title: iPad-mediated talk in young children’s learning and exploration of interests

authors: Khoo, Elaine G.L.

abstract: Emerging evidence highlights the potential of mobile and tablet technologies such as the Apple iPad in facilitating more productive learning processes and outcomes in formal contexts. Very little research has however been conducted in the New Zealand context, especially in early childhood settings. This study is aimed at understanding the nature of the talk young children (3 and a half to 5 year olds) engaged in while using the iPad for free exploration and play in small group settings with teacher guidance. Data was collected from eight observations (one hour to one and half hours long) of child-directed iPad use (video and audio recordings and photographs). Analysis of the data was based on an adaptation of Mercer's (1994) ‘talk types' framework which discriminates between cumulative, exploratory and disputational talk. Findings indicated that children used different kinds of talk to support one another's attempts to work through an app on the iPad. The iPad further afforded a unique potential as a shared, public learning device, and enabled young children's ease of sharing content and working together. Additionally, teacher-child talk was crucial in children realising the iPad's potential, reminding ground rules for working with the iPad, supporting developing literacy and numeracy ideas when working on iPad apps, and acknowledging children’s success. Teachers therefore play an important role in scaffolding young children's ability to develop talk strategies valuable to their learning and exploration with the iPad in the ECE contexts.

text: iPad-mediated talk in young children’s learning and exploration of interests Emerging evidence highlights the potential of mobile and tablet technologies such as the Apple iPad in facilitating more productive learning processes and outcomes in formal contexts. Very little research has however been conducted in the New Zealand context, especially in early childhood settings. This study is aimed at understanding the nature of the talk young children (3 and a half to 5 year olds) engaged in while using the iPad for free exploration and play in small group settings with teacher guidance. Data was collected from eight observations (one hour to one and half hours long) of child-directed iPad use (video and audio recordings and photographs). Analysis of the data was based on an adaptation of Mercer's (1994) ‘talk types' framework which discriminates between cumulative, exploratory and disputational talk. Findings indicated that children used different kinds of talk to support one another's attempts to work through an app on the iPad. The iPad further afforded a unique potential as a shared, public learning device, and enabled young children's ease of sharing content and working together. Additionally, teacher-child talk was crucial in children realising the iPad's potential, reminding ground rules for working with the iPad, supporting developing literacy and numeracy ideas when working on iPad apps, and acknowledging children’s success. Teachers therefore play an important role in scaffolding young children's ability to develop talk strategies valuable to their learning and exploration with the iPad in the ECE contexts.

year: 2016

title: Editorial: Reclaiming the professional development agenda in an age of compliance

authors: Locke, Terry

subjects: curriculum reforms

abstract: This issue of the journal takes as is starting point a global context, which has seen certain powerful and pervasive discourses underpinning a raft of educational reforms in a number of educational settings, in particular the United Kingdom, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These reforms have, among other things, been characterised by a rhetoric of devolution accompanied, ironically, by an assertion by the state and other central agencies of control over the what (curriculum) and how (pedagogy) of teaching, often driven by a "standards" agenda. These changes have had an enormous impact on the nature of teachers' work through the implementation of managerial organisational practices and other accountability mechanisms. It can be argued that in such a context, professional development, in being yoked to a reform agenda, has become little more than induction into ideological compliance. This issue seeks to bring together the voices of educational researchers and reflective teachers who have investigated the changing nature of professional development across a range of educational settings.

text: Editorial: Reclaiming the professional development agenda in an age of compliance This issue of the journal takes as is starting point a global context, which has seen certain powerful and pervasive discourses underpinning a raft of educational reforms in a number of educational settings, in particular the United Kingdom, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These reforms have, among other things, been characterised by a rhetoric of devolution accompanied, ironically, by an assertion by the state and other central agencies of control over the what (curriculum) and how (pedagogy) of teaching, often driven by a "standards" agenda. These changes have had an enormous impact on the nature of teachers' work through the implementation of managerial organisational practices and other accountability mechanisms. It can be argued that in such a context, professional development, in being yoked to a reform agenda, has become little more than induction into ideological compliance. This issue seeks to bring together the voices of educational researchers and reflective teachers who have investigated the changing nature of professional development across a range of educational settings.

