Zealand Education Research Articles

Pride and prejudice…and other barriers to teaching for Asian New Zealanders

As New Zealand has become increasingly pluralistic, the teaching profession has become progressively less reflective of the wider population. This paper reviews the literature on impediments to teaching for minority students, and reports on a case study exploring factors that deter Asian New Zealanders from pursuing teaching as a career. The findings indicate that although the salary of an occupation is an important consideration, many other factors interact to deter Asian New Zealanders from teaching. Many of the reported barriers align with those identified for North American studies. The paper offers suggestions for short-term measures to attract Asian New Zealanders into teacher education programmes, and highlights the need for further research to inform a longer term resolution of the ethnic disparity in New Zealand's education sector.

Kaupapa Māori assessment: A journey of meaning making

Introduction This article describes the journey of a Maori early childhood centre towards an assessment framework that embeds Maori epistemologies, ideas of valued learning and cultural norms and understandings. The information presented is based on work completed in two interrelated projects. The first is the Te Whatu Pokeka: Kaupapa Maori Learning and Assessment Exemplar project, a Ministry of Education-funded project to produce a professional support assessment resource primarily for Maori early childhood services. The second is my doctoral thesis, Tikanga Maori as Outcomes for Early Childhood: Implications for Assessment: Kaupapa Maori Learning and Assessment Framework Development (Rameka, 2009), which journals the progress of participating Maori centres in developing Maori early childhood assessment approaches and framings. Background Best of Both Worlds Bilingual Preschool, the early childhood centre that is the focus of this article, is located in Papakura, South Auckland. It services a low-socioeconomic community with a high population of Maori and Pacific Island families. It is a Maori/ English bicultural, bilingual early childhood centre that was established in 1995. In 2004 a second centre was opened to cater for the growing numbers of children on the waiting list. The centres provide for 34 and 33 children respectively and employ 16 teachers who work across both centres. The majority of the children and teachers at the centres are Maori, although a diverse range of cultures, ethnicities and nationalities are also represented. The centres were established with the specific goal of supporting children to achieve academically in the New Zealand education system. The founders of the centre were frustrated at the rate of Maori educational underachievement that they were witnessing, especially within South Auckland. They believed that by exposing children to the best of both worlds, including all aspects of te ao Maori (the Maori world) and te ao Pakeha (the Western world), children would be better prepared to succeed in the education system, or in spite of the education system. The Best of Both Worlds philosophical statement is: To prepare children for school, to give them the confidence to question when they do not understand something. To openly discuss situations or events. For children to understand their tikanga (culture) and use it when an event calls for it. To know who they are and what they are as a person is important--their identity. To learn to challenge things and challenge life. To test the barriers and boundaries and learn to take risks in order to problem solve. To establish relationships with peers and ongoing friendships. To be a part of tuakana/teina (elder/younger sibling relationships) and understand how our elders look after our younger. To learn life skills in an environment where they are loved and understood. Methodology A qualitative, kaupapa Maori research methodology was used to gather, collate and analyse data in the research projects that underpin this article. In other words, they used an emergent methodological approach that located the kaiako, tamariki and whanau in their environments or settings and was concerned with meaning making, multiple interpretations or perspectives and collaborative endeavour. Not only do qualitative research approaches locate participants in their own environments or settings, they also support them to make sense of or interpret events in a way that affirms and legitimates their world views and lived realities. Denzin and Lincoln (1994, p. 4) state that: Qualitative researchers stress the socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between the researcher and what is studied, and the situational constraints that shape inquiry. Such researchers emphasise the value-laden nature of inquiry. …

Setting the record straight: the selection, subordination and silencing of Maata Patene, teacher

Maori women teachers in nineteenth‐century New Zealand have been little acknowledged in educational histories, and indeed, in some instances their contributions have been explicitly nullified. Those who have taken leadership roles have been no more visible. This article examines the silencing and exclusion from educational history of a young Maori woman who was both a teacher and a community leader during this period. It identifies the various points at which her role was silenced and suggests that such silencing is a reflection of her position as woman and as Maori, in a missionary/colonial context. In telling her story, this article (re)instates Maata Patene to a position of leadership and agency in the history of New Zealand education.

Barriers to and Facilitators of Inclusion for Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Education

In the New Zealand education system, as in other countries, legislation and early childhood policy has been developed to support equity, social justice and democratic participation for children with disabilities and their families. However, despite this non-discriminatory and inclusive policy and legislative environment, some children with disabilities and their families experience exclusionary and discriminatory early childhood settings and struggle to access quality education. In this article, the author examines some of the barriers to and facilitators of inclusion for children with disabilities and their families in early childhood education. The author also suggests some changes in cultures, policies and practices that may help create early childhood settings that would see all children included.

