Alternative education in Aotearoa New Zealand: The politics and poetics of authorisation

Secondary students who become disenfranchised from mainstream schools are directed to attend Alternative Education (AE) centres. AE was a grassroots’ initiative in the 1990s led by youth organisations, iwi, community social service agencies and churches to meet the education and pastoral needs of rangatahi. Due to the tenuous links held between AE and the mainstream system and with no government policy work occurring within the sector for the decade prior to 2009, the sector struggled for adequate resourcing and professional recognition. Through a poetic inquiry approach this paper explores three key AE government policy directions over a ten-year period, from 2009 to 2019. Unbuckling prose found within official documents, concrete (visual) poems were created to perform a critical reading of policy. The policy poems form a narrative arc that show the discrediting of AE providers and demonising of students in AE has recently given way to more hopeful directions in policy. &nbsp

A Review of Undergraduate Education Student Responses to the Online Component of Blended Learning: A Cautionary Tale

Calls for enhancing the digital interface for teaching and learning within tertiary institutions have played out in one School of Education, with variable results. Online learning tasks were added in 2018 to regular classes to provide more flexibility for student engagement. A team of lecturers developed a questionnaire for students to be completed after the first semester pilot. Data and findings indicated that one-third of students identified online learning as an enhancement to their learning. A second survey was conducted one year later to assess changes made and analyse the longer-term impacts. During the COVID-19 lockdown, fully online pedagogy was required; anecdotal observation indicated an improvement in satisfaction and engagement, but perhaps only because online was the only way possible to complete assessments. The conclusion contains recommendations and a cautionary tale, when introducing online learning across existing courses

The Pull of Words : Reliving a Poetry Symposium through Found Poetry

Poetic inquirers immerse themselves in the flow of life, listening for art in the ordinary world, offering a response through voice and written word. The biennial International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, which draws poet-scholars from across disciplines and the world, showcases the artful use of poetry in research as a method of inquiry. In this article, the Fifth Symposium on Poetic Inquiry is relived by two attendees who interrogate found poems they each created from presentations and performances. The poems are brought together as a means of researching each author’s respective approaches to creating found poetry. In this article, the authors converse about their methodological frameworks: phenomenology and metaphor/ narrative. Central to this dialogue is how the found poem is listened for, and how artful responses are made to the pull of words. The authors conclude by considering the ethics of rehousing others’ words and the challenge this inquiry presents to our own private sense-making in academic conferences