Kimihia, rangahaua ngā tikanga heke iho. He taonga huahua e riro mai: Exploring whakapapa as a tool towards a kaupapa Māori assessment framework in early childhood education

This study explores whakapapa as a tool, which can be used as a kaupapa Māori assessment framework in early childhood education, positioning kaupapa Māori theory as a paradigm base underpinning a philosophical and theoretical discourse towards assessment for children's learning. This thesis represents the culmination of a personal and professional journey, derived from the writer's longstanding interest in and commitment to kaupapa Māori early childhood education, and more specifically, philosophies and practices for assessment in this context. The study has canvassed a vast terrain of kaupapa Māori philosophy in its search for a theoretical grounding for a kaupapa Māori assessment framework for early childhood education. Foundation to the study has been the premise that the notion of whakapapa serves as an overarching philosophical matrix, encompassing the interconnected realms of genealogy, spirituality, and knowledge that precede, surround, and embrace the Māori child. Throughout the thesis, diagrams are employed to demonstrate and model the whakapapa underpinning the conceptualisations being explored. After contextualising the study within a historical overview of the impact of colonisation of kaupapa Māori education and research, it is suggested that a re-examination of key concepts from tikanga Māori will illuminate transformative possibilities applicable to the study's focus on the development of a theoretical base for an assessment tool within kaupapa Māori early childhood settings. Drawing from the literature, the thesis re-positions the view of the Māori child to one of being nurtured within a philosophical construct underpinned and immersed in tikanga such as whakapapa, ira tangata, whanaungatanga, mana and tapu, and ako, providing a strongly Māori theoretical base for the envisioning of the assessment process. The outcome of this study is to propose an assessment framework, which embodies and reflects these core kaupapa Māori philosophies as praxis

TRANSFORMATIVE PEDAGOGY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION: TEACHING TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION STUDENTS TO BRIDGE WITH ANZALDÚAN THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE

This thesis discusses the growing challenge facing teachers of technical communication in preparing educators with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives to effectively work with an increasing diverse student population, especially with those students whose cultural, racial, language, professional, and ethnic backgrounds are different from the educator’s background. Therefore, Anzaldúan theory offers another productive way of bringing together theory and practice to address the challenge of seeing and practicing technical communication’s critical and civic aspects within diverse communities. This essay provides insight into how Anzaldúa theories for social change might fulfill civic objectives

TRANSFORMATIVE PEDAGOGY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION: TEACHING TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION STUDENTS TO BRIDGE WITH ANZALDÚAN THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE

This thesis discusses the growing challenge facing teachers of technical communication in preparing educators with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives to effectively work with an increasing diverse student population, especially with those students whose cultural, racial, language, professional, and ethnic backgrounds are different from the educator’s background. Therefore, Anzaldúan theory offers another productive way of bringing together theory and practice to address the challenge of seeing and practicing technical communication’s critical and civic aspects within diverse communities. This essay provides insight into how Anzaldúa theories for social change might fulfill civic objectives

Expanding Directions, Exploding Parameters: Culture and Nation in LatCrit Coalitional Imagination

The articles and commentaries in this Symposium are excellent points of departure for reflecting upon the advances thus far achieved in the evolution of this still very young community of scholars. The articles and commentaries that follow this brief Introduction comprise the second free-standing law review Symposium on LatCrit theory organized specifically in response to student interests and initiatives. The timing is fitting, for this Symposium also coincides with the fifth anniversary of LatCrit theory\u27s emergence in the American legal academy. Since then, five annual conferences and four additional colloquia have produced, in total, nine published symposia in both mainstream and of color law journals. This record reflects and affirms LatCrit theory\u27s original commitment to collaboration with student law review editors, especially those of color, in the production of this new critical legal discourse on Latinas/os, policy, and society. This textual recordincluding this very Symposium-also attests to LatCrit theory\u27s expanding directions and exploding parameters. Indeed, this Symposium effectively celebrates and continues the LatCrit experiment that, in 1995, was, like Carlos\u27 dreams, little more than a will to imagine and believe

Some Temperance on the Doctoral Studies and On-Line Education

Toward the goal of doctoral studies, it is necessary to combine two basic characteristics of independent study. I like to call it an independent study, which would be partial to capture the whole of graduate studies. As for its high honor, the title page of dissertation in vast of universities usually use the phrase “...submitted for the partial fulfillment of doctorate degree...”. That phrase implies that the completion of dissertation would be a major part of doctoral studies, but should be partial depending on some of additional factors. Idealistically, that could be the whole quality as an independent researcher or investigator, and possibly the kind of human paradigm as a prospective teacher. In any case, we would not be incorrect if we see our principal work at the graduate level learning the ways of independent scholar. In this context, I would propose some of elements to be addressed in the end to guide the paradigm of doctoral studies and especially involving the e-age

