Keeping Gifted Education on the Agenda: Interview with Professor Roger Moltzen

Interview with Professor Roger Moltzen by Deborah Fraser

Tension and challenge in collaborative school-university research.

Collaborative university and school research projects are inevitably labour intensive endeavours that require the careful negotiation of trust and the joint critique of current practice. While this raises tension it can also build generative communities of inquiry that enhance both theory and practice. This article refers to an arts project undertaken in eight primary schools between university staff and generalist teacher co-researchers, focusing on children's idea development in dance, drama, music and visual art. The two-year project is briefly outlined and some issues that arise in school research are explored. There were issues related to insider-outsider tensions, the familiarity all project members have with classrooms, and the associated difficulties with reconceptualising how things might be done. While there are many strengths in collaborative research, there are also tensions. Some of the tensions outlined in this paper include: the need to exercise healthy scepticism alongside interest in the arts; the different cultures of schools and universities and how these influence research; and issues of risk and trust, which are both sensitive areas of ongoing negotiation. These issues and paradoxes in collaborative research are considered alongside particular processes that build school and university partnerships

Pain and pleasure in partnership between normal school teachers, student teachers and university teachers.

The triad of teacher, student teacher and lecturer has not always been a mutually beneficial liaison. Lecturers have expressed frustration with the constraints of schools and classroom programmes to incorporate approaches they wish to develop with students; teachers have expressed annoyance at the "child banking" nature of some interactions with lecturers and students. Some teachers have felt that their own valuable craft knowledge and skilful teaching practice has been ignored or is seldom acknowledged; students have often been left in the awkward position of having to learn from, and collaborate with, two powerful but sometimes opposing mentors. This report focuses specifically on teachers' perceptions of the state of their partnership with lecturers and students at the School of Education, University of Waikato. The research questions also illuminate the teachers' concepts of "genuine partnership" and how such partnership can be fostered. Some significant mismatches are revealed between teachers' concepts and lecturers' concepts of what it means to be professional. This report argues that an open dialogue (in various contexts) on what it means to be professional and the fostering of collaborative research may go some way towards achieving a collaborative triad which is mutually beneficial

Editorial: What lies beneath… confessional narratives; lessons from research.

Presents an introduction to the January 2005 issue of the "Waikato Journal of Education.

The creative potential of metaphorical writing in the literacy classroom

Creativity is difficult to define and a universal definition remains elusive. However, common words associated with creativity affirm that it concerns novelty and originality, hallmarks of many great and enduring texts. Students can also be encouraged to surface original ideas through constructing their own creative texts. This article outlines such a project that focuses on metaphorical writing with students in the primary school setting. When teachers foster creativity in the literacy classroom, they provide openended lessons, encourage variety and innovation, and allow time to play with ideas. Engaging students in writing their own metaphorical texts is one way in which students can generate novel responses and multiple interpretations as outlined in this paper. The students’ texts reveal unique voices that range from the playful to the dramatic in their creative exploration of what it means to be human. The potential of such writing for engaging students is discussed alongside the value of metaphorical writing for encouraging emotional exploration, imagination and sheer enjoyment

Curriculum integration as treaty praxis.

The article discusses the significance of curriculum integration on the promotion of principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, an agreement signed in 1840 by the Maori and the Crown people in New Zealand. It explores the challenges linked with this curriculum theory design. It also highlights a case study which analyzes the impact of curriculum integration in education

Who is learning what from student evaluations of teaching?

Student evaluations of teaching (or SET) through anonymous survey forms are a consistent practice in higher education across the world yet research results vary considerably as to the reliability, validity and efficacy of SET. Nonetheless, the widespread use of SET for promotion and tenure decisions ensures that these results are high stakes for tertiary staff. The tension between the purposes of SET (to supposedly improve teaching) and the ramifications of SET results are explored. Staff and students tend to hold very different views of SET and the issue of maintaining high academic standards can be at risk. However, SET can be used as an opportunity for staff and students to work together on issues in teaching and learning that enhance quality for all concerned

Negotiating the Spaces: Relational Pedagogy and Power in Drama Teaching

While there is a growing body of literature on relational pedagogy as a concept, less attention is given to the details of just how relational pedagogy manifests in classroom practice. Similarly, while issues of power, democracy and co-constructed learning feature in contemporary research, the details of how power relationships can be effectively altered between teachers and children warrants closer scrutiny. This paper explores how pedagogy is enhanced when spaces are negotiated between teachers and children in the real and fictional worlds of drama. The findings emerge from a two year collaborative research project between generalist elementary teachers and university researchers. Salient issues of trust, power sharing, and metaxis, which are part of relational pedagogy in the drama classroom, are explored. In particular, the paper discusses how traditional power and knowledge positions are 'disrupted' through the drama strategy of 'teacher-in-role' - a strategy with both political significance and pedagogical force

Paradox and promise in joint school/university arts research

Collaborative university and school research projects are inevitably labour intensive endeavours that require the careful negotiation of trust and the joint development of critique of current practice. While this raises tension it also builds generative communities of inquiry that can enhance both theory and practice. This paper reports on an Arts project undertaken in primary classrooms between university staff and generalist teacher co-researchers focusing on children’s idea development in dance, drama, music and art. This two year project is briefly outlined and some issues that arise in school research are explored. Project collaborators need to exercise caution in their examination of practice and strive to resist premature closure. All parties need to hold the tension of apparent contradictions, being both interested (in effective Arts pedagogy) and disinterested (in order to heighten perception) so that they might ‘surprise themselves in a landscape of practice with which many are very familiar indeed’ (McWilliam 2004:14). These issues and paradoxes in collaborative research are considered alongside some particular processes that build school and university partnerships

Exploring children's development of ideas in music and dance

Eisner maintains that the Arts education community needs ‘empirically grounded examples of artistic thinking related to the nature of the tasks students engage in, the material with which they work, the context’s norms and the cues the teacher provides to advance their students’ thinking’ (2000:217). This paper reflects on preliminary results of a collaborative research project between teachers and university researchers that is investigating how children develop and refine arts-making ideas and related skills in Dance and Music in a small sample of schools in New Zealand. Factors such as the place of repetition in the development of ideas, the relevance of offers, the place of verbal and non-verbal communication in arts idea generation, and group work as an accepted ritual of practice, are explored and discussed