title: Unpacking housing affordability policies in New Zealand

authors: McLeay, Colin

abstract: Recent New Zealand governments have sought to increase the provision of affordable housing by increasing the supply of land for housing and encouraging builders to include affordable housing in their developments. Despite claims to the contrary, affordable housing policies introduced by both centre-right and centre-left governments are expressive of neoliberal capture of the political process. This paper explores tension between public endorsements of affordable housing policies and acceptance of market mechanisms in the provision of affordable housing. Thus, while Members of Parliament from both National-led and Labour-led Governments have identified the distinctiveness of their respective housing policies, recent legislative provisions draw on shared acceptance of post-political conceptions of state and society.

text: Unpacking housing affordability policies in New Zealand Recent New Zealand governments have sought to increase the provision of affordable housing by increasing the supply of land for housing and encouraging builders to include affordable housing in their developments. Despite claims to the contrary, affordable housing policies introduced by both centre-right and centre-left governments are expressive of neoliberal capture of the political process. This paper explores tension between public endorsements of affordable housing policies and acceptance of market mechanisms in the provision of affordable housing. Thus, while Members of Parliament from both National-led and Labour-led Governments have identified the distinctiveness of their respective housing policies, recent legislative provisions draw on shared acceptance of post-political conceptions of state and society.

year: 2021

title: Being and Becoming Reflexive in Teacher Education

authors: Norsworthy, Beverley Elizabeth

subjects: teacher education

abstract: Initial teacher education is constantly in the spotlight regarding its quality and its effectiveness.  The literature contains many claims from those who believe that it is ineffectual.  The notion of the reflective practitioner was introduced and embraced as an antidote to these claims, and as an approach to break the influence of technocratic beliefs and expectations which pre-service teachers bring with them to their initial teacher education.  Typically reflection targets the practicum experience.  However, this study focuses specifically on the contribution of course work to the development of a reflective beginning teacher.  

This qualitative study invited pre-service teachers to provide insight into their initial teacher education experience: initially within a Teaching of Science methods paper, and then some 18 months later at the conclusion of their three year Bachelor of Education (Teaching) professional preparation.  A critical reflexive interpretive methodology which sought authenticity within its meaning-making process developed from an initial consideration of self-study research methodology.  Of particular importance was that the enquiry was authentic, participants' voices were valued and recognition was given to the implications embedded within the context within which the study occurred.  Methods of data collection included in phase one were: a pre-course questionnaire, a Gestalt-like activity, and pre-service teachers' email reflections based on Hoban's (2000a) categories of learning influences, and meta-reflections from the Teaching of Science paper.  The journal I kept during this phase was also drawn upon as data.  Phase two data collection included a vignette, and a three part final questionnaire to which 40 pre-service teachers and nine teacher educators responded.  

The findings suggest that pre-service teachers' understanding of the nature of education is critical to the way in which they experience the course work within initial teacher education.  This understanding shapes their perception and consideration lens through which course work is experienced.  On entrance to initial teacher education this lens is described, for many pre-service teachers, as technocratic.  Education is seen as a commodity, something to acquire, teaching is telling and initial teacher education is dependent on the teacher educator providing the necessary tools and techniques so the beginning teacher can do the right thing.  

This study suggests that such a stance toward educational experiences is a hindrance mechanism when teacher educators seek transformative teaching, learning, and reflexivity.  However, when that view of education is as a process of growth and transformation toward a valued 'way of being', the perspective and consideration lens is described as professional.  Rather than focusing on what a teacher does, the focus is on whom the teacher is and how this influences the teaching and learning process.  Teacher educators and the institution which is the context within which course work occurs also demonstrate a mixture of technocratic and professional lenses.  Important factors within initial teacher education which contribute to transformation from technocratic to professional lens include relational and pedagogical connectedness.  These factors lead to valuing, ownership and justification of learning where assessment tasks are tools for personal development and where critical consideration of multiple perspectives has an important role.  Relational connectedness (to self, peers, and teacher educators) is important for developing a safe, but challenging, dialogical space in which paradoxes, challenges and pre-service teachers' vulnerable sense of disorientation may be engaged.  Pedagogical connectedness relates to the fit between what the teacher educator says and does.  For example, a powerful approach to learning is where the pre-service teachers learn to be reflexive, by being reflexive.  The study indicates the importance of institutional congruency so that what is espoused is experienced through language, assessment, teaching approaches and contextual culture.  However, pre-service teachers' perception and consideration lens determines the degree to which course work is transformational.  Where a technocratic lens is dominant, reflection becomes a task to be completed.  Where a professional lens is dominant, reflection becomes an iterative process for improving practice by becoming professionally self aware through identifying assumptions in decisions and responses within the learning/teaching relationship, and judging those assumptions for their appropriateness in the light of a developing and critiqued personally owned educational vision.

text: Being and Becoming Reflexive in Teacher Education Initial teacher education is constantly in the spotlight regarding its quality and its effectiveness.  The literature contains many claims from those who believe that it is ineffectual.  The notion of the reflective practitioner was introduced and embraced as an antidote to these claims, and as an approach to break the influence of technocratic beliefs and expectations which pre-service teachers bring with them to their initial teacher education.  Typically reflection targets the practicum experience.  However, this study focuses specifically on the contribution of course work to the development of a reflective beginning teacher.  

This qualitative study invited pre-service teachers to provide insight into their initial teacher education experience: initially within a Teaching of Science methods paper, and then some 18 months later at the conclusion of their three year Bachelor of Education (Teaching) professional preparation.  A critical reflexive interpretive methodology which sought authenticity within its meaning-making process developed from an initial consideration of self-study research methodology.  Of particular importance was that the enquiry was authentic, participants' voices were valued and recognition was given to the implications embedded within the context within which the study occurred.  Methods of data collection included in phase one were: a pre-course questionnaire, a Gestalt-like activity, and pre-service teachers' email reflections based on Hoban's (2000a) categories of learning influences, and meta-reflections from the Teaching of Science paper.  The journal I kept during this phase was also drawn upon as data.  Phase two data collection included a vignette, and a three part final questionnaire to which 40 pre-service teachers and nine teacher educators responded.  

The findings suggest that pre-service teachers' understanding of the nature of education is critical to the way in which they experience the course work within initial teacher education.  This understanding shapes their perception and consideration lens through which course work is experienced.  On entrance to initial teacher education this lens is described, for many pre-service teachers, as technocratic.  Education is seen as a commodity, something to acquire, teaching is telling and initial teacher education is dependent on the teacher educator providing the necessary tools and techniques so the beginning teacher can do the right thing.  

This study suggests that such a stance toward educational experiences is a hindrance mechanism when teacher educators seek transformative teaching, learning, and reflexivity.  However, when that view of education is as a process of growth and transformation toward a valued 'way of being', the perspective and consideration lens is described as professional.  Rather than focusing on what a teacher does, the focus is on whom the teacher is and how this influences the teaching and learning process.  Teacher educators and the institution which is the context within which course work occurs also demonstrate a mixture of technocratic and professional lenses.  Important factors within initial teacher education which contribute to transformation from technocratic to professional lens include relational and pedagogical connectedness.  These factors lead to valuing, ownership and justification of learning where assessment tasks are tools for personal development and where critical consideration of multiple perspectives has an important role.  Relational connectedness (to self, peers, and teacher educators) is important for developing a safe, but challenging, dialogical space in which paradoxes, challenges and pre-service teachers' vulnerable sense of disorientation may be engaged.  Pedagogical connectedness relates to the fit between what the teacher educator says and does.  For example, a powerful approach to learning is where the pre-service teachers learn to be reflexive, by being reflexive.  The study indicates the importance of institutional congruency so that what is espoused is experienced through language, assessment, teaching approaches and contextual culture.  However, pre-service teachers' perception and consideration lens determines the degree to which course work is transformational.  Where a technocratic lens is dominant, reflection becomes a task to be completed.  Where a professional lens is dominant, reflection becomes an iterative process for improving practice by becoming professionally self aware through identifying assumptions in decisions and responses within the learning/teaching relationship, and judging those assumptions for their appropriateness in the light of a developing and critiqued personally owned educational vision.

year: 2008

title: Have you heard of Hinehau? A research journey of reclamation

authors: Wakefield, Sandy

subjects: Te Tai Tokerau

abstract: As the Māori political and cultural movement continues to grow, issues of representation, power, and control are critiqued by Māori minds.
After discovering a tribal myth about the mana of a woman known as Hinehau, a chain reaction of enquiry develops into the reclamation of tribal knowledge.
By investigating the historical context surrounding the narrative of Hinehau, her story transcends the fairy-tale myth she was confined to, and exposes the rendering down of her story.
Under the umbrella of Western science, European and Pākehā historical archives created an enduring legacy of “Māori myth” that is synonymous with falsehood. Through the assertation of tribal oral tradition and connecting our experiences to our missing histories, Hinehau is relocated. The Hinehau story renews through reconnecting to mātauranga Māori, Ngāpuhi kōrero tuku iho and the creativity of the researcher. In this process, her story renews.
With the guidance of hapū members, mentors, and a diversity of literature, the narrative of Hinehau becomes a part of a much larger inter-tribal narrative held within an ancestral landscape which is sometimes hard to recognise in whenua we no longer have tribal autonomy over. Our Indigenous identity is still under threat as we are still “othered” in our tribal lands. This work contributes to pushing the envelope of what it means to think, exist, and challenge as tangata whenua in Aotearoa, where traditional tribal roles have been minimalised in society, or disappeared through generations of the colonial project (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012).

text: Have you heard of Hinehau? A research journey of reclamation As the Māori political and cultural movement continues to grow, issues of representation, power, and control are critiqued by Māori minds.
After discovering a tribal myth about the mana of a woman known as Hinehau, a chain reaction of enquiry develops into the reclamation of tribal knowledge.
By investigating the historical context surrounding the narrative of Hinehau, her story transcends the fairy-tale myth she was confined to, and exposes the rendering down of her story.
Under the umbrella of Western science, European and Pākehā historical archives created an enduring legacy of “Māori myth” that is synonymous with falsehood. Through the assertation of tribal oral tradition and connecting our experiences to our missing histories, Hinehau is relocated. The Hinehau story renews through reconnecting to mātauranga Māori, Ngāpuhi kōrero tuku iho and the creativity of the researcher. In this process, her story renews.
With the guidance of hapū members, mentors, and a diversity of literature, the narrative of Hinehau becomes a part of a much larger inter-tribal narrative held within an ancestral landscape which is sometimes hard to recognise in whenua we no longer have tribal autonomy over. Our Indigenous identity is still under threat as we are still “othered” in our tribal lands. This work contributes to pushing the envelope of what it means to think, exist, and challenge as tangata whenua in Aotearoa, where traditional tribal roles have been minimalised in society, or disappeared through generations of the colonial project (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012).

year: 2021