School of Education - Te Kura Mātauranga
Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10292/3300
Research within the School of Education - Te Kura Mātauranga is driven by students working towards postgraduate qualifications, staff pursuing their own research interests, and contracts for funding agencies such as the Ministry of Education and other partners. Research interests in the School of Education include; Learning and teaching, theory and practice, Curriculum and development, Teacher education, Early childhood education, Adult and tertiary education and development, Schools, E-learning, Educational administration, and Professional inquiry and practice.
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Teachers’ Experiences of Curriculum Reform in Aotearoa New Zealand(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2026-04-28) Gordon, Lisa; Lourie, MeganNew Zealand teachers have faced a period of significant curriculum reform over the past four years. With the government’s recent announcement of plans to reform the national qualification, and the proposal to introduce new subjects into the curriculum, we know more change is coming. This may result in role overload for teachers. Role overload occurs when the demands of a role surpass the time and resources available to an individual. Over recent decades, as teachers’ roles have evolved and expanded, evidence suggests there has been an increase in stress and burnout rates. This article reports on a small-scale study which explored the experiences of a group of early-adopter teachers attempting to enact Te Mātaiaho: The Refreshed New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education in Te Mātaiaho: the refreshed New Zealand Curriculum: draft for testing, New Zealand Government, 2022), which was the first of several curriculum rewrites. The findings of the study shed light on the significant demands that complex curriculum reform places on teachers highlighting the emotional and professional toll this can take. The research identified two urgent needs: a greater awareness of what is required of teachers when curriculum change occurs, and a re-evaluation of the way New Zealand policymakers approach educational reform. These findings are very relevant as New Zealand teachers continue to grapple with constant change and the effects of this on their wellbeing.Item The Subject-English Curriculum War: A Struggle for Symbolic Control(Springer, 2026-03-24) McPhail, Graham; Lourie, MeganThere have been significant changes to the national curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last three decades. Subject-English has been at the forefront of the three most recent changes which have occurred in quick succession and have had different priorities. We theorise that what is happening in subject-English is symptomatic of broader educational shifts and these shifts will also be reflected in the curricula of other learning areas as they are developed. In this article we employ Bernstein’s concept of ‘recontextualisation’ to trace how key ideas from various societal discourses became the recontextualising principles used to formulate and realise subject-English curriculum policy. We begin with an analysis of two key government documents that have given direction to the writers of the most recent English curricula. This is followed by an examination of the following curricula: English Years 0–6, the draft for English Years 7–13, the recently released curriculum for English Years 0–10, and The New Zealand Curriculum I Te Mātaiaho, demonstrating how the discourses identified in the government documents have made their way into these curricula.Item Enacting Power Sharing in the Pasifika Early Literacy Project(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2025-11-14) Siʻilata, Rae; Jacobs, Mary M; Aseta, Martha; Hansell, Kyla; Tilialo, AvikailaThe Pasifika Early Literacy Project, funded by the Ministry of Education from 2014 to 2024, provided teacher professional learning and development focused on supporting tamariki (children) and whānau (families) to revitalise Pacific heritage languages, while also acquiring English language and literacy. Teachers in early childhood education and primary schools were supported to connect duallanguage books with whānau heritage languages, experiences, and cultural identities. Power sharing with tamariki and whānau in English-medium education was encouraged to enhance engagement and learning outcomes. This article highlights how power sharing within professional learning and development and family fono (meetings) from 2021 to 2024 challenged monocultural ideologies of language and literacy.Item The Romanian Traditional Shirt "Ia": Agency, Complexity and Thing-Power in an Immigrant Teacher Identity Journey(University of Alberta Libraries, 2026-05-11) Enache, MihaelaThrough critical collaborative autoethnography with arts-based methods, I experienced the embodied making of a Romanian traditional shirt called ia, as a practical exploration of my immigrant teacher