Waikato Journal of Education
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Overcoming data collection challenges and establishing trustworthiness: The need for flexibility and responsiveness in research
No full textAn increasingly multicultural Aotearoa early childhood education (ECE) landscape forms the context for my doctoral study in progress. My research explores the culturally embedded and negotiated environmental identities of a growing number of migrant Indian teachers. This article documents my experiences of confronting and navigating the unexpected while planning and conducting the data collection for my research. The primary challenges were access to participants as well as participant dropouts. I discuss how I mitigated these challenges by employing an alternate sampling method as well as accounting for participant attrition and trustworthiness of data. The modification strategies highlight flexibility and responsiveness as critical research tools. This article has implications for early career researchers intending to plan or begin their research in the light of any future disruptions, such as the current Covid-19 climate
Addressing issues of missing values in the survey research of high school mathematics teachers' digital competencies
No full textThis paper reports how I addressed the issue of extensive missing values in my PhD study, "Digital Competencies of High School Mathematics Teachers". I collected data using an online survey. Several methods exist to address the issue of missing values. I utilised multiple imputation (MI) as it provides more accurate results. The mean scores and scale reliability of survey items changed after imputation. While addressing the missing values, I observed my focus was completely shifted from the analysis of the survey to developing an approach to imputing missing values. Researchers should be ready for complex and challenging situations. Once encountered, they should use that challenging situation to instigate creative tension – a force that moves us closer to our goals – to motivate themselves and to learn new things. I used creative tension to move from the issue of missing values back towards my initial research goal (preserving sample size and a complete dataset for analysis)
Contestations over Hijrat and postcoloniality: Forming a theoretical framework for the doctoral journey
No full textMy PhD study explored the experiences of a cohort of Iranian doctoral candidates in New Zealand. This paper presents my response to the unexpected challenge I faced as I collected data and formed my theoretical framework. I found that Western interpretations of non-Western international students largely ignored social-cultural specificities. I navigated this challenge by drawing from the postcolonial concepts of ambivalence, uncertainty and cultural hybridity to make sense of the way Iranian doctoral candidates’ experiences in a Western university were analysed and understood. First, I conceptualised the knowledge journey of the research participants as a Hijrat ‒ an Islamic and Persian cultural metaphor that refers to the experience of departure from one’s homeland. Second, I drew from postcolonial theory to manage the West/non-West binary. This paper offers non-Western doctoral candidates and their Western supervisors an example of how cultural congruence can be understood when completing a PhD study in the West. In a general sense, it is important to acknowledge and critically explore the impacts of past socio-political experiences and practices (e.g., colonisation) and historical knowledge traditions (e.g., Islamic) on present thinking and practices
Unsettling language ideologies: Examples from writing teacher education in New Zealand and the United States
No full textIn this study, we use qualitative research methods to explore how discourses about language manifested within two university writing teacher education classes, one in New Zealand and one in the United States. We used a collaborative teaching journal and student work as main sources of data, which were analysed inductively at key points before, during and after the focal classes. Findings showed that in these two geographically and culturally distinct contexts, practices related to “correctness” and “academic” language or writing were similarly hard to displace, even when the underlying ideas were unsettled. Our analysis suggests teachers and teacher educators have similar struggles of balance—to both prepare students to succeed within the world as it is now and to prepare them to push against the systems that maintain inequities
Teachers implementing new primary school digital technology areas: What are we teaching now?
