History Of New Zealand Research Articles

Primary school visual arts education: Teachers’ perspectives

This research project developed from my concerns around visual arts programmes in New Zealand primary schools. Visual arts are an important expression of personal and cultural values and identity. Making art has been found to have a range of personal, social and developmental benefits for children (Efland, 2004a; Eisner, 2002; Jarvis, 2004; O'Connor & Dunmill, 2005) as well as developing valuable workplace skills for the growing sphere of creative industries. I felt there had been a reduction in time spent teaching visual arts over the last 10 years or so, and informal enquiries found many teachers agreed that they taught visual arts less than they used to or would like to. When I asked one teacher why this was so, she replied: It's too hard. The school day is so full, and everything has to be justified. (Personal contact) The effect of such pressures on visual arts education must be considered alongside a long-standing problem identified by research in New Zealand and internationally: many primary teachers lack the knowledge or confidence to teach visual arts beyond first steps. The Education Review Office found that less than half of New Zealand's primary school classroom teachers are able to provide good visual arts programmes (1995, 2004) and, although art is often children's favourite subject, the National Education Monitoring Project found that their art-making skills are generally not well developed (Flockton & Crooks, 2008). Primary teachers in Britain and the United States have reported feeling inadequately prepared for teaching visual arts (Ford, 2003; McCoubrey, 2000), but the problem does not seem to be simply one of adequate preservice preparation. A review of research literature in the area of primary visual arts education suggests that there are multiple, interrelated factors behind this problem. Teachers are at the epicentre of learning (Schwille & Dembele, 2007, p. 11) and central authorities ... depend upon teachers to implement (McGee et al., 2004). It is, therefore, vital to understand how teachers interpret the curriculum and why they make certain decisions about teaching rather than simply focusing on classroom outcomes. I began by considering the historical, political, professional and personal circumstances that may determine teachers' daily decisions around what, when and how they teach, as preparation for an inquiry into the perspectives of teachers on teaching visual arts as part of the classroom programme. The challenges for generalists teaching visual arts in primary schools A. Curriculum reform and the visual arts curriculum While art has been a core subject throughout the history of New Zealand's state education system (Collinge, 1978) the content and purpose of art curricula have changed to fit prevailing values and social and economic aims for the nation (Smith, 2007). The political impulse behind curriculum development indicates the origin of some significant challenges for teachers. Curriculum reform has been constant and substantial since the 1980s and a world-wide focus on quantitative measures of student achievement, influenced by neoliberal views, has had a major impact on what kinds of knowledge and achievement are valued (Biesta, 2010; Middleton, Codd, & Jones, 1990). When curriculum reform runs counter to teachers' beliefs as to desirable outcomes for students, and undermines what they know to be effective pedagogical practice, this creates a dissonance which reduces their effectiveness (Harker, Gibbs, Ryan, Weir, & Adams, 2003) and can produce resistance to mandated change (George, 2009; Stokrocki, 2004). As primary teachers are generalists they must accommodate change in all curriculum areas. Standen (2002) found that teachers' approach to teaching is determined by a coherent belief system which is composed of various interdependent elements including beliefs about self, relationships, knowledge, change, teaching and learning. …

Bidwill of Wide Bay

John Carne Bidwill was born in 1815 in England and died in Queensland in 1853. His short life is relevant to Australia's garden history, botany, the horticultural use of Australian plants in European gardens and the colonial history of Sydney, New Zealand, Wide Bay and Maryborough. He may have been the first to introduce plant breeding into Australia. In a short life, and working in his spare time, he contributed more than many full-time and longer-lived horticulturists. This included discovering new species, crossing new hybrids (specific and inter-generic), and propagating and promulgating plants for the nursery trade and gardeners. His efforts are marked by his name gracing many Australian and New Zealand plants, exotic plant hybrids and modern suburbs of Sydney and Maryborough. This brief biography outlines Bidwill's time in Australasia and Queensland.