The Construction of Deaf Children as Marginal Bilinguals in the Mainstream

The political discourse of Deaf ethnolinguistic identity has empowered Deaf people in recent decades to deconstruct a pathological model of deafness and the deficit pedagogy that centres on acquisition of speech and social assimilation. The engagement of Deaf community members in consultation and employment in the New Zealand (NZ) education system has progressed the ideological recognition of Deaf claims for a bilingual identity and pedagogy in the education arena. However these priorities sit uneasily within the special education discourse which assumes an individual needs-based approach to accommodating diverse learners in regular school settings. The recognition of sign language and Deaf experience as valid cultural capital raises questions about the sociolinguistic status and educational needs of deaf children individually enrolled in mainstream schools, contexts which do not currently afford the interactional conditions for a sign bilingual education. Based on a larger study of deaf children in NZ mainstream primary schools, this paper analyses an illustrative case study of a 10-year-old deaf boy with a cochlear implant, to critically consider the extent to which mainstreamed deaf learners are constructed as potential bilinguals in the discourse that defines and addresses their needs. Analysis shows this learner to be positioned as a marginal bilingual or defective monolingual by the aggregation of beliefs, decisions, interactions and resources that construct his educational context. Finally, the paper reports the vision of Deaf informants working in the mainstream school system for changing learning outcomes, from a construct of deaf children as members of a collective with a heritage of cultural adaptations that should inform appropriate educational responses.

The Influence of Chinese Perceptions of Modernisation on the Value of Education: A Case Study of Chinese Students in New Zealand

Based on findings from a survey of Chinese students in New Zealand, this paper examines Chinese students’ perception of “modernisation”, and links their evaluation of New Zealand education to issues in contemporary Chinese education and society. By examining the motivating factors for selecting New Zealand as their educational destination, the effects of these factors on their experience in New Zealand, and their comparisons between New Zealand and Chinese education, this study finds that Chinese students’ experience in New Zealand closely relates to Chinese views of modernisation and the value of education generally, which are influenced by China’s drive for economic growth and the rise of materialism. The problems that Chinese students face abroad reflect the dilemmas and challenges in current Chinese society and education.

The Influence of Chinese Perceptions of Modernisation on the Value of Education: A Case Study of Chinese Students in New Zealand

Based on findings from a survey of Chinese students in New Zealand, this paper examines Chinese students’ perception of “modernisation”, and links their evaluation of New Zealand education to issues in contemporary Chinese education and society. By examining the motivating factors for selecting New Zealand as their educational destination, the effects of these factors on their experience in New Zealand, and their comparisons between New Zealand and Chinese education, this study finds that Chinese students’ experience in New Zealand closely relates to Chinese views of modernisation and the value of education generally, which are influenced by China’s drive for economic growth and the rise of materialism. The problems that Chinese students face abroad reflect the dilemmas and challenges in current Chinese society and education.

Place-Based Education: Catering for Curriculum, Culture and Community

Place-based education (PBE) is not an overly familiar term in the New Zealand education context but it has a rapidly developing profile within the United States and parts of Canada, mainly as an outreach of the environmentalist movement. At the practical level "place-based education" sets out to answer two fundamental questions: "What is this place?" and "What is our relationship with it?" It is hypothesized that the New Zealand education system (including its students, teachers, learning institutions and curriculum) is seriously remiss in not providing adequate structured opportunities for all New Zealanders to have a consistent and long-term ontological identification with what Geoff Park (1996, p. 323) refers to as "the two cosmologies – the two landscapes" that co-exist in New Zealand. This article explores some of the theories and practices embedded in a place-based education for Aotearoa New Zealand and recommends a set of principles for advancing the practice. Areas of research are suggested as appropriate starting points for tertiary institutions.

New Zealand School Uniforms in the Era of Democracy: 1965 to 1975

School uniforms are dynamic cultural forms and as such have meanings specific to the cultures in which they are worn. In New Zealand the history of their development is also a history of changing meanings specific to the New Zealand culture, connected to the status of children and the changing educational and social objectives of the education system. After a relatively slow development in New Zealand, school uniforms came into their own during the 1950s only to undergo radical change and diversification in the 1960s. During the 1970s school uniform as a practice reached a new extreme, allowing expressions of individualism and pluralism, values associated with a democratic ideal. Although such expressions threatened to overturn the sustaining principles of uniforms and uniformity, instead they reinforced uniforms as carriers and protectors of a powerful democratic ideal embedded in the New Zealand education system.