Expanding Directions, Exploding Parameters: Culture and Nation in LatCrit Coalitional Imagination

The articles and commentaries in this Symposium are excellent points of departure for reflecting upon the advances thus far achieved in the evolution of this still very young community of scholars. The articles and commentaries that follow this brief Introduction comprise the second free-standing law review Symposium on LatCrit theory organized specifically in response to student interests and initiatives. The timing is fitting, for this Symposium also coincides with the fifth anniversary of LatCrit theory\u27s emergence in the American legal academy. Since then, five annual conferences and four additional colloquia have produced, in total, nine published symposia in both mainstream and of color law journals. This record reflects and affirms LatCrit theory\u27s original commitment to collaboration with student law review editors, especially those of color, in the production of this new critical legal discourse on Latinas/os, policy, and society. This textual recordincluding this very Symposium-also attests to LatCrit theory\u27s expanding directions and exploding parameters. Indeed, this Symposium effectively celebrates and continues the LatCrit experiment that, in 1995, was, like Carlos\u27 dreams, little more than a will to imagine and believe

The making of European society: contesting methodological nationalism

The paper is concerned with the problem of ‘society’ and in particular with the notion of ‘European society.’ Rather than reject the possibility of society, it draws on theories of the social as networks. The thesis proposed is that the concept of society should rather be understood as a relational field of interconnections. It is argued that this is highly relevant to the analysis of Europe conceived of in terms of a society. This approach can be seen as an alternative to methodological nationalism. The paper applies a network conception of society to Europe with the emphasis on the on the nineteenth century. In this account, European society is not something that was produced by European integration. Rather than see European society as a recent development, it is argued that the field of tensions between capitalism and democracy constituted the major elements that shaped a European model of society

Decolonizing the University: the Challenges and Possibilities of Inclusive Education

This article argues for a reframing of the curriculum within the academy in order to make the academy more inclusive and more accessible to a diverse student body. Reframing the curriculum is seen as an aspect of decolonizing the university. Many questions emerge from this argument to include the following: What curriculum informs the education contemporary learners receive and how do they apply this to their academic and work lives? How do educators re-fashion their work as educators and also as learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human and to determine what is human work? What are the limits and possibilities of visions of and counter and anti-visions to contemporary education? How do educators and learners challenge colonizing and imperializing relations within the academy and that influence the academy and its learners? How does curriculum become inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training and how does it make space for Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing? How do we frame an inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-colonial global future and what is the work that is required to collectively arrive at that future? These complex questions, stimulated by my decolonizing curriculum work and experience, are engaged through the body of this article.

Education as Aesthoecology

This thesis investigates the significance of aesthetics and ecology for education. Both these topics are considered in detail from a number of different perspectives including their social and philosophical emergence as significant entities since the 19th century. Their particular significance in more recent years is discussed within the framework of posthumanism and new materialism, in order to postulate the contribution that they might make to educational futures. An autoethnographic and theoretical approach has been used to frame the arguments for the importance of aesthetics and ecology. Using experiences from personal education practice, I examine the ways in which the complex interrelationship between aesthetics and ecology might influence educational debate and how this might fundamentally underpin any consideration of affective and emergent education philosophy. I argue that aesthetics and ecology might combine as a symbiotic entity. In this form its impact for education might be even more pervasive. This new organic entity, for which I have formulated the term aesthoecology, operates in its most dynamic form when mediated by a rhythmicity that maximises the affective and connected characteristics of the relationship between the two. Fundamental to the impact of aesthoecology is its role in processes of transformation in nature and culture. Features of this transformation such as symmetrical form, liminality and anticipation are considered from a theoretical perspective subsequent to locating them in the dimensions of space, place and time. The importance of the theoretical construction of aesthoecology is considered as the starting point for its potential application to education within a world that is experiencing significant and unprecedented challenges. Specific reference is given to examples of education practice that might illuminate the theory of aesthoecology, particularly from my personal interest in museums and galleries and from extensive school and community education experience. The thesis concludes with an invitation to education practitioners to reflect upon and consider significant elements of aesthoecological theory to experiment with and apply to the transformational processes within their own practice