identity. Ia changed my world; she became an intrinsic part of my identity and the core of my study. She deserved attention and representation because she was a presence. I thus responded to a provocation: not only did I understand the object/subject/agent of my study differently, but I became different myself and transformed my relationships with humans and nonhumans. Ia changed from an object into a subject and a participant; she became a storyteller and my teacher. Through complexity, thing-power, and agency, ia generated an extensive theoretical framework and enabled juxtapositions of concepts from Romanian village metaphysics, new materialism, and quantum entanglements.Item Queer Bodies in School Spaces: Dis/orienting Practicum in Aotearoa New Zealand(Informa UK Limited, 2026-05-13) Cameron, Yael Thomas; Gaerlan, EuniceThis article is a focused analysis of one participant’s written reflections on what it means to be a cis-gender gay man on teaching placement in an Aotearoa New Zealand primary school. Sara Ahmed’s queering of phenomenology is a powerful activation of theory offering the possibility of critical, interpretative insight into queer experience within teacher education. We demonstrate how Ahmed’s queer phenomenology might generate depth in understanding of the spatial, affective and embodied dimensions of queer student teaching experience in practicum. We show that, in Aotearoa New Zealand, heteronormativity continues to play a significant role in the experiences of LGBTQ+ student teachers. Importantly, we find queer student teachers draw on capacities of resistance in order to enact and anticipate ‘liveability’ in school spaces.Item Breaking New Ground: New Zealand Certificates of Steiner Education(Frontiers in Education, 2024-02-13) Boland, Neil; Brice-Geard, Karen; Bell, Amanda; Cook, ChristineThe New Zealand Certificates of Steiner Education (CSE) are secondary qualifications at levels 1, 2 and 3, recognized by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. They give access to tertiary education in New Zealand and beyond. The impulse for new qualifications grew from a wish to have important aspects of the taught Steiner curriculum recognized and valorized, that these aspects be credit bearing toward tertiary study, an option not offered by existing qualifications. The certificates were developed over an 18-month period and were implemented by the (then) four New Zealand Steiner schools with high school classes. The CSE are based on a suite of learning outcomes which give teachers a substantial degree of assessment autonomy, allowing them to tailor assessment modalities to the student or class being taught. Since 2012, the qualifications have been offered overseas and are now used as a pathway to university by Steiner schools in a growing number of countries. This article draws on the experiences of one of the developers of the qualification and two teachers in schools using the certificate in the UK, and outlines some of the challenges faced when breaking new ground in the advancement of Waldorf education internationally.Item Navigating an Uncertain Interregnum(Frontiers Media, 2024-12-05) Boland, NeilThis article seeks to identify trends in Steiner Waldorf education through the lens of Clarence Beeby’s work on educational myths. Beeby calls myths a form of communication between contemporaries or between generations, ways of conceptualizing education that can be understood quickly yet are flexible enough to accommodate a range of interpretations. A myth holds for a period and then transitions into a new myth that best suits changed times and changed circumstances. I reflect on what the myths of Waldorf education might be and take up Gramsci’s well-known quotation on change, “The crisis consists precisely of the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear,” In writing this, Gramsci extended the interregnum beyond its usual papal connotation to include the socio-cultural condition as well. I use the notion to consider if Waldorf education is currently in an interregnum period and is displaying both “morbid symptoms” and promising signs of fresh development. In addition, I contemplate if these promising signs point toward a new myth that will allow Waldorf education to step beyond its century-old, colonial heritage.Item Scoping Community Engagement in the Context of Tomorrow’s Schools in Aotearoa New Zealand: An Integrative Review of the Literature(Informa UK Limited, 2026-04-21) Boyask, Ruth; Drake, Melanie; Macdonald, MaryanneSchools in a democracy need community involvement; community engagement in schools needs structures to support it. This article scopes how community engagement is conceptualised and enacted within Aotearoa New Zealand’s self-managing Tomorrow’s Schools system between 2009–2024 through a systematic integrative review of scholarly and grey literature. Using a replicable, PRISMA-informed protocol, we identified 68 eligible sources across government, education and academic sectors, and analysed them using reflexive