An evaluation of characteristics of environmental education practice in New Zealand schools

This paper reports on a national evaluation project that investigated characteristics of environmental education (EE) practice in New Zealand schools in 2002–2003. The research included a review of New Zealand and international environmental education literature, a survey of nearly 200 New Zealand schools and case studies of environmental education practice in eight schools. In this paper we describe and discuss key features of environmental education practice in New Zealand schools at the time of the research. We consider the rewards and challenges for teachers, students, schools and the wider school community arising from the schools’ implementation of this non‐compulsory curriculum subject. We conclude by considering what the findings told us about current EE practice and how these findings might inform a greater emphasis towards environmental education/education for sustainability in New Zealand schools at a time of national curriculum policy change.

On children transitioning to new cultural and linguistic settings. "When in Rome it's okay to be a tourist…"

There may be an implicit assumption amongst some New Zealand educators that minority cultures should assimilate wholly into the New Zealand way of life, shedding aspects of their own culture that conflict with the mainstream. Some others assert that encouraging minority students to maintain their culture, including language and traditions, results in positive academic and social achievement. This paper challenges some of the possible covert assumptions that may be prevalent amongst educators; assumptions that prevent these children from transitioning smoothly into our schools. It outlines the importance of valuing cultural differences, promoting a sense of personal identity and encouraging the use offirst languages.

Becoming Individuals Together: Socialisation in the Japanese Preschool

Early childhood educators and parents in New Zealand commonly express the hope that young children become independent, creative individuals. In contrast, Japanese preschools work towards a harmonious group of children whose views and behaviour are mirrored by their classmates. Dominated by lengthy periods of free play with little disciplinary action by teachers, classes as large a forty introduce children to 'life in the group' (shūdan seikatsu) and to essential Japanese social values. This approach is often at odds with stereotypical images New Zealanders may have of Asian children as academically driven from an early age. As New Zealand institutions face increasing numbers of Asian children entering the early childhood sector, this paper examines the ideology and practice of shūdan seikatsu socialisation methods prevalent in Japanese preschools in the hope of stimulating critical reflection by New Zealand educators on their own methods and goals.

Differences in Living and Learning: Chinese International Students in New Zealand

The international education market has developed rapidly throughout the Western world. Accordingly, Chinese students have become the largest group of international students studying in New Zealand. However, despite an increasing role that the Chinese market plays in sustaining the New Zealand education export industry, the education experience of Chinese students has not always been reported positively. The importance of this market to the educational sector gave rise to questions about the way in which Chinese international students perceived their New Zealand education and how satisfied they were with both their sociocultural and educational experiences. A study of 140 Chinese international students enrolled at a range of educational institutions in Auckland was undertaken. The results show that recognition of the influence of sociocultural factors beyond the learning experience itself is vital in facilitating mutually beneficial outcomes for Chinese international students and the international education industry in New Zealand.

Towards a new technological literacy: curriculum development with a difference

Abstract This article provides a brief review of the entry of technology education into New Zealand schools. It outlines the nature of technological literacy underpinning the 1995 technology curriculum and indicates how this has manifested itself in student achievement after 10 years of implementation. The article then discusses how the technology curriculum revision process sought to respond to early implementation findings, and in particular the key role of leading New Zealand technologists in this process. It explains the role of the researchers in mediating between this community, the philosophy of technology literature, and the technology education sector. We argue that the development process has resulted in both a more robust curriculum framework for technology and a greater depth of understanding within the wider technology community of the nature and importance of technology education. Introduction Multiple forms of literacy (for example, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy, information literacy) are becoming more visible in general education, both nationally and internationally. However, how these literacies are defined and how they may combine to support the development of an overarching literacy has yet to be explored. National curriculum statements are well known for using such underdefined terms, and this is no less true in technology. This paper seeks to provide some insight into the development of an understanding of technological literacy for New Zealand education, as a starting point for future exploration into how it may function alongside other forms of literacy to support an overarching literacy for citizenship. The aim of Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1995) was stated to be the development of students' technological literacy. The initial support material did not expand on this notion, and the teaching community was largely left to work out for themselves what technological literacy might look like and how it might be supported in classrooms. At this stage, all that was really known in technology education was that technological literacy was different from literacy developed within other disciplines (see, for example, Barnett, 1995; Gardner, 1994; Layton, 1993; Lewis & Gagel, 1992), and that such a literacy was essential for citizens living in a society that was mediated and challenged by technological developments and artefacts (see, for example, Heidegger, 1977; Idhe, 1983; Mumford, 1934; Petrina, 2000). Drawing on comparative work describing other countries' forays into technology (Black, 1994), New Zealand curriculum developers sought to position technology education on the broader side of the technological literacy debate; that is, aligned with a view of developing practical capability for citizenship rather than focusing on narrow technical competency (Compton, 2001). In an effort to provide guidance for teachers to support their students' developing technological literacy, classroom-based research became focused on developing a better understanding of technological practice (Compton & Harwood, 1999, 2003, 2005; Jones & Moreland, 2004; Moreland, Jones, & Northover, 2001). Technological practice was defined as that resulting activity that students could engage in when learning opportunities were based on all three strands of the 1995 curriculum statement--technological knowledge and understanding, technological capability, and technology and society. Technological practice, therefore, was viewed as the vehicle that would enable students to develop their technological literacy. This stance was coupled with an argument for a strong sociological focus within all technology programmes that would support a shift from a functional technological literacy, as critiqued by Pacey (1983), to one that was more critical in nature (Compton, 2001; Compton & Harwood, 2003; Compton & Jones, 2003; Davies Burns, 2000; Pacey, 1983; Petrina, 2000). …

