What are the main features of the dominant educational ideology espoused at Bethlehem College? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education in Education at Massey University

This case study is an inquiry into a Christian view of Education. More specifically, what is sought in this research, are the characteristics of the dominant educational ideology held within a private interdenominational Christian school. An educational ideology represents the ideas and beliefs held in common by the members of the school regarding the arrangements for schooling in their particular context. Although a number of different ideologies may co-exist, it is the dominant ideology that is being sought in this study. A framework for the articulation of ideologies, most recently developed by Brown (1988), will be used as the basis for the analysis of this school's educational ideology. In this framework, an ideology is analyzed through the identification of distinctive features within several component theories which constitute the overarching educational ideology. These component theories include the school's view of: knowledge, its content and structure; learning and the learners' role; teaching and the teachers' role; the organisation of the learning situation; and its aims, objectives and outcomes. The school used in this research is Bethlehem College in Tauranga New Zealand. Since its establishment in 1988, Bethlehem College has opened an Early Childhood Centre, Primary school, Secondary school and a Teachers College, presently catering for seven hundred students. Currently, it is developing plans towards greater involvement in adult education programmes, somewhat akin to Polytechnic and University courses. Moreover, the demand for student enrolments at Bethlehem College has had a waiting list in excess of four hundred students

Using appreciative inquiry to explore the professional practice of a lecturer in higher education: moving towards life-centric practice

This paper reports on a strategy for exploring the life-centric practice of a lecturer in Higher Education. The initiative for this inquiry arose out of the realisation that there did not appear to be positive, heart-lifting stories in a lecturer’s current teaching experiences. Using an appreciative eye and supported by a critical friend, life-giving experiences were ‘stalked’ from the past. The hope in this endeavour was to find greater meaning in the lecturer’s best professional practice. Using an Appreciative Inquiry approach, this endeavour rejuvenated the lecturer’s professional practice. As life-centric stories were recalled, provocative propositions were constructed that became the basis of a personalised action plan for future professional practice. This paper outlines the nature of the journey and the heartfelt discoveries

An appreciative inquiry into the transformative learning experiences of students in a family literacy project

Educational discourse has often struggled to genuinely move beyond deficit-based language. Even action research, a predominant model for teacher development, starts with the identification of a problem (Cardno 2003). It would appear that the vocabulary for a hope-filled discourse which captures the imagination and infiuences our future educational activity seems to have escaped us. Moreover, we seem bereft of educational contexts where the experience for students is holistic and transformative

Hermite regression analysis of multi-modal count data

We discuss the modeling of count data whose empirical distribution is both multi-modal and over-dispersed, and propose the Hermite distribution with covariates introduced through the conditional mean. The model is readily estimated by maximum likelihood, and nests the Poisson model as a special case. The Hermite regression model is applied to data for the number of banking and currency crises in IMF-member countries, and is found to out-perform the Poisson and negative binomial models.Count data, multi-modal data, over-dispersion, financial crises

Libre culture: meditations on free culture

Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms