New Zealand Journal of Teachers' Work
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Practicum - A space for leadership and mentoring
Full text linkAssociate teachers (AT) play a crucial role in supporting beginning teachers but there is little research that identifies the practicum as an opportunity for advancing ATs’ leadership capability. While research identifies mentoring as central to the way ATs support beginning teachers entering the profession, there is little explicit discussion of the leadership skills ATs engage in and model to student teachers during a practicum experience. Nor is there explicit acknowledgement of the AT role as a pathway to leadership for early childhood educators.
In this article we draw from a case study located in a provincial New Zealand town and a review of literature to demonstrate that practicum is largely overlooked as a space for early childhood teachers to develop and advance their leadership skills. We argue that mentoring and supervision of student teachers during practicum provides a rich opportunity for associate teachers to increase their own professional knowledge and expertise as leaders within early childhood
Mātauranga Māori and secondary science teaching: 2022
Full text linkThis reflection piece is written for secondary science teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand who are , for the first time, being obliged to consider the inclusion of Māori words and concepts in the NCEA achievement standards they use to assess their students. My aim is to unpack the issues implicit in the current trends to incorporate Māori knowledge in the secondary science curriculum, and help science teachers see the new standards in a more balanced and optimistic way
Risky Choices: Autonomy and surveillance in secondary English departments
No full textAchievement data from New Zealand secondary schools suggest that students from lower socio-economic communities have fewer opportunities to engage with complex content in subject English. This article examines this phenomenon by drawing on Foucault’s notion of governmentality and considers how a context of simultaneously increased autonomy and surveillance may shape curriculum and assessment choices. To explore these ideas, I use interview data from ten secondary English teachers in the wider Auckland region. I complement Foucault’s (1982) explanation of governmentality with Ball, Maguire, and Braun’s (2012) notion of policy enactment to explore spaces of both compliance and resistance
An agentic perspective in assessment and evaluation of play-based learning
Full text linkIn recent times play-based learning has become more prevalent in New Zealand primary schools. The notion of learner agency has also emerged as a priority for educators. Learner agency is underpinned by a strong foundation of theory that has the potential to find synergies with play-based learning. Based on research across three primary school classrooms, this paper conceptualises learner agency as occurring on three separate levels in the classroom—type of learning, direction of learning, and evaluation of learning. It is the evaluation of learning where play-based educators may benefit the most from an agentic perspective. It is suggested that primary classroom teachers seeking to evaluate play-based learning should adopt a dialogic approach to evaluation based on asking questions that are focused on the four key properties of agency, which are: ideas, planning, action, and self-reflection
Australian music teachers’ reflections and concerns during the pandemic: Resetting the use of technologies in 21st century classroom practice
Full text linkClassroom practice around the globe has changed considerably due to the global pandemic. Although ICT (information and communication technology) is at the heart of 21st century teaching and learning, many teachers and students had to make significant adjustments shifting from face-to-face to remote (online) delivery in response to lockdowns and government restrictions since March 2020. This paper focuses on one focal question: ‘What were some of the concerns using ICT during Covid-19 pandemic?’ which was part of a wider Australian study ‘Re-imaging the future: music teaching and learning, and ICT in blended environments in Australia’. The authors seek to understand how music teachers look to employ technology in ways that connect teaching frameworks to 21st century classroom practice. As part of the ongoing study, they present preliminary survey data gathered between March–June 2021 from a range of music teachers around the country. Using thematic analysis, they discuss advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and challenges in relation to responses that thematically relate three key elements: pedagogy, social interaction, and technology. They identify concerns and call on music educators to reset what, how, and why they teach when using technology to develop 21st century competencies, as the future of schooling continues to change its landscape due to the pandemic
Reflection on supporting offshore international students during the pandemic: international student agency and the enactment of caring teaching
Full text linkTeaching is usually considered a caring profession, yet care in higher education settings is rarely studied. In this reflective piece, I draw on my experiences supporting offshore international students during the pandemic to highlight that maternal, calculated and neoliberal care are not the only enactments of care possible in higher education setting. I propose that communal forms of caring teaching based on recognition and dialogic relationship with students offer tertiary educators the opportunity to put the heart back to the neoliberal university. 