No full textNew digital technology areas were added to the New Zealand primary school technology curriculum in 2020. These areas aim to grow students who are not just passive users of technology but, instead, students who understand how computers work, who are digital creators, informed by design processes and critical thinking. The new digital areas of the technology curriculum appear to have created tension between the expectations of teachers and their relative capabilities. Examining three primary teachers' implementation of the new digital areas, this project utilised a participatory action research (PAR) methodology to review teachers’ journey of adoption. Findings indicated that implementing the curriculum areas was not as complex as teachers first imagined and that unplugged activities (those without devices) played a significant role in the new digital technology areas’ successful implementation in the classroom. The main themes that appeared from the data included levels of teacher knowledge, teacher confidence and curriculum learning area integration
Reflecting on an unexpected challenge in obtaining ethical approval for research with adults with learning disabilities
No full textObtaining ethical approval for my PhD research with adults with learning (intellectual) disabilities presented an unexpected challenge of learning to work with two sets of guidance: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the Ethical Conduct in Human Research and Related Activities Regulations (HRR). The CRPD binds States Parties to progress equal rights for people with disabilities of which Article 12, equal recognition before the law, disconnects mental capacity from legal capacity. The HRR protects participants, researchers and institutions and recognises mental capacity as a component of informed consent. In applying the CRPD and the HRR as complementary safeguards, and looking through the lens of edgewalking, I gained an appreciation for positively encountering complexity and incorporating multiple points of view. This article will describe how my challenging experience enabled skill building to develop a more strategic academic voice and will be of interest to student and other researchers
Exploring possibilities and challenges of Lesson Study: A case study in a small island developing state
No full textLesson Study (LS) is a teaching improvement and knowledge-building process that has origins in Japanese elementary education. In Japanese LS, teachers work in small teams to plan, teach, observe, analyse and refine individual lessons called research lessons. This study examined a small sample of primary school teachers’ perceptions of LS as a professional learning endeavour. The benefits and challenges teachers experienced when attempting to engage in LS was further explored. The study focused on the Fijian primary teaching context, specifically on Year 8 mathematics teachers. Data was collected using a series of class observations and semi-structured interviews in two case-study schools. Analysis of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews confirms that LS provided a useful mode for teachers to talk about their mathematics lessons and open them for scrutinisation by their teaching colleagues. The findings suggest that all the teachers in the two schools found that LS is a powerful learning platform to improve teachers’ mathematical knowledge and pedagogical skills. These findings have important implications for the implementation of effective professional learning amongst practising primary school teachers
The construction and disruption of hegemonic power in picturebooks: An analysis of “bestbehaviour" Picturebooks in China
No full text“Best behaviour” picturebooks, also known as “making good habits” or “teaching good manners” picturebooks, have explicit educational intentions that imply a culturally hegemonic voice. Despite this problematic characteristic, these picturebooks are welcomed by both parents and the market in China. Using extant picturebook theory of picture-text relationships, narratological, paratextual analyses and translation theory, this article seeks a better understanding of how this hegemonic voice is formed, resolved or consolidated via a critical reading of three best-selling “best behaviour” picturebook series available in the Chinese market. One is the original Chinese-language WaiWaiTu-ZiKongLi series (Little Bunny series). The second series is the translated United States series, Hands Are Not For Hitting, now a Chinese best behaviour publication. The third series is a translated rendition of Pete the Cat series, which did not serve any evident educational purpose in its original English-market form but has been identified to cultivate good character on the Chinese covers. These publications commonly present straightforward picture-text relationships of two-dimensional stories and characters. Most importantly, adults hold power in these best behaviour children’s books. We argue that both the construction and disruption of hegemonic thinking co-exist in these picturebooks, reflecting the nature of adult power plays. At the same time, these best behaviour picturebooks serve as a good example of how hegemonic notions work within specific cultural and pedagogical contexts
Families’ comfort with LGBTQ2s+ picturebooks: Embracing children’s critical knowledges
No full textThis article shares conversational research (Thomson et al., 2012) that we undertook with parents in one of children’s primary education settings: the home. We investigated the question: what are the comfort levels of families, with young children, as they encounter picturebooks featuring diverse gender and sexual identities? Over the past 10 years in Canada, including New Brunswick, these picturebooks have increased in production (Bouchey, 2021; Miller Oke, 2019) complexity (Sullivan & Urraro, 2017) and circulation. Yet some educators in the early years of school remain uncomfortable reading these texts with young children, their concerns, in part, related to imagined backlash from heteronormative families (Goldstein 2021) and deeply entrenched constructs of childhood innocence (Kintner-Duffy et al., 2012; Martino & Cumming-Potvin, 2011, 2016; Robinson, 2013). Scholarship and our research confirm that most children know and can communicate their sex and gender identities by two years of age (Pastel et al, 2019; Stevenson, 2019) and are able to engage critically with picturebooks featuring diverse gender and sexual identities as they get older. Through our conversations with mothers, we learned that all families were comfortable with each picturebook category presented: gender expression, gender identity, gender harassment, and family composition. Interpreting our conversations through Queer Theory (Butler, 1990, 1993), we also learned how particular picturebooks serve as entry points to family discussions about diverse gender and sexual identities and how important access to diverse picturebooks is to provide these opportunities. Specifically, each of the nine mothers shared picturebooks that supported their child/children/families with being and knowing related to gender variance, who you can love, and/ or what games, hobbies and clothes are acceptable
An unexpected journey: From typing to dictating a thesis
No full textUnexpected twists and turns on the PhD journey can be directly related to the research itself, while others are related to the experience of the journey. For me, the most unexpected aspects were related to my health and saw me transition from writing and typing to dictating to the computer. This autoethnographic article is based on the lived experience of this unexpected journey and explores the implications for this necessary change in procedure. Implications included learning new processes for writing, transcribing interviews and controlling the computer by voice. Consideration of this experience viewed through Heidegger's ontological concept of being helped ease frustrations brought on by this unexpected twist. Becoming aware of the skills mentioned above may help others with accessibility issues, and reflection on the PhD journey from the perspective of this article may help others make sense of frustrations related to their own experiences