Severe pollen limitation in populations of the New Zealand shrub Alseuosmia macrophylla (Alseuosmiaceae) can be attributed to the loss of pollinating bird species

AbstractThe loss of bird species following human colonization of New Zealand has raised concerns about the consequences for crucial ecosystem functions such as pollination. The understorey shrub Alseuosmia macrophylla (Alseuosmiaceae) exhibits characteristics typical of a bird pollination syndrome, but populations still persist in northern North Island forest remnants despite the local extinction of most endemic bird pollinators, leading to the suggestion that moths – rather than birds – may be the primary pollinators. The aim of this study was to quantify the importance of endemic birds as pollinators of A. macrophylla over several years by comparing plants on Little Barrier Island (LBI), where all extant endemic bird pollinators still occur, to plants at sites on the adjacent North Island in the Waitakere Ranges (WTK), where only one of these species remains common. Flowers on LBI were visited by endemic bellbirds (Anthornis melanura) and stitchbirds (Notiomystis cincta), while at WTK sites the most common visitors were the recently arrived silvereye (Zosterops lateralis) and the introduced honeybee (Apis mellifera), both of which acted principally as nectar robbers. Caged flowers on LBI had significantly lower fruit set than open flowers, and plants at WTK were significantly more pollen‐limited than plants on LBI. This provides evidence that the loss of endemic pollinating birds is the most likely reason for the high pollen limitation found in some North Island A. macrophylla populations, and the very low seed set of these populations could have serious implications for the long‐term persistence of this species.

Mates and Lovers: A Gay History of New Zealand by Chris Brickell

Mates and Lovers: A Gay History of New Zealand by Chris Brickell

<i>Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand Barry Reay Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand. By Chris Brickell. Auckland: Godwit, 2008. Pp. 430. $49.99 (paper). How does one write a nation’s history of same-sex desire and practice when there is almost no national sexual historiography? What would such a history look like when there is little to engage with in terms of local theory and practice? An answer, an optimum outcome, is Mates & Lovers. Chris Brickell’s pioneering work combines his sophisticated knowledge of the international literature with enterprising national archival work to produce what must be one of the most significant national histories of male homosexuality ever written. The title is quietly subversive in a New Zealand context, for it refers to Brickell’s country’s obsession with mateship, with close male bonding and the kinds of privileged masculinity that such relationships declare. Mates & Lovers is an attempt to queer this national (indeed Australasian) preoccupation. Yet the book can also be read with profit by an international readership. The history of same-sex sex is of worlds that are simultaneously recognizable and different, and one of the dangers of writing sexual histories is the imposition of modern meanings and interpretations where the forcing of the familiar forecloses any discussion of the different. It is ironic that this inability to read the past becomes most acute with recent history and that historians are more willing to recognize complexity in the sexual premodern than the modern. Rather than assuming a single history of homosexuality, historians now consider a variety of categories of male same-sex desire—friendship, sodomy, effeminacy, inversion—in the period leading up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when homosexuality itself became a type. But even that final category, whether “homosexual” or “gay,” should not preclude modern multiple forms of same-sex sexual expression. The book’s subtitle, A History of Gay New Zealand, implies a sexual certainty that its author is immediately keen to deny. The word gay, he points out in his preface, is not meaningful in its modern sense until the 1970s, and so he does not use it for his histories of earlier decades (“it is important to consider the vocabulary of sex and intimacy in its own specific context”), though the obvious risk is that mindsets will have already been reinforced by that very naming in the title (9). It could be argued that Brickell never reconciles this tension between sexual ambiguity and identity. Thus he [End Page 328] has men who “laid the foundations for the emergence of a modern gay identity” and an “emerging ‘queer’ world” (what could be more teleological?) while simultaneously stressing male same-sex uncertainty, ambiguity, and “imprecision” in his sexual history (8–9, 16–20). Yet his emergent “modern gay identity” dissolves almost at the moment of its making (20). Perhaps Brickell will have his proverbial cake, but even those who look for the sexual teleology will appreciate his careful, indeed loving, construction of the richness of male homoeroticism in New Zealand’s past. Friendship, that category of varied inflection, lies at the heart of Brickell’s analysis, the mates and lovers of the book’s title. Because it leaves traces of the expression of same-sex love and passion, friendship illustrates perfectly the indecipherability of the history of homosexuality. Friendship was a highly ambiguous term that covered a range of sexual and nonsexual expression. We simply cannot assume that male friends were lovers, as close male friendship—including affectionate address—was a cultural commonplace. The companionship of men was stressed rather than the sexuality of their interactions. Yet this very closeness could lead to something more. We can see friendship visually in the tantalizingly intimate, nineteenth-century photographs of male friends—who may, or may not, have been what we would call more than friends. The temptation for historians, not entirely resisted by all, though scrupulously avoided by our author, is to read too much into these friendships. The book ranges from early British settler society in the 1840s to the visible gay culture of the 1990s. The themes and imagery—drag, homosexual effeminacy, physique culture, the impact...

