194 research outputs found
The seven servants of Ham: Labourerâs letters from Wellington in the New Zealand Journal, 1840-1845
Several years ago David Fitzpatrick noted that âthe materials of family historyâ had assumed increasing importance in studies of immigration. â[O]ld photographs, diaries and lettersâ, combined with genealogical methods, allow historians to âreconstitute the personal storiesâ of migrants. A number of New Zealand historians have done just that. Raewyn Dalzielâs research on 1840s immigrants to New Plymouth involved genealogical techniques. Rollo Arnoldâs Farthest Promised Land traced âordinary people whose family traditions are rooted in the English villagesâ. More recently, Jock Phillips and Terry Hearn have drawn on âfamily histories collected by members of the New Zealand Society of Genealogistsâ. Of the many forms of private documents used in studies of colonial immigration, used letters have perhaps proved of greatest interest. In 1972 Charlotte Ericksonâs book of EnglishâAmerican correspondence demonstrated the contribution letters could make to studies of âthe process of migration and the impact of this experience upon the migrant himselfâ. Angela McCarthy described letters as a fascinating âsource for exploring New Zealand historyâ and used them to draw attention to âthe critical importance of kin and neighbourhood connectionsâ of Irish migrants to New Zealand. Similarly, Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald have used extracts from early immigrantsâ letters to identify womenâs experiences of âunsettlementâ and âdestabilisationâ
"I my own professor": Ashton-Warner as New Zealand educational theorist, 1940-60.
The invitation to contribute to this volume addressed me as a New Zealander who had written about how Sylvia Ashton-Warner's fantasies, theories, imagery, and life-history narratives threaded their way through my own. I had written of my youthful encounters with her work in Educating Feminists (Middleton 1993), in which I looked back on reading Spinster in 1960 at age thirteen and reflected on my teenage dreams of life as an artist and beatnik in Parisian cafes and garrets: confined to an Edwardian boarding school hostel in a provincial New Zealand town, I had plotted my escape to what Ashton-Warner described in Myself as "some bohemian studio on the Left Bank in Paris or over a bowl of wine in Italy, me all sophisticated and that, with dozens of lovers, paint everywhere and love and communion and sympathy and all that" (Myself, 212). When, in the early 1970s, I began secondary school teaching and read Teacher, that book built bridges between the frightening urgency of classroom survival, the enticing theories but alien classrooms described by American deschoolers and free-schoolers, and "what I believed myself to be when a girl on the long long road to school, a vagabond and an artist" (I Passed This Way, 307). As a young teacher I, too, had poured my impassioned soul into writing journals and poetry, painting, and playing the piano. Like Ashton-Warner, I had hoped that artistic self-expression could keep the mad woman in my attic at bay, for "asylums are full of artists who failed to say the things they must and famous tombs are full of those who did" (Incense to Idols, 169)
âEmigrants of the labouring classesâ: Capital, labour and learning in Wellington, 1840-45
Questions of space and place are of increasing interest to educational researchers. A recent synopsis of âeducational geographyâ identifies Henri Lefebvre as a particularly âoverarching presence in the educational appropriation of spatial theories with many researchers referring to his work on perceived, conceived and lived spaceâ (Gulson and Symes, 2007, p.101). Physical, or perceived, space is that of everyday embodied âspatial practicesâ in everyday life: âsocial practice, the body, the use of the hands, the practical basis of the perception of the outside worldâ (Lefebvre, 1974, p.38). Abstract, or conceived, space, a product of capitalism, âincludes the âworldâ of commodities, its âlogicalâ and its worldwide strategies; as well as the power of money and that of the political stateâ (Lefebvre, 1974, p.53). âRepresentations of spaceâ are the charts, texts or maps of these rationally determined enclosures, including those of âcartographers, urban planners or property speculatorsâ (Shields, 2004, p. 210). Enacting technologies of domination, these introduce âa new form into a pre-existing space â generally a rectilinear or rectangular form such as a meshwork or chequerworkâ (Lefebvre, 1974, p.139). Lived, or social, space includes the realm of the imagination that âhas been kept alive and acceptable by the arts and literature. This âthird spaceâ not only transcends but also has the power to refigure the balance of popular âperceived spaceâ and official âconceived spaceââ (Shields, 2004, p. 210). The artistic and other expressions of âlived spaceâ are referred to as ârepresentational spaces.â In capitalist societies, Lefbvre argued, the abstract appropriations of âconceived spaceâ, and textual representations of this space, gain ascendency
Putting Sylvia in her place: Ashton-Warner as New Zealand educational theorist
Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a New Zealand teacher, won international acclaim in the 1950s-1950s with her novels, autobiographies, and accounts of her educational theory. Blurring genres between fiction and autobiography, much of her writing was centred on the âcreative teaching schemeâ she developed in Maori Schools. At the heart of the scheme was the idea that literacy was best achieved when children captioned their experiences of fear and sex, the two great (Freudian) drives. In Sylviaâs infant room, these erupted to the surface by means of captions (a childâs âkey vocabularyâ). I introduce Lefebvreâs idea of ârhythm analysisâ, applying it first to the teaching scheme, then to the âsystemâ in which Ashton-Warner taught. With reference to extracts from Ashton-Warnerâs Creative Teaching Scheme and Myself, I connect the rhythms of her life with her âtheory.â I identify Sylviaâs own âkey wordsâ (violence and war; ghosts; sex and the kiss) and their rhythmic engagements and collisions with educational âauthorities.