year: 2004

title: Incidental teacher<->student moments in an Aotearoa New Zealand secondary school: Entangled encounters with key competencies

authors: Graham, Judith Ann

subjects: key competencies

abstract: This study focuses on the performance of Key Competencies of the New Zealand curriculum in incidental teacher<->student moments. It makes visible a significant and often taken-for-granted portion of teachers’ daily work. Situated in one Aotearoa New Zealand secondary school, the research material of this study was generated in two cycles of conversations with teachers. In these conversations the teachers spoke about ordinary, unplanned moments with students. As the school is composed of more than 50% Māori students, I spoke first with individual Māori teachers at the school, inquiring into their knowledge of key competencies, and how that pedagogical knowledge related to knowledge and practice from whakaaro Māori. In the second cycle of generating research material, a collaborative group of Māori and Pākehā teachers engaged in a recursive process of inquiring together into stories participants told of everyday encounters with students. In this inquiry the names of key competency categories were put in the background as the group focused their inquiry on the teacher’s values, knowledges and beliefs that were contributing to action in the moment.
My analysis of the research material is situated in the field of posthuman philosophy and relational<->materialist theorising. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Massumi, Barad and Bennett, I applied Barad’s methodology of diffractive analysis and paid attention to multiple material and discursive forces and intensities at play in each story. In this analysis, diverse forces such as colonised histories, educational discourse, human and more-than-human materialities, whakaaro Māori, hope and belief, were evidenced intra-acting together. I noticed how these forces invited the mobilisation and performance of key competency actions in the service of becoming and relating with the world.
This study shifts thinking with key competencies from the reductionist territory of the individual human and re-territorialises them as dynamic performances of becoming. It contributes to a re-thinking of subjectivity and potentiality in the place of schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand. As the multi-dimensional entangled complexity of day-to-day pedagogical encounters is disclosed, teacher<->student intra-actions become known as ripe opportunities for performances of actions that come under the umbrella of key competencies. The study opens new ways of thinking about how key competency learning is produced in secondary schools, and how the placetimemattering of the school shapes that learning.
I explore diffractive patterns as key competencies entangle with posthumanism and with whakaaro Māori in everyday teacher<->student encounters. I present a way of thinking with key competencies that aligns closely with whakaaro Māori and posthumanism, and offers a creative and ethical orientation to life and learning. I think with the teacher<->student relational moment as a significant site of learning, and how knowledge of affect and relational-practices of knowing and recognition might contribute to teachers’ professional adaptive expertise.

text: Incidental teacher<->student moments in an Aotearoa New Zealand secondary school: Entangled encounters with key competencies This study focuses on the performance of Key Competencies of the New Zealand curriculum in incidental teacher<->student moments. It makes visible a significant and often taken-for-granted portion of teachers’ daily work. Situated in one Aotearoa New Zealand secondary school, the research material of this study was generated in two cycles of conversations with teachers. In these conversations the teachers spoke about ordinary, unplanned moments with students. As the school is composed of more than 50% Māori students, I spoke first with individual Māori teachers at the school, inquiring into their knowledge of key competencies, and how that pedagogical knowledge related to knowledge and practice from whakaaro Māori. In the second cycle of generating research material, a collaborative group of Māori and Pākehā teachers engaged in a recursive process of inquiring together into stories participants told of everyday encounters with students. In this inquiry the names of key competency categories were put in the background as the group focused their inquiry on the teacher’s values, knowledges and beliefs that were contributing to action in the moment.
My analysis of the research material is situated in the field of posthuman philosophy and relational<->materialist theorising. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Massumi, Barad and Bennett, I applied Barad’s methodology of diffractive analysis and paid attention to multiple material and discursive forces and intensities at play in each story. In this analysis, diverse forces such as colonised histories, educational discourse, human and more-than-human materialities, whakaaro Māori, hope and belief, were evidenced intra-acting together. I noticed how these forces invited the mobilisation and performance of key competency actions in the service of becoming and relating with the world.
This study shifts thinking with key competencies from the reductionist territory of the individual human and re-territorialises them as dynamic performances of becoming. It contributes to a re-thinking of subjectivity and potentiality in the place of schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand. As the multi-dimensional entangled complexity of day-to-day pedagogical encounters is disclosed, teacher<->student intra-actions become known as ripe opportunities for performances of actions that come under the umbrella of key competencies. The study opens new ways of thinking about how key competency learning is produced in secondary schools, and how the placetimemattering of the school shapes that learning.
I explore diffractive patterns as key competencies entangle with posthumanism and with whakaaro Māori in everyday teacher<->student encounters. I present a way of thinking with key competencies that aligns closely with whakaaro Māori and posthumanism, and offers a creative and ethical orientation to life and learning. I think with the teacher<->student relational moment as a significant site of learning, and how knowledge of affect and relational-practices of knowing and recognition might contribute to teachers’ professional adaptive expertise.

year: 2019