The Invertebrate Life of New Zealand: A Phylogeographic Approach.

Phylogeography contributes to our knowledge of regional biotas by integrating spatial and genetic information. In New Zealand, comprising two main islands and hundreds of smaller ones, phylogeography has transformed the way we view our biology and allowed comparison with other parts of the world. Here we review studies on New Zealand terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates. We find little evidence of congruence among studies of different taxa; instead there are signatures of partitioning in many different regions and expansion in different directions. A number of studies have revealed unusually high genetic distances within putative species, and in those where other data confirm this taxonomy, the revealed phylogeographic structure contrasts with northern hemisphere continental systems. Some taxa show a signature indicative of Pliocene tectonic events encompassing land extension and mountain building, whereas others are consistent with range expansion following the last glacial maximum (LGM) of the Pleistocene. There is some indication that montane taxa are more partitioned than lowland ones, but this observation is obscured by a broad range of patterns within the sample of lowland/forest taxa. We note that several geophysical processes make similar phylogeographic predictions for the same landscape, rendering confirmation of the drivers of partitioning difficult. Future multi-gene analyses where applied to testable alternative hypotheses may help resolve further the rich evolutionary history of New Zealand's invertebrates.

Peopling of the Pacific: A Holistic Anthropological Perspective

The human colonization of the Pacific is an enduring problem in historical anthropology. Recent advances in archaeology, historical linguistics, and bioanthropology have coalesced to form a set of models for population movements and interactions in Oceania, which have been tested on independent data sets. Earliest human movements into Near Oceania began about 40,000 years ago, resulting in great cultural, linguistic, and genetic diversity in this region. About 4000 years ago, the expansion of Austronesian speakers out of Southeast Asia led to the emergence of the Lapita cultural complex in Near Oceania. The Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania, commencing about 1200 BC, led ultimately to the settlement of the vast eastern Pacific, ending with the colonization of New Zealand about AD 1250. Polynesians probably reached the coast of South America, returning with the sweet potato and possibly the bottle gourd. Polynesian influences on New World cultures remain a topic of debate.

The new Oxford history of New Zealand – Edited by Giselle Byrnes

The Economic History ReviewVolume 63, Issue 4 p. 1198-1199 The new Oxford history of New Zealand – Edited by Giselle Byrnes MALCOLM MCKINNON, MALCOLM MCKINNON Victoria University of WellingtonSearch for more papers by this author MALCOLM MCKINNON, MALCOLM MCKINNON Victoria University of WellingtonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 October 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2010.00551_28.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume63, Issue4November 2010Pages 1198-1199 RelatedInformation

Global Influences and Local Environments: Forestry and Forest Conservation in New Zealand, 1850s-1925

James Beattie, Senior Lecturer, History Programme, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, Waikato, New Zealand, jbeattie@waikato.ac.nz. He publishes on Asian and Australasian imperial environmental history, Chinese art collecting, garden history and the history of science. Current projects include: Chinoiserie in Australasia (with Duncan Campbell); Australasian garden history (with Katie Holmes); Dunedin Chinese Garden (with Campbell) and Empire and Environmental Anxiety, 1800-1920 to be published by Palgrave in 2010. Paul Star, formerly Department of History, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, starmulq@ihug.co.nz. He has published widely on New Zealand environmental history, contributing a chapter to the New Oxford History of New Zealand (2009) and co-authoring three chapters in the forthcoming Seeds of Empire, to be published by I.B. Tauris in 2010. Current projects include: private and public afforestation in New Zealand; the role of nurserymen and others in global plant and animal transfers.

Licensed Native Interpreter:

Many of the cross-cultural intermediaries who figure in the New Zealand historiography operated in ‘middle ground’ situations. However, in New Zealand as elsewhere in the Pacific, intermediaries also had roles to play in settings where the authority of the colonial state was more or less assured. Working from government records and the 1920 diary of the Pakeha interpreter Ben Keys, this article examines the sorts of cross-cultural expertise involved in negotiating sales and leases of Maori land and probes the relationship between such instrumental uses of knowledge of Maori culture and the ethnographic interests that this work nurtured. For some settlers, Keys included, amateur ethnographic inquiry constituted the active intellectual work of being a New Zealander. By examining the work of an intermediary and amateur ethnographer in an age of automobiles and cinemas, I seek to demonstrate — in a modest, textured way — how the colonization of New Zealand was an ongoing, twentieth-century process in the sphere of economics and law as well as culture and identity.