Researching Identities: Impact of the Performance-Base Research Fund on the Subject(s) of Education
My argument begins by introducing key conceptual tools, applying them to the formative years of Education as a university subject. Second, I sketch a brief history of the subject in New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasising its contradictory mandates as both academic and
professional/clinical discipline. Third, I explore intervieweesâ experiences and perspectives during and immediately after the quality evaluation process (Middleton, 2005a). The conclusion suggests ways the evaluation model might change to support (not penalise) Educationâs dual mandate to enhance research capacity and outputs and to produce good practitioners for the teaching professions
Becoming PBRF-able: Research assessment and education in New Zealand
It seems ironic that, designed as they are to quantify, evaluate and reward the research quantum of academic institutions, departments and individuals, research assessment exercises have themselves become objects of their research and critique. As many in this volume and elsewhere attest, the impact of research assessment runs deeper than mere measurement of âwhat is already thereâ: such processes are productive, or formative (Henkel, 2005, McNay, 2003; Sikes, 2006). Of course bringing about change is intended in the sense of increasing research quantity, enhancing its quality, etc. However, there are suggestions that by changing the conditions of knowledge production, research assessment exercises may also alter the shape and direction of disciplines by diverting and channelling researchersâ intellectual attention and political engagement, influencing what they study, how they do it, and how they report and write (Beck and Yong, 2005; Bernstein, 2000)
After the education disciplines: teaching theory on-line.
Like all social theorising, the academic study of education is 'reflexive'- complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper discusses an on-line version of an undergraduate teacher-education course, 'Social Issues in New Zealand Education,' that is designed to teach its students how to do such 'situated' educational theorising. Consistent with this theme, the paper is written as a stream-of-consciousness narrative. In an attempt to fix in print the 'counterpoint' of pedagicical theorising in general, as well as more specifically in an on-line setting, it is episodic in structure - more like the lateral leaps of hypertext than the disciplined hierarchies of headings characteristic of the linearity of conventional academic argument. It falls into three parts. The first introduces the online virtual classroom environment in which the teaching takes place. Part two locates the course within more general epistemological issues confronting designers of education (foundations) courses in pre-service teaching degrees in the twenty-first century. In Part three, the syllabus of the course is outlined. The paper concludes with examples of students doing 'situated' educational theorising as they engage with course readings and assignments. Through this multi-layered account, I raise for discussion some broad questions about pedagogy in educational foundations courses in today's environment
Labourersâ letters in the New Zealand Journal, Wellington, 1840-45: Lefebvre, Bernstein and pedagogies of appropriation
Henri Lefebvre suggested that social researchers engage in "the concrete analysis of rhythms" in order to reveal the "pedagogy of appropriation (the appropriation of the body, as of spatial practice)". Lefebvre's spatial analysis has influenced educational researchers, while the idea of "pedagogy" has travelled beyond education. This interdisciplinary paper combines Lefebvre's analytical trilogy of perceived, conceived and lived spaces with Bernstein's "pedagogical device" in an interrogation of historical documents. It engages in a "rhythm analysis" of the New Zealand Company's "pedagogical appropriation" of a group of agricultural labourers into its â"systematic colonisation scheme". The temporal-spatial rhythms of the labourersâ lives are accessible in nine surviving letters they wrote in Wellington and sent to Surrey between 1841-1844. By revealing how their bodies were "traversed by rhythms rather as the "ether" is traversed by waves," we understand how bodies, social space and the self are mutually constitutive and constituted
One hundred years of Sylvia Ashton-Warner: An introduction.
A biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner is presented. She was born on 17 December 1908 in New Zealand. She studied at the Auckland Teachers' Training College and taught in several native schools including Horoera Native School and Pipiriki Native School. Later she started writing, starting with "Teacher," a book about teaching schemes and followed by "Incense to Idols," "Bell Call," and "Greenstone." Also, her travels to various places are mentioned
Mentoring and teaching in academic settings: Professional and cultural identities from one PÄkehÄâs perspective
When invited to respond to the paper on âMentoring MÄori in a PÄkehÄ frameworkâ by Hook, Waaka and Raumati (2007), I hesitated. Mentoring was not a term I had previously used in my professional thinking or academic writing: unlike Barbara Grant (Ratima & Grant, 2007), I had not been involved in formal mentoring programmes or immersed myself in the mentoring literature. As a PÄkehÄ, I was not qualified to evaluate the authorsâ definition of a MÄori framework. At first glance, the target paperâs focus seemed to be on mentoring in commercial, rather than academic workplaces. My experience had been as a teacher, the last 30 years having been in a university School of Education. I was persuaded to undertake this commentary on the grounds that academic work involves nurturing, advising and supporting younger or less experienced colleagues, as well as students â tasks identified as mentoring in the Hook et al. paper. The following comments are informed by my everyday practices as teacher, thesis supervisor and researcher, and by my former management roles as an assistant dean of graduate studies and head of department. My angle of vision and conceptual resources are those of a (PÄkehÄ and feminist) sociologist of education
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