thematic analysis. Definitions of community engagement were rarely explicit, and reported practices clustered at the lower end of the engagement continuum, particularly communication and participation, with comparatively few examples of durable, democratic decision-making. A consistent theme arising from the review is that policy ambiguity, including an under-specified notion of ‘community’, can constrain meaningful engagement and may leave gains for historically underserved groups less secure. The review concludes with implications for policy and future research, emphasising definitional clarity, representative infrastructures and longitudinal, collaborative inquiry.Item A Hiring Decision That Disrupted Whiteness: A Critical Autoethnography of Equity-focused Educational Leadership(SAGE Publications, 2026-04-18) Drake, MelanieThis article presents a critical autoethnographic examination of an equity-driven leadership decision in a historically segregated primary school: the appointment of a highly qualified Black African English teacher in an environment where whiteness had long shaped institutional culture, professional legitimacy, and community expectations. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, culturally responsive leadership and resonant leadership, the study interrogates how this decision surfaced deeply embedded racialised assumptions about language, academic ‘standards’, and belonging. The narrative illuminates the coded and explicit forms of resistance that emerged, revealing how appeals to ‘tradition’ functioned as mechanisms for maintaining racialised institutional norms. Through analysis of reflective journals, the article explores the emotional and relational labour involved in confronting such resistance, including the spillover of tensions into family life. While foregrounding that this experience cannot be equated with the systemic racism endured by marginalised educators, the study demonstrates how whiteness disciplines white leaders who disrupt its expectations. The findings highlight the fragility of equity gains in schools where transformation lacks structural anchoring. The article argues that sustainable equity work requires institutional, not individual, commitment and contributes to broader scholarship by offering a nuanced account of race, leadership, and the ongoing struggle for justice in education.Item Revealing Stories of Artistic Identity Through Fabric Bricolage(Informa UK Limited, 2026-03-31) Probine, Sarah; Jackson, Jayne; Enache, Mihaela; Ewing, Robyn; Crosbie, Jane; Stewart, JeanThis article presents and discusses the products of a creative workshop for artist/teachers which aimed to explore artistic identity through fabric bricolage, a medium unfamiliar to the participants. The account of the workshop and the artifacts created reveala the efficacy of a process that fostered reflection, honored complexity, included relational knowing, and affirmed the power of arts-based methods to reveal, connect, reframe, and transform. The article illustrates how individual acts of making, through the tactile, symbolic, and historically rich process of quilt-making, became a collective quilt of experience. The discussion points to the potential for further application in teacher education, professional development, and community arts contexts; any space where identity, creativity, and connection are valued. In a time when the arts continue to be marginalized in formal education and public discourse, creating spaces where creativity can be reawakened and meaning co-constructed is not just enriching, it is essential.Item The Criticality of Pacific Education – The Search for a Transformative Disciplinary Space(Wiley, 2026-03-29) Ualesi, Toleafoa Yvonne; Cunningham, Emma; Matapo, Fa’alogo Jacoba; Fa’avae, David Taufui Mikato; Iosefo, Fetaui; Allen, Jean M Uasike; Fa’aea, Aiono Manu; Baice, TimThis paper is a collective talatalanoa by early to senior career education researchers and scholars seeking to make sense of Pacific education and its trajectory as a critical and transformative sphere within the broader context of education and education research within Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ). The critical stance towards the education of diverse Pacific communities is well established in Aotearoa NZ and reflects ongoing settler‐colonial negotiations within postcolonial schooling contexts. Our collaborative and ongoing conversational narratives through talatalanoa captures the potentiality of a Pacific Indigenous modality or form of communicative expression and articulation. The impact of engaging a critical discipline provides visibility and disruption, enabling the deconstruction and re‐calibration of understanding centred in Indigenous Pacific concepts and frameworks enabling shifts to occur that are agentic and transformative within initial teacher education (ITE), classroom pedagogy and policymaking and implementation in Aotearoa NZ. As Moana scholars in Aotearoa NZ, we argue for Pacific education as critical