Waikato Journal of Education
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Afterword: On the unexpected challenges of doctoral studies in Aotearoa New Zealand: An indigenous Māori perspective
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Ko e leo ke eke hā? Empowering tagata Niue living in Aotearoa New Zealand to claim its status in education
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Teaching with biosecurity content in the social sciences learning area: A Year 13 social science teacher’s experience
No full textIn this era of pandemics, asylum seekers, and conflict between super powers, social sciences are a critical subject that can help develop young people who can not only recognise racial and social discrimination but also injustices at a regional, national, and global scale.
Mainstream subjects, such as sociology, routinely support learning in the social sciences area. As a science/biology teacher, I wanted to find out whether biosecurity science could be used to support learning in the social sciences area. My interest in biosecurity stems from personal and professional experiences in New Zealand. Further, in my own pedagogical experience, teaching science/biology in schools, I found young people (15–18 years) were unfamiliar with the concept of biosecurity in New Zealand.
Considering my experiences, I set out to conduct research to look at the efficacy of using biosecurity in teaching and learning. This paper reports on the experience of one Year 13 social science teacher who used biosecurity content to teach in the social sciences learning area. Classroom observations and individual teacher interviews were used to gather data. The results show that biosecurity content engaged Year 13 social sciences students in the classroom and that the teacher used transformational learning theory to engage his students into undertaking social action related to biosecurity. Given the importance of biosecurity to New Zealand, this paper shows that social sciences as a learning area could support teaching and learning about biosecurity
Minions, masters, and migration: Challenging power structures in Gavin Bishop's Cook's cook: The cook who cooked for Captain Cook
No full textArguably New Zealand’s best loved picturebook author/illustrator, Gavin Bishop invariably challenges populist power structures in his fiction and non-fiction. As such, his books are ideal vehicles for teaching children about such broad topics as race relations, colonisation, migration, class conflicts, gender relationships, environmental issues and spiritual beliefs. The fact that Bishop often addresses several of these simultaneously, and draws on found texts to do so, paves the way for the teacher to encourage the child to read not only the lines and images but between and beyond these in order to construct a fuller meaning.
This article will discuss Bishop’s (2018a) picturebook, Cook’s Cook: The Cook Who Cooked for Captain Cook, which qualifies as “faction”, a genre that mixes fact and fiction, with Bishop reproducing historical events and characters whilst investing them with an imaginative dimension. Most obviously, the selected book portrays migration, including the colonisation of New Zealand and the Pacific, and its longer-term effects. Hence, it focuses on the subjugation of the indigenous people, culture, flora and fauna to those that are imported, as well as the domination of the working class by the upper class. However, Bishop is too skilful an author/artist to suggest that everything is black and white. Rather, through paralleling and fusing the aforementioned foci, and in the ways in which the print and pictures work separately, together, sometimes against each other, and in interaction with fore texts, he suggests that dichotomies are mixed.
The article will examine those portrayed as minions and masters (whether human or non-human), their conflicts and conflations, and Bishop’s use of verbal and visual techniques and fore texts to challenge dominant power structures. It will also argue that, while emphasising dichotomies, Bishop, the master storyteller and artist, creates structures that ensure his picturebook is balanced and whole and that, rather than treating the reader as a minion, allow him or her to become a master of meaning making
'Being' with research participants: Experiences of doing narrative research in the Covid-19 pandemic
No full textThe global Covid-19 pandemic has severely hit the lives of the people of Nepal. The country witnessed two phases of lockdown over 10 months from March 2020 until August 2021. I completed my PhD data collection in Nepal through February to April 2021, when the pandemic’s risk was naturally lowered. My research explores local value systems of communities involved in school governance in Lalitpur, Nepal. Accordingly, my participants included schools’ stakeholders: parents, teachers, locals, Education Officers and elected representatives. The Covid-19 situation in Nepal requires social distancing and mask wearing while talking with others. In my experience these health protocols disrupted my aims to develop rapport and build close, trusting relationships with my research participants. In this article, I reflect on ways I sought to build relationships of trust with my participants before conducting interviews amid Covid-19 regulations. I narrate my experiences as a Nepalese citizen and researcher in uncertain times. This research might be useful to researchers in establishing a relationship with participants, applying face to face interviews in unfavourable situations such as a pandemic
Navigating (mis)assumptions in exploring teachers’ knowledge and practice of multiliteracies pedagogy
No full textMy research aims to explore teachers’ literacy experiences and teaching practices in New Zealand intermediate schools through the lens of multiliteracies pedagogy (MLP). However, upon the initial semi-structured interview, I realised my (mis)assumptions and learned that it could be demanding and challenging for teachers to narrate their literacy teaching beliefs and practices. Consequently, I reworked my interview protocols and switched from semi-structured to unstructured interviews. Then I conducted them in conjunction with the collection of observational data. I also extracted the key elements of MLP – diversity, multimodality and a repertoire of pedagogy – and substituted them with terms and practices more familiar to the teachers. Through this experience, I discovered that honesty, flexibility and adaptability are some of the essential characteristics when conducting research as a novice researcher
Wayfinding waves and winds of change: The currency of the post-covid gaze into Pasifika/Pacific education’s trajectory
No full textThe thematic currency of this paper is a post–covid concern. My talatalanoa sits alongside Pacific educators’ voices in this volume of the Waikato Journal of Education, colleagues from Aotearoa New Zealand’s Realm Nations of the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau. While adopting a place-based and Indigeno-centric Pasifika/Pacific gaze through talanoa–vā, an analytical lens centred on unpacking stories and insights, I share my motivations and concerns wayfinding the wave-like changes facing Pasifika/Pacific education’s level of criticality and trajectory within Aotearoa New Zealand
Developing mathematics-enhanced chemistry research lessons through productive lesson study: Insights from in-service teachers
No full textThis study explores the perceptions of five in-service chemistry and mathematics teachers in using productive lesson study as a framework for teaching and learning. Introductory professional development workshops on horizontal articulation, productive pedagogy and lesson study were given to teachers at the onset of the project. Teachers were then tasked to produce two research lessons for grade 10 chemistry using the productive lesson study framework. We utilised inductive thematic analysis to identify the themes underpinning the perceptions of the teachers. Findings show that the teachers improved and deepened their knowledge by learning from each other’s perspectives. They had also adopted effective strategies for teaching by reflecting on their students’ learning, which helped them address the challenges of integrating and relating different topics into one. Furthermore, they became more aware of their students’ prior knowledge which enabled them to address misconceptions. Thus, learning was reinforced, broadened and extended. Participating in the study made a transformative intervention in the teachers as they became more focused on the enhancement of their professional practice as teachers
Omani international students' social connection and friendship at a New Zealand university
No full textThis is a qualitative study that explored the experiences of friendship formation of Omani international students at a university in New Zealand. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data from 12 Omani participants and data were analysed using thematic analysis. Utilising Bochner et al.’s (1977) Functional Model, the study found that Omani students were generally satisfied with how they were developing friendships with co-national and international students but revealed dissatisfaction concerning forming friendships with New Zealand students. The perceptions of Omani students revealed six factors that influenced their formation of intercultural friendships: (1) willingness to establish intercultural friendships, (2) frequent communication and social interaction, (3) English language proficiency, (4) capability to engage with host nationals, (5) cultural differences, and (6) personality traits. The data suggest that host-national contact is lacking and that international students prefer to contact co-national and multinational friends, which indicates that highly supportive co-national and international social ties significantly predominate. Higher-education providers in New Zealand and receiving countries addressing one cohort of international students will find these findings particularly useful