Paradigm lost

The term paradigm lost (with apologies to Milton) references the lost opportunities arising from a discrepancy in both what the New Zealand education context promises and what is implemented in many schools. Honouring the Treaty of Waitangi inherently promises an education system that draws on the worldviews of both Māori and Pākehā. We argue that the schooling model, adopted in 1877 and substantively unchallenged since, does not reflect the views of the uniqueness of every child as contained in the heritages of both Treaty signatory partners. More concerning is that the accompanying assimilatory practices within schooling have perpetuated their disastrous impact on Māori. This article explores the impacts of the ‘lost paradigm’ on students’ sense of self and therefore on their sense of belonging at school. The potential and hope for paradigm regained is also presented, drawing from the responses of educators who have participated in a professional learning and development course, where participants engage in a process of conscientisation, resistance and transformative praxis, that changes both their personal educational practice and that of their school. Through this course, participants experience what Freire (1996) refers to as ‘radical hope’ – the belief that we can make life better for others and change the paradigms that lead to oppression and despair.

extent of tablet computer use in New Zealand's early childhood education services

In 2017, New Zealand’s revised curriculum for early childhood education, Te Whāriki, expanded reference to the use of technology for teaching and learning to include digital media and related devices. This article reports findings from a doctoral study about tablet computer use among New Zealand’s four major early childhood service types: education and care centres, home-based services, kindergartens, and playcentres. Data were gathered in 2017, initially through a national survey, followed by a collective case study. Seven services participated in the collective case study which was designed to explain the results of the survey. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to analyse survey data while cross-case analysis was used to identify themes from the responses from each service in the collective case study. The results are presented according to two categories of respondents, services who classified themselves as non-users and services who were using tablet computers for teaching and learning at the time of the survey. The national survey results revealed that more than half of the services did not use tablets. Non-users’ reasons for not using tablet computers are discussed considering findings from both quantitative and qualitative phases of the study. Services who used tablets did so for a variety of reasons, including for documentation and assessment, to support children’s learning and teaching work. Qualitative data regarding policies or guidelines for staff about the use of and access to digital media, teachers’ and educators’ learning for how to use touchscreen tablets for teaching and learning, as well as services’ preferences on the facilitation of children’s tablet use are also presented. An important issue uncovered in this study was the use of personal tablets within ECE services. Among non-users, teachers and educators from more than half of home-based services and playcentres used their personally owned tablet computers, raising concerns about cybersafety and screen time. Many user services did not have formal guidelines or policies regarding tablet use. The data suggest that some services relied on the use of teachers’ and educators’ personally owned tablets. Implications arising from the findings of this study are explored, including the relevance of using digital technology for supporting distance learning and learning at home as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Were we ready? New Zealand high school students' experiences of online learning during school closures of Covid-19, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 resulted in New Zealand schools closing and teaching moving to online. This paper reports research which investigated senior high school students experience of learning from home during these school closures and anything about the experience that they would like continued in the future. High school students in their final two years of schooling (n=1975) responded to a questionnaire consisting of quantitative and qualitative questions with qualitative data analysed thematically and quantitative data with descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that a variety of learning activities, feedback on learning, positive social interactions and effective use of technology supported students. A lack of motivation and daily structure were the major hinderances. The key experience they would like continued was greater flexibility in their learning. Schools demonstrated varying degrees of readiness for the crisis, but findings showed the need for resilience plans which include policies and practices for student and teacher digital readiness in preparation for future crises which result in emergency online learning.

Global Citizenship Education conceptualisation in curriculum guidelines of the New Zealand Curriculum

Global Citizenship Education is a significant theme in the United Nations Educational Sustainable Development Goal #4. The aim of the goal is “to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNESCO, 2015b). This article provides an insight into where and how notions of Global Citizenship and Global Citizenship Education are represented within the New Zealand Curriculum. The systematic review of the document’s content and learning objectives, themes, and categories were based on the thematic framework proposed by Cox and Browes. These were generated utilising UNESCO’s definitions of Global Citizenship Education and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s international assessment studies of citizenship and civic education. In spite of the limitations of this research systematic review, that is, only the New Zealand Curriculum document is reviewed, this study adds some understandings of how and where Global Citizenship and Global Citizenship Education concepts exist at the curriculum level within Aotearoa New Zealand, making the suggestion of the incorporation of a Global Citizenship Education definition and concepts into the curriculum guideline documents to enhance the connection and fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goal #4.