transformative disciplinary work through the lens of transindigeneity and offer implications for practice, research and policy.Item Integration of AI into Art & Design TVET Curricula: Expert Perspectives on Strategies and Implications for Pakistan(RAVTE, 2026-03-12) Pirzada, GouharThe current study is a qualitative research examining the urgent need to consider utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) curricula and training programs in different Art and Design courses. Given that AI is rapidly changing the creative and technical sectors, TVET systems should keep up with it to provide graduates with the appropriate skills. A group of 12 informants participated in a focus group discussion (FGD), including specialists in five significant areas of the TVET: fashion design, graphic design, textile, interior design, and digital technology. During the FGD session, the discussions on the strategies to be used, opportunities, and challenges involved in integrating AI in the selected vocational training areas were thoroughly discussed. The results indicate that the most effective integration has been regarded as important in keeping TVET relevant. The respondents also found opportunity areas that should be developed in their curriculum, such as developing the skills to be more productive, to develop innovation, and to teach hybrid skill sets that could combine the technical AI skills with creative and critical thinking. Nevertheless, it was observed that there were immense obstacles that included educator training, ethical issues, and revision of old curricula. The paper concludes that a proactive and strategic approach toward AI integration, with outlined learning outcomes, ongoing instructional growth, and adaptable instructions, is needed to match the results of TVET and the needs of the digital economy in the South Asian market, in particular, Pakistan.Item Equity and Veterinary Education in Aotearoa New Zealand(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2026-03-04) Stewart, GT; Birdsall, SThis short commentary article considers veterinary education as a specific type of science professional education that is impacted by lack of participation of Māori and Pacific students in senior secondary science education. The veterinary profession in Aotearoa New Zealand faces a difficult challenge to overcome the severe under-representation of practising Māori and Pacific veterinarians. At the only veterinary school in the country, the first Māori professor of veterinary education is leading the VetMAP programme, which has been established to recruit and support more Māori and Pacific veterinary students. A related question involves addressing the monocultural nature of veterinary education, so key Māori concepts of whakapapa, kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga are discussed for their potential usefulness.Item Holding the Line: Maintaining Indigenous Sovereignty and Authority in International Research Collaborations(Taylor and Francis Group, 2026-03-10) Hetaraka, Maia; Meiklejohn-Whiu, Selena; Webber, Melinda; Jesson, RebeccaThis article calls to attention the possibilities and problematics of upholding Indigenous ethics and approaches in cross-cultural international research collaborations. We describe the opportunities and challenges that present themselves and elaborate on four lessons learned during a recent education project, including (1) how the authority and mana of Indigenous stakeholders can be maintained, (2) how to ensure Indigenous concepts and worldviews are honoured, (3) how to decolonize western academic expectations about open data-sharing, and (4) how and why Indigenous rituals of encounter must be established to ensure cultural safety. Using Moana Jackson’s (2016) ten Māori research ethics, this paper identifies and examines what needs to be upheld, interrogated and refused when working in cross-cultural international research collaborations. We conclude with recommendations for collaborators, including the importance of embedding regular opportunities for collective reflexivity, as a means of rebalancing or refusing the uneven power relations that affect genuine partnership.Item Transensus, Transculturalism, and Participatory Embodied Performing Arts: A Manifesto for Cultural Democracy Amidst Climate Mobility(INTRACOMP, 2025-08-31) McIntosh, Hamish; Rowe, Nicholas; Madjar, Andrew; Mehta, Alesha; Piccolo, Emanuela; Guerinoni, Martina; Lämsä, Tiina; Salmi, Sara; Awi, Jane; Faik-Simet, Naomi; Frauenknecht, Lea; Giacaman, Nasser; Lysberg, Julie; Makinen, Katja; Milani, Marta; Naime, Sophie; Ness, Tove; Nokkala, Terhi; Bean, Teresa Ó Brádaigh; Risberg, Eirik Julius; Rønning, Wenche; Wuensche, BurkhardClimate change and associated environmental, political, and economic impacts currently threaten democratic attitudes associated with equality, inclusion and diversity, across Europe and the world. Over the next 25 years, the anticipated scale of climate mobility will prompt an unprecedented growth in acculturation across Europe, which