title: Education for Sustainability: An Investigation of Teachers' and Students' Perceptions and Experiences

authors: Chalmers, Jade

subjects: Sustainability

abstract: Human activity and the mismanagement of this generation and the previous, has resulted in large-scale environmental and social damage associated with climate change, ecosystem destruction, resource depletion and pollution (Littledyke, Taylor & Eames, 2009). This has caused concern for the future of our planet, and it is this concern that introduced Environmental Education/Education for Sustainability (EE/EFS) in the 1960s and 1970s. EE/EFS has been shaped by international conferences and publications to reach the notable status that it currently holds today. The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007) stopped short of mandating EE/EFS, but ‘sustainability’ is woven throughout the document, offering potential for EE/EFS to be effectively expressed in teaching and learning. 
This qualitative study sought to obtain rich qualitative data to investigate and gain a better insight into the EE/EFS learning experiences currently taking place in five Bay of Plenty primary classrooms. It explored the perceptions that were held by teachers and students participating in EE/EFS. The methods used for data collection included interviews, observation and questionnaires. 
The study found evidence to suggest that teachers and students lacked a general understanding of the terms ‘environment’ ‘EE/EFS’ and ‘sustainability’, and their views of these concepts were predominantly ecological in nature. A gap between what current research and literature on EE/EFS stipulates, and what was known by the teachers in this study, was clearly apparent. Teachers had received very little, if any tertiary education or professional development in EE/EFS, and therefore, although more specialised views exist amongst educators and specialists of the area, the teachers had not been well introduced to the current trends and issues in EE/EFS, and therefore, relied on their ‘lay’ understandings. 
Waste management and recycling activities, were the topics most frequently focused on within each of the schools, and activities appeared to address the symptoms of the waste issues rather than focusing on underlying causes or the wider issue. Examples of education ‘For’ the environment were generally absent. Barriers to EE/EFS existed, with challenges in its implementation most commonly mentioned by teachers being time limitations. The value of teachers’ personal passion and enthusiasm for EE/EFS was highlighted in this study, and as EE/EFS remains non-mandatory, its future relies on teachers with this personal interest. 
This study’s findings suggest that quality professional development is needed, both conceptual and pedagogical, as students and teachers had limited understandings of EE/EFS. Universal, clearly stated guidelines, containing information about the contemporary focus of EE/EFS should be introduced and presented to teachers, as although there are supporting resources and literature available, they were not being accessed by the teachers in this study. The implementation and development of whole school approaches to EE/EFS should continue to be encouraged, and school leaders need to play a part in initiating this. Therefore, support for school leaders may be needed to encourage collaborative EE/EFS initiatives to take place in schools.

text: Education for Sustainability: An Investigation of Teachers' and Students' Perceptions and Experiences Human activity and the mismanagement of this generation and the previous, has resulted in large-scale environmental and social damage associated with climate change, ecosystem destruction, resource depletion and pollution (Littledyke, Taylor & Eames, 2009). This has caused concern for the future of our planet, and it is this concern that introduced Environmental Education/Education for Sustainability (EE/EFS) in the 1960s and 1970s. EE/EFS has been shaped by international conferences and publications to reach the notable status that it currently holds today. The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007) stopped short of mandating EE/EFS, but ‘sustainability’ is woven throughout the document, offering potential for EE/EFS to be effectively expressed in teaching and learning. 
This qualitative study sought to obtain rich qualitative data to investigate and gain a better insight into the EE/EFS learning experiences currently taking place in five Bay of Plenty primary classrooms. It explored the perceptions that were held by teachers and students participating in EE/EFS. The methods used for data collection included interviews, observation and questionnaires. 
The study found evidence to suggest that teachers and students lacked a general understanding of the terms ‘environment’ ‘EE/EFS’ and ‘sustainability’, and their views of these concepts were predominantly ecological in nature. A gap between what current research and literature on EE/EFS stipulates, and what was known by the teachers in this study, was clearly apparent. Teachers had received very little, if any tertiary education or professional development in EE/EFS, and therefore, although more specialised views exist amongst educators and specialists of the area, the teachers had not been well introduced to the current trends and issues in EE/EFS, and therefore, relied on their ‘lay’ understandings. 
Waste management and recycling activities, were the topics most frequently focused on within each of the schools, and activities appeared to address the symptoms of the waste issues rather than focusing on underlying causes or the wider issue. Examples of education ‘For’ the environment were generally absent. Barriers to EE/EFS existed, with challenges in its implementation most commonly mentioned by teachers being time limitations. The value of teachers’ personal passion and enthusiasm for EE/EFS was highlighted in this study, and as EE/EFS remains non-mandatory, its future relies on teachers with this personal interest. 
This study’s findings suggest that quality professional development is needed, both conceptual and pedagogical, as students and teachers had limited understandings of EE/EFS. Universal, clearly stated guidelines, containing information about the contemporary focus of EE/EFS should be introduced and presented to teachers, as although there are supporting resources and literature available, they were not being accessed by the teachers in this study. The implementation and development of whole school approaches to EE/EFS should continue to be encouraged, and school leaders need to play a part in initiating this. Therefore, support for school leaders may be needed to encourage collaborative EE/EFS initiatives to take place in schools.

year: 2011

title: Correlating tephras and cryptotephras using glass compositional analyses and numerical and statistical methods: review and evaluation

authors: Lowe, David J.

subjects: Tephra

abstract: We define tephras and cryptotephras and their components (mainly ash-sized particles of glass ± crystals in distal deposits) and summarize the basis of tephrochronology as a chronostratigraphic correlational and dating tool for palaeoenvironmental, geological, and archaeological research. We then document and appraise recent advances in analytical methods used to determine the major, minor, and trace elements of individual glass shards from tephra or cryptotephra deposits to aid their correlation and application. Protocols developed recently for the electron probe microanalysis of major elements in individual glass shards help to improve data quality and standardize reporting procedures. A narrow electron beam (diameter ~3-5 μm) can now be used to analyze smaller glass shards than previously attainable. Reliable analyses of ‘microshards’ (defined here as glass shards <32 µm in diameter) using narrow beams are useful for fine-grained samples from distal or ultra-distal geographic locations, and for vesicular or microlite-rich glass shards or small melt inclusions. Caveats apply, however, in the microprobe analysis of very small microshards (<=~5 µm in diameter), where particle geometry becomes important, and of microlite-rich glass shards where the potential problem of secondary fluorescence across phase boundaries needs to be recognised. Trace element analyses of individual glass shards using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), with crater diameters of 20 μm and 10 μm, are now effectively routine, giving detection limits well below 1 ppm. Smaller ablation craters (<10 μm) can be subject to significant element fractionation during analysis, but the systematic relationship of such fractionation with glass composition suggests that analyses for some elements at these resolutions may be quantifiable. In undertaking analyses, either by microprobe or LA-ICP-MS, reference material data acquired using the same procedure, and preferably from the same analytical session, should be presented alongside new analytical data. 
In part 2 of the review, we describe, critically assess, and recommend ways in which tephras or cryptotephras can be correlated (in conjunction with other information) using numerical or statistical analyses of compositional data. Statistical methods provide a less subjective means of dealing with analytical data pertaining to tephra components (usually glass or crystals/phenocrysts) than heuristic alternatives. They enable a better understanding of relationships among the data from multiple viewpoints to be developed and help quantify the degree of uncertainty in establishing correlations. In common with other scientific hypothesis testing, it is easier to infer using such analysis that two or more tephras are different rather than the same. Adding stratigraphic, chronological, spatial, or palaeoenvironmental data (i.e. multiple criteria) is usually necessary and allows for more robust correlations to be made. A two-stage approach is useful, the first focussed on differences in the mean composition of samples, or their range, which can be visualised graphically via scatterplot matrices or bivariate plots coupled with the use of statistical tools such as distance measures, similarity coefficients, hierarchical cluster analysis (informed by distance measures or similarity or cophenetic coefficients), and principal components analysis (PCA). Some statistical methods (cluster analysis, discriminant analysis) are referred to as ‘machine learning’ in the computing literature. The second stage examines sample variance and the degree of compositional similarity so that sample equivalence or otherwise can be established on a statistical basis. This stage may involve discriminant function analysis (DFA), support vector machines (SVMs), canonical variates analysis (CVA), and ANOVA or MANOVA (or its two-sample special case, the Hotelling two-sample T² test). Randomization tests can be used where distributional assumptions such as multivariate normality underlying parametric tests are doubtful.
Compositional data may be transformed and scaled before being subjected to multivariate statistical procedures including calculation of distance matrices, hierarchical cluster analysis, and PCA. Such transformations may make the assumption of multivariate normality more appropriate. A sequential procedure using Mahalanobis distance and the Hotelling two-sample T² test is illustrated using glass major element data from trachytic to phonolitic Kenyan tephras. All these methods require a broad range of high-quality compositional data which can be used to compare ‘unknowns’ with reference (training) sets that are sufficiently complete to account for all possible correlatives, including tephras with heterogeneous glasses that contain multiple compositional groups. Currently, incomplete databases are tending to limit correlation efficacy. The development of an open, online global database to facilitate progress towards integrated, high-quality tephrostratigraphic frameworks for different regions is encouraged.

