Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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“Those were Grand Days”: A New Zealand Teenager Writes her Own Life, 1928–1946
Get PDFThis article considers an “autobiography” written by a New Zealand school girl in 1946. This document is a family history artefact that, while possibly unique in terms of genre, has value for broader histories of childhood and youth, of adolescent writing and particularly for understanding the historicised educational experiences of girls in the interwar period. It provides a case study of how such sources can be used or interpreted, arguing in particular for a contextual and relational approach that considers the issues of historical setting, voice versus agency, and discursive influences. In the process it suggests that semi-autonomy rather than full autonomy emerges as a more useful interpretive concept when reading such adolescent life histories
Mythologising McCahon: A Heretical View
Get PDFMcCahon has frequently been characterised as a prophet, the greatest New Zealand artist, and exceptional, as if his works are somehow outside history and beyond criticism. This mythologisation has largely passed unquestioned in art critical and historical texts over the last sixty years. This essay views McCahon’s work and mythologised persona from a different perspective. It emphasises art-making processes and the business of establishing a public profile that ground his work and person in the material, everyday world, rather than elevating them transcendentally. A different picture of McCahon’s art and the means by which it came to be so idealised and hallowed emerges
After McCahon at Auckland City Art Gallery: Canonisation and the Market in the 1980s
Get PDFCan New Zealand postmodernism be described as a post-McCahon condition? Curator Christina Barton’s exhibition after McCahon: some recent configurations in art (1989), at Auckland City Art Gallery, was a critical response to McCahon’s canonisation, registering internal diversity within an institution deeply invested in this status. Strategically invoking McCahon’s name enabled Barton to smuggle a group of younger artists into ACAG’s exhibition programme. The artists in After McCahon explored poststructuralist theory, an expansion of institutional critique, post-punk practices and decolonial politics. These discourses of the 1980s supported the production of works dripping with postmodern irony and acutely conscious of the institutional authority amplifying McCahon’s voice and certifying his blue-chip status
Shifting Tides: The Potential and Limitations of Critical Mass to Change Discipline Research Habits
Get PDFAs we consider the future of Pacific scholarship in Aotearoa–New Zealand it becomes vital to consider what we wish that future to look like and how to get there. Part of that talanoa involves considering what the possible levers of change are and whether they are capable of fulfilling our desires for change. This article outlines the different national interventions that are being made to increase Pacific engagement in Aotearoa–New Zealand’s universities, and then considers whether these interventions are fulfilling our vision for our communities. In order to deepen conversations in this space, this article also draws on critical university studies literature to help unpack the current situation and to provoke some questioning around our current trajectory
Public education unbounded: Reflection on the publicness of Green School New Zealand
Get PDFGreen School New Zealand is a private school whose school fees confirm for critics the inequity of private education, but the school may contribute to an alternative vision of public education if its commitment to sustainability is recognised as a public good. Conventional understanding of public education is challenged by contemporary political and democratic theory on the nature of publics. While public education generally refers to education funded by the state, if public education is limited to education provided by the state it restricts the good that it can do because the state is not equitable in whose interests it serves. Concepts of public education need updating to reflect understandings of varied publics and the individuals of which they are comprised (pluralist publics); the freedom of publics in subjectivity and sovereignty (unbounded publics); and the mutuality and equality of relations within publics (publicness). Green School New Zealand undoubtedly works against public interests in some respects; however, its focused concern for the environment represents an emergent publicness that is not apparent in schools that are more closely bound to the priorities of the state. When we recognise their public dimensions, schools like Green School New Zealand may help with rethinking public education and how we develop new systems of education that act for the good of pluralist, unbounded but connected publics
Responding to Assessment for Learning: A pedagogical method, not assessment
Get PDFAssessment for learning (AfL) is a major approach to educational assessment that relies heavily on pedagogical practices, such as involving students in assessment, making transparent objectives and criteria, and asking open-ended questions that provoke higher order thinking. In this perspective piece, I argue that without the possibility of opening classroom activities to systematic and rigorous inspection and evaluation, AfL fails to be assessment. AfL activities happen ephemerally in classrooms, leading to in-the-moment and on-the-fly interpretations and decisions about student learning. In these contexts, determination of the degree of error in those judgements does not happen. Because human performance is so variable and because the samples teachers use to make judgements are not robustly representative, there is considerable error in their judgements about student learning. Nonetheless, despite the difficulties seen in putting AfL into practice, they appear to be good classroom teaching practices. In contrast, assessment proper requires careful inspection of data so that alternative explanations can be evaluated, leading to a preference for the most valid and reliable interpretation of performance evidence. Psychometric methods not only quantify amounts or qualities of performance, but also evaluate the degree to which judges agree with each other, leading to confidence in the validity and reliability of insights. Consequently, because AfL activities lack the essential characteristics of paying attention to error and methods of minimising its impact on interpretations, I recommend we stop thinking of AfL as assessment, and instead position it as good teaching
From Hilbert proofs to consecutions and back
Get PDFRestall set forth a "consecution" calculus in his An Introduction to Substructural Logics. This is a natural deduction type sequent calculus where the structural rules play an important role. This paper looks at different ways of extending Restall's calculus. It is shown that Restall's weak soundness and completeness result with regards to a Hilbert calculus can be extended to a strong one so as to encompass what Restall calls proofs from assumptions. It is also shown how to extend the calculus so as to validate the metainferential rule of reasoning by cases, as well as certain theory-dependent rules
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