presents both opportunities and challenges for sociocultural cohesion. Anticipatory governance approaches therefore urgently seek co-designed policy solutions and strategies that can enable Europe to navigate the polycrises of this era; strategies and solutions that promote preparedness and support the transilience of communities across the continent. To advance such preparedness and transilience, lifelong learning in cultural awareness and expression becomes a highly significant educational endeavour, given the scale of acculturation during this period. Participatory arts are particularly relevant for engaging all children and young people in active, democratic processes of cultural deliberation and collaborative regeneration. Guided by the New European Bauhaus and the Porto Santo Charter for cultural democracy, participatory arts may advance critical and ethical approaches to superdiversity, through processes of collaborative worldbuilding. To explore this opportunity, the INTRACOMP (Intercultural and Transcultural Competence for Collaborative Cultural Expression) project has responded to the Horizon Europe call CL2-2024-Transformations-01-08-Arts and Cultural Awareness and Expression in Education and Training. The INTRACOMP Consortium brings together more than 50 scholars, educators, arts practitioners and administrators from 13 organisations in 12 countries across Europe and the world, in a transdisciplinary, cross-sectoral, multi-institutional, international examination that investigates: How can intercultural and transcultural expression be evidenced and assessed within arts education? As the outcome of the foundational theoretical task in the INTRACOMP project, this document critically examines contemporary academic literature associated with this research question, generating a manifesto for cultural democracy amidst climate mobility. Our manifesto presents several key ideological innovations that can guide INTRACOMP and like-minded initiatives as we address the climate crisis. The first is the conceptualisation of transensus, as a key outcome of deliberative democracy that transcends the determinist binaries of consensus and dissensus. Aligned with the Indigenous philosophy of tā-vā, transensus valorises the collaborative vibration experienced within liminal, imaginative states of possibility-thinking during democratic deliberation, thus enabling cultural democracy. We argue that transensus requires a strong transcultural competence; a disposition that extends beyond intercultural competence and purposefully values temporary and complex manifestations of culture. We further argue that participatory arts can contribute to the development of a transcultural competence, but such arts activities require a clearly rationalised participatory purpose, so as to avoid hegemonic and counter-hegemonic cultural encounters. This leads to our development of Participatory Embodied Performing Arts (PEPA) as a conceptual framework, purposefully designed to enable transcultural competence and experiences of transensus. Access to these encounters and experiences may be further broadened through engagement in virtual worldbuilding and posthuman approaches to collaboration. While these concepts present a speculative proposition, the INTRACOMP project seeks measures that can evidence the development of transcultural competence through PEPA. This requires the development of a complex and nested competence framework that foregrounds group competence amongst individual and ecological competences focused on human flourishing.Item International ECE Student Teachers on Practicum in Aotearoa New Zealand: Fostering Ethnorelative Understandings(Massey University, 2026-01-27) Weisz-Koves, Tamar; Li, YananIn Aotearoa New Zealand, an increasing number of international students are choosing to study through initial teacher education programmes and staying to teach after they have graduated. However, to date, little research has focused on the practicum experiences of international early childhood education student teachers and how to effectively support their professional growth in ways that foster ethnorelative understandings. In this article, Yanan Li shares insights and recommendations drawing on her experience of having been an international ECE student teacher from China and her current role as a Visiting Lecturer. The aim of this article is to foster ethnorelative understandings between international student teachers and those who work with them, to enhance communication, relationships, and mentoring in the early childhood education practicum space.Item Bridging the Triple Bottom Line: Art & Design Students' Perspectives and Incorporation of Artificial Intelligence for Their Entrepreneurial Projects(University of the Punjab, 2025) Pirzada, GouharThe current research investigates the interrelationships within the field of sustainable entrepreneurship, focusing on the evolution of the construct concerning the triad social, economic, and environmental and the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creative practices. Within the management discipline, sustainable entrepreneurship is a new construct. Most of the literature addresses the practice as ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable business practices’. The term entrepreneurship is sustained in the literature to bridge the entrepreneurship and sustainable development literature. For this research, a qualitative approach was taken. The participants of the study included 39 students from Art & Design. They were also part of the research sample. These students were later assigned an entrepreneurial project where they incorporated sustainability and creatively AI integration as a core variable in the design, operational, and ethical frameworks. The sample comprised students from the last semester of four different sectors: Fashion Design, Textile Design, Interior Architecture Design, and Graphic Design. Adopting sustainable entrepreneurship strategies that satisfy all stakeholders' operational needs and advantages is challenging. This is due to institutional frameworks prioritizing established businesses and non-sustainable practices over newly sustainable alternatives. The results from this research offer valuable information regarding certain aspects of sustainable entrepreneurship, student perspectives regarding the role of AI in enhancing the ethics of the design and production processes, and the capacity of such innovations to promote a transition to a developing country’s economy.Item Reorienting Aotearoa New Zealand Secondary School Geography Towards Decolonisation and Indigenisation(European Association of Geographers, 2026-01-24) Finn, Karen; Turner-Adams, Hana; Webber, MelindaSecondary school geography in Aotearoa New Zealand has a Western-centric curriculum due to the British colonial influence. Despite being the knowledge system of the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) has been sidelined from geography curricula. A recent system-wide review and overhaul of the national curriculum and assessment system aimed for equal status for mātauranga Māori, respecting it and addressing its exclusion and denigration, and added aspects of decolonising geography, such as critiquing power, to the secondary school geography curriculum. This study investigated how Aotearoa New Zealand secondary school geography teachers understand decolonising and indigenising geography. Qualitative data were gathered through an online survey of 47 geography teachers and analysed using content analysis and reflexive thematic analysis. The study findings are presented as three orientations that teachers take when decolonising geography: decolonising and indigenising geography in the classroom, engaging with Indigenous people to decolonise geography and reflexivity for decolonising geography. In doing so, the research outlines practical implications for geography teachers, initial teacher education and policy.Item A Sidetrack to Autoethnography. Enriching a Reading Research Collective(Institut für Qualitative Forschung, 2026-01-26) Maurice-Takerei, Lisa; Bernay, Ross; Boyask, Ruth; Hopkins, Rebecca; Milne, John; Jackson, Jayne; Tadi, ParisaAs a group of academics working for the first time together on a collective project on children and young people's reading engagement, we discovered the value of reflexive conversations on the nature of our individual roles as literacy educators and our roles as collaborative researchers. As the project progressed, we developed this paper from conversations that drifted into self-reflection on our own experiences as readers, teachers and researchers. Rather than viewing these conversations as digression, we decided to embrace wholeheartedly the possibility that they would enrich our research and progress our goals as a group. This was an opportunity to pause and venture into a less familiar research arena. In the process, as individuals, we revealed more of ourselves as collaborative researchers interacting in this new space which enriched our collective undertaking as well as our individual projects within different reading communities.Item “Only a Sith deals in absolutes”: Dialogising a Single Truth(Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2025-12-12) Westbrook, FionaThrough a series of visual provocations from Star Wars’ Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, this article contemplates the allure and danger of a singular truth. Anakin Skywalker’s transition from Jedi to Sith Lord, Darth Vader, amplifies and breaks down notions of truth and lies, posing seductive simplicities and paradoxical tensions. These come to the fore in the battle which marks Anakin’s final transition from Jedi to Sith, with his former Master Obi-Wan Kenobi’s ironic, absolutist declaration “only a Sith deals in absolutes” (Lucas, 2005). This article explores how these scenes seduce viewers with the clarity of absolute thinking and undermine it through dialogic contradiction, signalling the allure and dangers of simplistic, idealised, certainty.