Journal Articles
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915
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Item Music Education and the Neoliberal Turn in Aotearoa New Zealand(The MayDay Group, 2021) McPhail G; McNeill JIn this paper we explore the adoption of a neoliberal turn in New Zealand’s education system and its consequences, focusing particularly on secondary school music education. In the 1980s, New Zealand was one of the first states in the Western world to implement comprehensive neoliberal economic policies. Some 35 years later, education in New Zealand is situated in a highly devolved institutional framework that privileges neoliberal objectives. This article outlines the genesis of this socio-political context and the downstream effects of this environment on the secondary school music curriculum. Our central question is this: What have been the results of the “New Zealand Experiment” in terms of the type of music curriculum students now experience? The deeper problematic of the paper, however, concerns the fragmentation and instrumentalization of knowledge. On balance, we conclude that effects of the neoliberal turn within education in New Zealand may have been more detrimental than beneficial, as these agendas have encouraged a break with past more liberal and humanistic aims for education. However, we also argue that the changes have not been the product of any systematic project but rather the result of a confluence of complex and stratified causal mechanisms at work in the socio-political world.Item Supporting the Development of Science Pre-service Teachers’ Creativity and Critical Thinking in Secondary Science Initial Teacher Education(Springer, 3/03/2023) Marangio K; Carpendale J; Cooper R; Mansfield JCreative and critical thinking (C&CT) capabilities are essential qualities of future ready scientific literate citizens. As teacher educators, developing C&CT in science pre-service teachers (PSTs) requires supporting PSTs’ development of C&CT, in addition to supporting their understanding and capacity to teach for development of C&CT in their future school science students. In this study, four secondary science educators critically reflected on the development of our professional knowledge and practice for supporting secondary science PSTs’ understanding of, and capacity to teach, C&CT as future teachers of science. Meeting transcripts, reflective journaling and curriculum documents were inductively analysed for key themes, utilising an iterative approach with multiple cycles of review. Findings showed that integrating C&CT in explicit ways in our teaching and assessment tasks was not as straight-forward as initially imagined. Three themes were identified, showing how our thinking evolved, namely (1) becoming sensitised to C&CT in our science ITE practice; (2) developing a shared language and understanding for science education; and (3) illuminating the conditions for teaching C&CT. A recurring feature in all themes was the value of tensions for sensitising us to specific aspects of C&CT and its teaching. We offer recommendations for others seeking to develop science PSTs’ C&CT.Item Journeying from “I” to “we”: assembling hybrid caring collectives of geography doctoral scholars(Taylor and Francis Group, 2018-02) Dombroski K; Watkins AF; Fitt H; Frater J; Banwell K; Mackenzie K; Mutambo L; Hawke K; Persendt F; Turković J; Ko SY; Hart DCompleting a PhD is difficult. Add a major earthquake sequence and general stress levels become much higher. Caring for some of the nonacademic needs of doctoral scholars in this environment becomes critical to their scholarly success. Yet academic supervisors, who are in the same challenging environment, may already be stretched to capacity. How then do we increase care for doctoral scholars? While it has been shown elsewhere that supportive and interactive department cultures reduce attrition rates, little work has been done on how exactly departments might create these supportive environments: the focus is generally on the individual actions of supervisors, or the individual quality of students admitted. We suggest that a range of actors and contingencies are involved in journeying toward a more caring collective culture. We direct attention to the hybridity of an emerging ‘caring collective’, in which the assembled actors are not only ‘students’ and ‘staff’, but also bodies, technologies, objects, institutions, and other nonhuman actors including tectonic plates and earthquakes. The concept of the hybrid caring collective is useful, we argue, as a way of understanding the distributed responsibility for the care of doctoral scholars, and as a way of stepping beyond the student/supervisor blame game.Item Responding to calls for greater accountability(Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, 2007) Walshaw MItem Identifying discipline-based study skills: A preliminary needs analysis(Adam House Press, 2018) Ishii DAs undergraduate students begin their first year of study, they are expected to possess a set of transferable study skills. Teaching and learning support staff are typically called upon to provide assistance, through institution-wide skills workshops, for students in need of further skills development. An alternative approach is the movement towards embedding study skills within the curriculum to better address the specific study skill needs of each disciplinary community. This study used survey data from 191 students, collaboration with academic staff, and classroom observations as a means of conducting a preliminary needs analysis of students’ study skills in three, first-year undergraduate courses. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed particular study variables (i.e., tutorial attendance, comprehending readings, integrating knowledge sources into writing) were significant predictors of final term grades. The findings of this study may assist academic departments who wish to embed study skill support within their undergraduate courses.Item Pathways to engagement: a longitudinal study of the first-year student experience in the educational interface(Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2/07/2019) Kahu ER; Picton C; Nelson KStudent engagement is critical to success in the first year of university, yet evidence about how and why various factors influence engagement remains relatively rare. This study addresses this gap combining an existing framework of student engagement (Kahu and Nelson, Higher Education Research and Development, 37(1), 58–71, 2018) with student narratives to provide a detailed understanding of students’ engagement throughout their first year. Weekly semi-structured interviews with 19 first-year students at an Australian university illustrate how student and university factors interact to influence engagement, as conceptualised in the framework. The findings provide empirical support for the framework of student engagement, offering a more nuanced understanding of the student experience within the framework’s educational interface. The importance of self-efficacy, belonging, emotions and wellbeing as interwoven pathways to student engagement is demonstrated and the contextual and dynamic nature of engagement highlighted. Further work is necessary to understand how this knowledge can best facilitate student engagement and perhaps reduce cycles of disengagement.Item Making subject choices: Influences on adolescents' decision making(Adolescent Success, 2016) Poskitt JM; Bonney IMiddle Years students are required to make critical educational decisions with respect to subject choices. These decisions occur in adolescence - a period of intense identity formation, strong emotions, living in the moment and peer affiliation - characteristics which may affect decision making. Subject choices either broaden or narrow future pathways, so what influences adolescent student decisionmaking? A case study research investigation at one middle school involved teachers, students and their parents/caregivers through the use of questionnaires, interviews and document analysis to reveal various influences. Significant others (family, friends, older students and subject teachers), website sources and course information booklets were among the most frequently cited influences, although there were gender, ethnic and year-level variations. Structural issues related to school resourcing and timetabling affected some students’ choices. Of concern was inadequate awareness of: subject information, subjects required for entry to particular tertiary courses or career options, how to access information or who to approach. The school careers’ advisor was rarely sought, and subject teachers sometimes had little knowledge of progression in their field or career options. Implications arise from the study about effective ways to support adolescents in making appropriate subject choices.Item Practice Leader Role in Developing Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour Professional Identity Through Induction(Massey University, 20/09/2017) Arnold JThis research paper centres on a professional inquiry across Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) clusters within New Zealand that explored the role induction played in the ongoing development of new RTLB’s professional identity. A review of the literature was timely as although the RTLB service has the RTLB Toolkit, induction practices vary across the country. There is no ‘set’ framework that RTLB all use, and evolvement of professional identity is not mentioned within the RTLB Toolkit. Through anonymous online surveys to both new RTLB to the service in the last three years and, Practice Leaders (PL’s), participants shared key factors they believed supported the development of their professional identity through their induction framework. The research results highlighted five key components of an effective induction process that could foster professional identity growth. They were consistency of induction, clarity and understanding around what is professional identity, developing and maintaining trusting relationships, the importance of ako, Communities of Practice (CoP) and the impact of RTLB training on professional identity.Item Skills for Citizenship? Writing Instruction and Civic Dispositions in Aotearoa New Zealand(WAC Clearinghouse, 30/09/2019) Gerrard H: This article offers an overview of a first-year writing course in Aotearoa New Zealand, Tū Kupu: Writing and Inquiry, which forms part of a core Bachelor of Arts (BA) curriculum with “citizenship” as a key theme. I situate the course in the context of the tertiary sector in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the social and political contexts for teaching here, analysing how these contexts deeply inform the sense of “the civic” that we engage in writing instruction. In particular, I account for neoliberal trends in higher education and the complexities of citizenship, including the multiple and sometimes competing kinds of belonging, participation, and publics we invoke when we name citizenship as a teaching focus, and the role of writing in their enactment. My broadest claim is that this set of complexities is a useful one to illuminate the multifaceted work of writing instruction in this country. In addition, in three sections, this article works through some of the institutional and policy demands on writing instruction, the competing accounts of citizenship that we might engage, and how our assignments, text choices, and workshop pedagogy model civic engagement and frame writing in terms of inquiry and collectivity, amid shifting frames and hierarchies of belonging, and questions about the role of the university.Item Inclusive Education: How do New Zealand Secondary Teachers Understand Inclusion and how does this Understanding Influence their Practice?(Institute of Education, Massey University, 2019) Clark-Howard KInclusive education expects that all students are welcome and that teachers focus on adapting environments so every student can be present, participate, learn and belong. This article summarises a mixed methods, small-scale inquiry which investigated how a sample of 44 New Zealand secondary school teachers understand inclusion and how this understanding influences their practice. While most participants responding to the online the survey reportedly agree with the values underpinning inclusive education, most participants also felt that students with severe needs should be taught by specially trained teachers. Participants identified numerous barriers which influenced student achievement in inclusive schools and reported feeling inadequately prepared to teach in inclusive schools. Furthermore, consistent and clear inclusionary practices were not evident. While further investigation is required, the findings from this small-scale inquiry serves as a starting point into investigating how New Zealand secondary teachers can be supported towards becoming confident, inclusive educators.