School monitoring and quality assurance in the New Zealand school system

This article reports on the New Zealand education quality assurance and school monitoring system, including its framework, and responsibilities of agencies. It first gives an outline of the education system in New Zealand, and then introduces the role of school charters and levels of schooling. To ensure the quality of schools, the methods of school self-review and external reviews of schools are used by the New Zealand government. Schools are given a list of obligations that they have to follow. Assessment policies and the school curriculum are designed to support learning.

Upper Secondary School Physical Science Curricula in New Zealand after the National Qualifications Framework Reforms

The recent structural reforms in New Zealand education have given schools and teachers unprecedented freedom in curricular design and delivery. Using official educational award statistics for 2004 and data arising from a study of 23 schools' upper secondary science curricula in the same year, this study represents an early monitoring of the impact of the reforms on upper secondary enrolments and course compilations in the physical sciences using biology as a reference point. Enrolments in physics and chemistry courses relative to biology did not appear to have changed, but there had been an expansion of physical science education through combined science programmes in years 12 and 13, although the profile of physical science in these tended to be low. Teachers exhibited a strong liking for highly focussed laboratory-based internally assessed modules, and it is recommended that curriculum designers provide a greater variety of internally-assessed modules specifically targeting unconventional physical science programmes.

A Due Diligence Report on New Zealand's Educational Contribution to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Rather than assuming New Zealand's educational sectors and institutions will be active and effective contributors to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) the authors ask instead: ‘Are New Zealand's school and university sectors actually in a position to respond programmatically to the UN initiative?’ The paper first reviews past efforts to introduce environmental education and education for sustainable development either directly or indirectly in the New Zealand school curricula and in university courses and degrees. The sobering conclusion is that by 2004 the gains could at best only be described as partial, limited and marginal, and certainly not transformational. The paper then reports on the first year of the UNDESD related activity in New Zealand. Again, the efforts have been minimal and the impacts negligible. The New Zealand evidence suggests that until understanding of the constraints of existing educational frameworks is taken seriously, prospects are slim for anything other than rhetorical and cosmetic adjustments in educational curricula and educational outcomes. This realization means early political effort associated with the decade should be concerned less with grand visions and the content of local projects and more with removing institutional obstacles and impediments to creating a ‘sustainability mindset’.

Coping With Demand: Managing International Student Numbers at New Zealand Universities

Export education in New Zealand dates from the 1950s, with international students coming to study through the Commonwealth Colombo Plan. There has been a dramatic increase of international students studying in New Zealand. This research asks the questions: Are New Zealand public universities having to manage the international student numbers they face? If so, by what processes are they managing the numbers, and to what target number or percentages are these New Zealand education institutions aspiring? Selected for the study were the eight public universities in New Zealand. Of all respondents, seven have a target or quota of international students at their institution, ranging from 12% to 20% of the total enrolment. New Zealand public universities, although recognising the important contribution international students make to revenue streams and the internationalisation of their institution, saw it as important to consider other objectives and to manage international student numbers.

Articulating Ako: Maori Pedagogy in New Zealand Education

Articulating Ako: Maori Pedagogy in New Zealand Education

Smoothing the secondary–further education interface: developments in New Zealand following the national qualifications framework reforms

The recent structural reforms in New Zealand education have enabled the liberalisation of upper secondary school curricula to the point where schools can devise programmes that lead to nationally recognised vocational qualifications. Strategies include close relationships with further education providers whereby instructional materials or direct instruction for some courses may be provided by the further education provider, and schools gaining accreditation to conduct vocational education programmes. These various programmes are of demonstrated benefit to groups that have traditionally been under-represented in academic success, and may provide a means of addressing the growing problem of boys' underachievement.