text: Correlating tephras and cryptotephras using glass compositional analyses and numerical and statistical methods: review and evaluation We define tephras and cryptotephras and their components (mainly ash-sized particles of glass ± crystals in distal deposits) and summarize the basis of tephrochronology as a chronostratigraphic correlational and dating tool for palaeoenvironmental, geological, and archaeological research. We then document and appraise recent advances in analytical methods used to determine the major, minor, and trace elements of individual glass shards from tephra or cryptotephra deposits to aid their correlation and application. Protocols developed recently for the electron probe microanalysis of major elements in individual glass shards help to improve data quality and standardize reporting procedures. A narrow electron beam (diameter ~3-5 μm) can now be used to analyze smaller glass shards than previously attainable. Reliable analyses of ‘microshards’ (defined here as glass shards <32 µm in diameter) using narrow beams are useful for fine-grained samples from distal or ultra-distal geographic locations, and for vesicular or microlite-rich glass shards or small melt inclusions. Caveats apply, however, in the microprobe analysis of very small microshards (<=~5 µm in diameter), where particle geometry becomes important, and of microlite-rich glass shards where the potential problem of secondary fluorescence across phase boundaries needs to be recognised. Trace element analyses of individual glass shards using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), with crater diameters of 20 μm and 10 μm, are now effectively routine, giving detection limits well below 1 ppm. Smaller ablation craters (<10 μm) can be subject to significant element fractionation during analysis, but the systematic relationship of such fractionation with glass composition suggests that analyses for some elements at these resolutions may be quantifiable. In undertaking analyses, either by microprobe or LA-ICP-MS, reference material data acquired using the same procedure, and preferably from the same analytical session, should be presented alongside new analytical data. 
In part 2 of the review, we describe, critically assess, and recommend ways in which tephras or cryptotephras can be correlated (in conjunction with other information) using numerical or statistical analyses of compositional data. Statistical methods provide a less subjective means of dealing with analytical data pertaining to tephra components (usually glass or crystals/phenocrysts) than heuristic alternatives. They enable a better understanding of relationships among the data from multiple viewpoints to be developed and help quantify the degree of uncertainty in establishing correlations. In common with other scientific hypothesis testing, it is easier to infer using such analysis that two or more tephras are different rather than the same. Adding stratigraphic, chronological, spatial, or palaeoenvironmental data (i.e. multiple criteria) is usually necessary and allows for more robust correlations to be made. A two-stage approach is useful, the first focussed on differences in the mean composition of samples, or their range, which can be visualised graphically via scatterplot matrices or bivariate plots coupled with the use of statistical tools such as distance measures, similarity coefficients, hierarchical cluster analysis (informed by distance measures or similarity or cophenetic coefficients), and principal components analysis (PCA). Some statistical methods (cluster analysis, discriminant analysis) are referred to as ‘machine learning’ in the computing literature. The second stage examines sample variance and the degree of compositional similarity so that sample equivalence or otherwise can be established on a statistical basis. This stage may involve discriminant function analysis (DFA), support vector machines (SVMs), canonical variates analysis (CVA), and ANOVA or MANOVA (or its two-sample special case, the Hotelling two-sample T² test). Randomization tests can be used where distributional assumptions such as multivariate normality underlying parametric tests are doubtful.
Compositional data may be transformed and scaled before being subjected to multivariate statistical procedures including calculation of distance matrices, hierarchical cluster analysis, and PCA. Such transformations may make the assumption of multivariate normality more appropriate. A sequential procedure using Mahalanobis distance and the Hotelling two-sample T² test is illustrated using glass major element data from trachytic to phonolitic Kenyan tephras. All these methods require a broad range of high-quality compositional data which can be used to compare ‘unknowns’ with reference (training) sets that are sufficiently complete to account for all possible correlatives, including tephras with heterogeneous glasses that contain multiple compositional groups. Currently, incomplete databases are tending to limit correlation efficacy. The development of an open, online global database to facilitate progress towards integrated, high-quality tephrostratigraphic frameworks for different regions is encouraged.

year: 2017

title: ‘Inside Out’: The politics of enumerating the nation by ethnicity

authors: Kukutai, Tahu

abstract: Since the 1990s, state practices of counting and classifying populations by ethnicity have come under increased scrutiny within the social sciences (Arel 2002 ; Kertzer and Arel 2002 ; Nobles 2000 ; Perlmann and Waters 2002 ; Petersen 1997 ; Statistics Canada and U.S. Census Bureau 1993 ). A number of excellent case studies have provided critical insights into how and why ethnic enumeration is pursued in particular times and places. ¹ However, with some notable exceptions (Morning 2008 ; Rallu
et al. 2006 ), little attention has been given to theorizing or empirically testing a global
model of ethnic classifi cation and counting. Consequently, there is a limited understanding
about the general conditions that impede or encourage state recognition of ethnicity in the national census and the forms that such recognition takes.

text: ‘Inside Out’: The politics of enumerating the nation by ethnicity Since the 1990s, state practices of counting and classifying populations by ethnicity have come under increased scrutiny within the social sciences (Arel 2002 ; Kertzer and Arel 2002 ; Nobles 2000 ; Perlmann and Waters 2002 ; Petersen 1997 ; Statistics Canada and U.S. Census Bureau 1993 ). A number of excellent case studies have provided critical insights into how and why ethnic enumeration is pursued in particular times and places. ¹ However, with some notable exceptions (Morning 2008 ; Rallu
et al. 2006 ), little attention has been given to theorizing or empirically testing a global
model of ethnic classifi cation and counting. Consequently, there is a limited understanding
about the general conditions that impede or encourage state recognition of ethnicity in the national census and the forms that such recognition takes.

year: 2015