The 'new normal' and 'new normalisations' in early childhood education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand

When New Zealand entered pandemic alert level 3 and early childhood centres were being ‘nudged’ to re-open in order to offer support for parents returning to work, the Ministry of Health advised both Early Childhood centres and parents that children were not at risk of catching or spreading the virus. Fast-forward to Level 1 and the Ministry of Health has advised that an infant, who arrived into the country from overseas together with its parents, had the virus and was in a managed quarantine. This paper discusses this apparent policy contradiction between guidelines and evidence by collecting and analysing discourses that the nation has received from government agencies regarding children and early childhood education. This paper uses these discourses to explore the 'body' of knowledge regarding childhood and early childhood education, discourses that make childhood and early childhood education possible. We then apply a range of theoretical and conceptual tools to suggest some possible conditions of early childhood education (leading up to, during, and post-Covid-19). We employ health and medical metaphors to highlight ongoing tensions for early childhood education as a patient for whom neither education nor health Ministries take sufficient responsibility. The use of a health as a metaphor additionally focuses this paper on the new ‘normal’ of early childhood education and education policy.

Early childhood education in Aotearoa in a post-Covid world

This article draws on recent research on the impact of Covid-19 on the early childhood education (ECE) sector in Aotearoa. It discusses the innovative ways that ECE services found to communicate with families and children and maintain an education programme during lockdowns, the essential role they played in childcare for children of essential workers, and the approaches some took to “working in solidarity” with children, families, and community. The article discusses crucial issues that need attention at policy and organisational levels. These include new issues that arose during lockdowns, and enduring issues that have intensified. The consequences of three decades of neoliberalism, privatisation and marketisation are briefly discussed and a reimagined vision is put forward.

Affordances of visual representations and sense-making of science

Visual thinking is essential in the development of science. Visual representations are also indispensable when scientists disseminate their findings. This paper discusses the ways that research studies on visual representations can inform science learning and teaching. I start by discussing the ways that drawings, charts and graphics represent their referents, and hence highlighting the affordances of these visual representations. Then I discuss how these affordances make visual representations a valuable tool to support science teaching in formal and informal contexts and, in particular, how learning with media graphics can support the learning of Nature of Science for scientific literacy.

(Re)Shaping spaces for learning

Schools and universities in Aotearoa New Zealand have been transitioning into new spatial configurations. These spaces are being carefully (re)designed to accommodate technology-rich activity, and to enable collaborative teaching and learning in ways that actively engage students in scaffolded inquiry. As teachers and students shift from traditional classroom layouts into flexible learning arrangements, educators are having to deeply rethink their own practices. In addition, the recent Covid-19 outbreak raised new questions in education about the role of technology in learning. This article argues that it is critical that Aotearoa educators understand (i) how to (re)design and (re)configure learning spaces in ways that support what they value in learning; and (ii) how they can tap on the digital to extend students experiences, both across and beyond schools and universities’ physical settings. The article introduces a way of framing the design and analysis of complex learning situations and reports on qualitative findings from a recent survey, which explored educators’ experiences of learning environments across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Software literacy in shaping what we know in a software-saturated society

Today’s modern societies are increasingly dependent on digital technologies and the software underpinning these technologies in almost every sphere of professional and personal life. These technologies and software are poorly understood as tools that shape our engagement with knowledge, culture and society in the 21st century. None of these tools are ‘neutral.’ They embody social and cultural assumptions about their use and all have particular values embedded in their interfaces and affordances. This paper draws from a funded research project investigating the notion of software literacy (Khoo, Hight, Torrens, & Cowie, 2017). In the project software literacy is defined as the expertise involved in understanding, applying, problem solving and critiquing software when it is used to achieve particular goals. The project team hypothesised there exists three progressive tiers of development towards software literacy in professional contexts. We conducted case studies of engineering and media studies students’ learning of an ubiquitous software such as PowerPoint as well as proprietary discipline-specific software to examine how software literacy is understood, developed and applied in a tertiary teaching-learning context. In this contribution we outline the project findings then use the notion of software literacy as the lens to unpack and illustrate through three everyday examples how software literacy would seem to be an essential part of learning and living in the 21st century.