Binding or Loosing in Australasia: Some Trans-Tasman Protestant Connections

In the context of recent moves to develop a shared history of Australia and New Zealand (Australasia), this paper identifies a religious dimension in the re-emerging shared history that is connected with other dimensions of the relationship. Building on this recent work, it uncovers the interconnectedness of Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists on opposite sides of the Tasman and finds some strength and consistency in the connections over the last 150 years. Starting with an examination of the denominations' attempts at institutional connection and cooperation, the paper moves onto an analysis of the exchange of personnel and ideas between them. It will also argue that these “religious” links strongly imply the existence of substantial “secular” links at both institutional and grass-roots levels. Finally, other areas for future research into trans-Tasman Christian linkages are briefly proposed and introduced.

A Survey of the History of Science in New Zealand 1769–1992

AbstractThis article provides an overview of the history of science in New Zealand over the period 1769–1992. General histories of New Zealand often overlook science and scientists and their contribution to shaping the country. This broad overview of New Zealand’s science history is not so much a re‐interpretation of events through a history of science lens, but rather an introduction to the contribution of science to New Zealand’s history, and follows a narrative showing the progression of science from Enlightenment and colonial science through the emergence of state science and the recent commercialisation of science. Along the way some key scientific institutions, including the New Zealand Institute and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, are introduced, along with some of the individuals who have made a contribution to science in New Zealand and its history in general.

The New Oxford History of New Zealand [Book Review

Review(s) of: The New Oxford History of New Zealand, edited by Giselle Byrnes, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2009, xvii, 738 pp. ISBN 9780195584714.

Mantle upwelling after Gondwana subduction death explains anomalous topography and subsidence histories of eastern New Zealand and West Antarctica

West Antarctica and adjacent seafloor have topographic elevations 0.5–1.2 km greater than expected from models of lithospheric age and crustal structure. Ocean crust near New Zealand has no equivalent depth anomaly, but tectonic subsidence histories from Campbell Plateau petroleum wells show anomalously high subsidence rates during the Paleogene, and total subsidence 0.5–0.9 km greater than expected from rift basin models. Geophysical and geochemical anomalies suggest that upward mantle flow supports the anomalous topography beneath Antarctica, and the Campbell Plateau subsidence history indicates that topographic support mechanisms were long lived (>80 Ma) and recoverable over a period of ~30 m.y. as plate motions moved New Zealand from Antarctica. We construct models of Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic mantle flow with a slab graveyard and upwelling above that is initially rooted at 1000–1500 km depth. Our models match topography and subsidence history anomalies, and are consistent with mantle seismic wave speed anomalies and the geoid. We suggest that when thermally driven slab downwelling ceased ca. 100 Ma, low-density material that was fertilized within a broad zone in the lower mantle during the previous ~400 m.y. of Gondwana subduction was released and able to rise. Mantle upwelling from depths of 700–1500 km, lasting for periods of ~100–200 m.y., with enriched chemistry related to the prior subduction history may be a general process that follows subduction death, and has not previously been recognized.

Will no Child be Left Behind? The Politics and History of National Standards and Testing in New Zealand Primary Schools

The recently elected National Government has proceeded, under urgency, to pass the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, legislation that seeks to provide specific information for both schools and parents about how well every primary and intermediate school student (Years 1 to 8) is progressing in literacy and numeracy compared with other children of the same age and in relation to clear national benchmarks. Readers familiar with the history of New Zealand’s education system will doubtless see in the ‘new’ policy many aspects of what appeared in an earlier policy document released by the then National Government in 1998–Assessment for Success in Primary Schools. This article will outline and explain the historical origins of National Standards and national testing in New Zealand primary and intermediate schools, and will provide a critique of the policy that is about to be launched. We conclude that politicians and others who are intent on pursuing ‘quick fix solutions’ to very complex educational problems, by embracing the ideological mantra of ‘National Standards’, appear set to perpetuate the very problems that historians had long though were best consigned to our educational past.

Paleoseismology and slip rate of the Conway Segment of the Hope Faultat Greenburn Stream, South Island, New Zealand

The Conway Segment of the dextral-slip Hope Fault is one of the fastest slipping fault segments along New Zealand s plate boundary, but has not ruptured co-seismically in the historic period and little paleoseismic data exist to constrain its large earthquake record. Two paleoseismic trenches were opened adjacent to Greenburn Stream near Kaikoura for the 2001 ILP Paleoseismology Conference. Both trenches were excavated into deposits ponded against an uphill-facing shutter scarp. Trench 1, dug through a cobbly soil and surface deposit was dominated by a thick fan/fluvial sequence that was radiocarbon dated at 4409 ± 60 C14 years BP (4844-5288 cal years BP) at the base of the trench. This trench exhibited evidence of complex deformation from many paleoseismic events. The most recent earthquakes are difficult to constrain due to a lack of cover stratigraphy on the fan deposits. However, the modern soil appears to be faulted and is covered by cobbles with a weathering rind-derived age of 220 ± 60 years. Trench 2, dug ?? 50 m to the west has an expanded sequence of the younger cover deposits. Paleoseismic event horizons have been recognised from the combined evidence of upwardterminating faults, offset and mismatched units, a sandblow deposit, and abrupt landscape change shown by the burial of paleosol surfaces that form the event horizons. Two paleosols underlying the modern soil are clearly faulted by two separate rupture events. A dome of sand interpreted as a liquefaction sandblow deposit overlies the lower paleosol (event horizon). Both paleosols are overlain by metre-thick debris deposits, interpreted as earthquake-induced rock avalanches that cascaded off the hillslope following Mw 7 + events. Four radiocarbon dates place some constraints on the timing of the three recent surface-rupturing events. The youngest and lowest date is 548 ± 60 C14 years BP (504-656 cal years BP) and occurs below the lower paleosol. It constrains the maximum duration of time in which the last 2 earthquake events occurred to be 545 years (1295-1840 A.D.). This is consistent with the average Recurrence Interval (RI) of 180-310 years that we determine using two independent paths. The soil record indicates that each event is separated by a significant period of time, comparable to the calculated RI. The most recent event is constrained between ca. 1780 A.D. ± 60 years, taking into account the dates from these trenches, a weathering rind age, and from stratigraphic correlation at the site. Event III probably occurred before 1220 A.D. A maximum dextral slip rate of 23 ± 4 mm/yr is calculated from the minimum fan age and the offset/deflection of a stream channel along the shutter ridge. In concert with the estimate of single event displacement (5-6 m), these results show that the Conway Segment of the Hope Fault is fast-slipping and has ruptured regularly as a result of large earthquakes prior to the European colonisation of New Zealand.

Native plant/herbivore interactions as determinants of the ecological and evolutionary effects of invasive mammalian herbivores: the case of the common brushtail possum

In their native range, mammalian herbivores exist in a suite of direct and indirect ecological and evolutionary relationships with plant populations and communities. Outside their native range these herbivores become embedded in a multitude of new ecological and evolutionary interactions with native plant species in the new range. Sound knowledge of the plant/herbivore interactions in the herbivores’ native range provides an ideal framework to better understand their effects in the introduced range. The example of the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) and its introduction to New Zealand from Australia provides an excellent case study. In Australia, the common brushtail possum is a widespread generalist herbivore and it is thought that this generalist lifestyle has equipped the species well for successful colonisation of New Zealand. In Australia the brushtail possum has co-existed with highly chemically defended foliage since the Oligocene and recent papers have supported the role of possums as agents of selection on eucalypt defences. While the chemical profile of New Zealand foliage is comparatively poorly understood, possums do show clear selectivity between and within populations and some of these interactions may be mediated by the animals ability to ‘cope’ with PSMs, coupled with maintaining its generalist diet. While possums have had less time to effect evolutionary change in New Zealand species, their impacts on plant fitness have been well documented. However, further knowledge on variation and heritability of foliage traits driving possum preferences is needed to elucidate the ecological and evolutionary plant/possum interactions in the invasive range.

Review: Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand, by Andrew Leach, Antony Moulis, and Nicole Sully

Review: <i>Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand</i>, by Andrew Leach, Antony Moulis, and Nicole Sully

Shifting the Views of Architectural History: A Review Essay

Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand consisting of sixteen papers presented at the annual conferences of the Society of Archectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) is reviewed. The book deals with the architectural debates and the review assesses the quality of papers and discusses the contribution the book makes towards popularizing architectural history in New Zealand.

LOOKING BACK?

In this paper I look back at The Piano in two ways. Firstly, I am ‘looking back’, in that quotidian sense of looking behind, over our shoulders at the past, at a film made 16 years ago and set in t...