simulations, and first-hand experiences can strongly enhance learning and teaching. The paper analyses pupils’ preferences for different types of media when acquiring information about science, as reported by a sample of pupils in Portugal and the UK. Specifically, it intends to investigate the pupils’ modes of gaining information about ocean-related topics by using different platforms as well as the media sources of information (such as TV, radio, computer, mobile platforms, magazines, or books) which are associated with higher levels of ocean literacy knowledge. Moreover, the paper analyses if mobile educational game-like applications with ocean related content could be a useful learning tool, as well as which are the most used applications by science teachers in an educational context. The study uses quantitative methodology and the data were collected between March and October 2017 by means of an online survey. The survey was administered to pupils who were studying science in years 7, 8, 9 (12 to 14 years) and to science teachers of six schools in Portugal and three schools in the UK. A total of 132 pupils and 21 teachers responded the survey in Portugal and 328 students and 20 teachers responded the survey in UK. Regarding the preferred source to get information about the ocean, findings indicate that the computer is clearly the preferred media, while the radio is the least chosen option by pupils in both countries. Moreover, findings show that over 35% of UK teachers and around 90% of Portuguese teachers consider that a mobile educational game-like application with ocean-related topics could be a useful learning tool and around 77% of UK teachers and 84% of Portuguese teachers say that they would use such educational applications as pedagogic tools.

There is a crisis in school science in Australia and this may be related to insufficient students developing an interest in science. This extended study looked at changes in 14 students’ interest in science as they moved through junior secondary school into Year 10. Although the majority of these students still had an interest in science in Year 10, it had fluctuated for most students from year to year. The presence or absence of simple, but effective, teaching practices, identified by these students, seems to suggest one way to retain or improve situational and, it would appear, in several cases, personal interest.

Donoho's JCGS (in press) paper is a spirited call to action for statisticians, who he points out are losing ground in the field of data science by refusing to accept that data science is its own domain. (Or, at least, a domain that is becoming distinctly defined.) He calls on writings by John Tukey, Bill Cleveland, and Leo Breiman, among others, to remind us that statisticians have been dealing with data science for years, and encourages acceptance of the direction of the field while also ensuring that statistics is tightly integrated. As faculty at baccalaureate institutions (where the growth of undergraduate statistics programs has been dramatic), we are keen to ensure statistics has a place in data science and data science education. In his paper, Donoho is primarily focused on graduate education. At our undergraduate institutions, we are considering many of the same questions.

The New Zealand Curriculum [NZC] identifies an understanding of science that supports informed citizenship as a major goal for the Science learning area. The Nature of Science strand, which explores how science itself works, is the overarching and compulsory strand in Science for Years 1–10. New Zealand primary schools vary in their choice of approach to science, but many employ generic inquiry approaches, most commonly aligned to information literacy processes, to address a range of learning areas, including Science. Experiences at primary level are formative for students in terms of their appreciation of science as a discipline. Key reports suggest that many New Zealand primary students’ experience of science is largely information based. This article draws on sociocultural learning theory and a multiple case study of science teaching in New Zealand upper-primary classrooms to propose that primary science educational experiences that reflect the discipline of science provide a range of opportunities for students to understand how science works, as is expected by NZC. Literature and findings from the study are used to suggest ways that primary teachers can support learning about the nature of science as part of their science programme.

Concept maps have been used individually to process thoughts and document knowledge in the educational sciences for years. This paper describes the usage of a concept map as an advance organizer and discussion aid for a group of 7th semester art education students. By collaboratively developing a concept map as an interactive installation over the course of multiple weeks, students are able to find and illustrate connections between wide-ranging topics covered in an introductory visual culture course. After individually researching topic areas, the group discusses and links them in the atelier. In addition to named connections between the concepts, works of art and media clippings are used to illustrate ideas. The installation serves as a motivational exercise for the students, benefits from their skills in visual expression, and can be exhibited at the end of the course as a collaboratively created work of art. While the process is easier to supervise and review when compared to written homework assignments, character differences between students lead to varying levels of participation. Students enjoyed the approach and plan to include it in their future practice as art educators, creating a need for development of best practices related to concept mapping in art education.

YOUR NEWS WANTED The news section gives updates on what has been happening in physics education worldwide. Items included show how events in one country could be relevant to good practice elsewhere in the world. Contributions are welcome from all our readers and should be about 200 to 300 words and can include a picture.