‘Maslow before Bloom’: Implementing a caring pedagogy during Covid-19
Full text linkThe speed at which the novel coronavirus, known as Covid-19, spread around the world in early 2020, has been well-documented. Countries closed their borders, cities and regions went into lockdown, schools and businesses closed and hospital geared up for an influx of patients (Cameron, 2020; OECD, 2021; UNESCO, 2020). On March 25, New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown, the most restrictive of the government’s alert level system. The school holidays, due to start on April 9, were brought forward two weeks to give the Ministry of Education and schools a chance to prepare for school-led home learning. A survey of schools highlighted that only half the schools in the country felt they could deliver learning fully online, with lack of devices and limited Internet connectivity being the major problems (New Zealand Government, 2020). Most schools moved into home learning on April 15 and continued until after May 18, when the country moved down to Level 2. On return, schools needed to alter their approaches to comply with social distancing and hygiene requirements until the country returned to Level 1 in June. In August 2020, Auckland schools closed again and yet again several times in 2021 (Author, 2020; Cameron, 2020; Education Review Office [ERO], 2021; Henrickson, 2020; Ministry of Education, 2020). The arrival of the Delta variant in Auckland communities, in late August 2021, led to further regional lockdowns, some of which are still in place at the time of writing.
This article draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 teachers in either late 2020 or mid-2021, as part of a larger study of New Zealand schools’ responses to Covid-19. The article begins with a short synthesis of research literature on teachers’ responses to lockdowns overseas and in New Zealand. The methodology for our study is briefly outlined before describing the ‘caring pedagogy’ theoretical framework that underpins the approach to this article. The findings are presented in a semi-chronological order, from teachers’ preparation, to implementation, to returning to school. The findings are interspersed with ‘found poems’ created from verbatim transcripts to highlight teachers’ voices. The discussion section revisits the concepts in the article’s title, that is, ‘Maslow before Bloom.’ The overall purpose of our article is to portray the tension between teachers’ willingness to adopt a caring pedagogy and the toll that it took on them, personally and professionally
A study of work stress and coping among primary school teachers in the Wellington region
No full textThis research examines the perception of work stress among primary school teachers in the Wellington region. Specifically, it focuses on the way teachers perceive work stress, the contributing factors and the coping strategies employed. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is the qualitative approach and methodology chosen to examine the way teachers make sense of their stress experiences. The educational sector in New Zealand has undergone enormous legislative and organisational change and in the recent past there have been nationwide primary school teacher strikes. While research on teacher stress in New Zealand in relation to the 1989 major reforms has been published, there has been little recent qualitative research on work stress in primary school teachers.
This study shows that these teachers experience moderate to high levels of stress because of work overload, the multiplicity of sources of stress, the emotional demands of the role and the frustration and constraints they face in role performance. Even so, these teachers derive satisfaction from the core job of teaching and utilise positive coping strategies to manage their stress and work demands, with most of them intending to stay in the role. However, the sustainability of the role of teaching is a concern, as societal misperceptions about teaching and lack of respect for them pose challenges for those continuing in the profession long term. This study contributes to the base literature on teacher stress in the New Zealand context and offers recommendations for supporting the well-being of primary school teachers
Editorial: PBRF Changes: Encouraging On-Going Fiddling with the Rules While the Academy Burns?
Full text linkOver the last 18 years successive governments have tried various schemes to reward and encourage good research, without actually conducting much research into the effectiveness of the rewards and discouragements inherent in their schemes. Universities have been very quick to analyse where the weaknesses in the successive formats gave them opportunities to promote their stronger players, and hide their weaker ones, to the point where the focus of universities seems to have become playing the rules, rather than actually supporting good research
Editorial: Ethics and Teacher Vaccinations during COVID-19
Full text linkIn this editorial, we discuss some of the ethical implications of the pandemic on teachers' work and their relationship to students, whānau, community and colleagues in relation to the complexity of mandatory vaccinations for educators