title: Empowering Solomon Islands’ beginning science teachers through the use of Appreciative Inquiry

authors: Porakari, James

abstract: This paper reports on a study that investigated the potential of using Appreciative Inquiry for exploring the development of three beginning science teachers in the Solomon Islands. Using the four phases of an Appreciative Inquiry framework, the teachers followed a process that allowed their strengths to be identified through the analysis of their stories of best-taught lessons. The findings indicate that the teachers felt they had strengths in knowledge bases relating to planning and teaching generally, and to teaching and learning science specifically. The teachers were able to identify and suggest actions for sustaining and developing their identified strengths. Involvement in the Appreciative Inquiry process allowed the teachers to speak positively, affirming their practice, and gave them agency in planning for future professional learning. This study adds to the sparse literature on beginning science teachers’ strengths, in a Pacific context. This research suggests that through using an Appreciative Inquiry framework, beginning science teachers can be given the opportunity to identify strengths and positive elements of their teaching of science, and plan action to build on these strengths.

text: Empowering Solomon Islands’ beginning science teachers through the use of Appreciative Inquiry This paper reports on a study that investigated the potential of using Appreciative Inquiry for exploring the development of three beginning science teachers in the Solomon Islands. Using the four phases of an Appreciative Inquiry framework, the teachers followed a process that allowed their strengths to be identified through the analysis of their stories of best-taught lessons. The findings indicate that the teachers felt they had strengths in knowledge bases relating to planning and teaching generally, and to teaching and learning science specifically. The teachers were able to identify and suggest actions for sustaining and developing their identified strengths. Involvement in the Appreciative Inquiry process allowed the teachers to speak positively, affirming their practice, and gave them agency in planning for future professional learning. This study adds to the sparse literature on beginning science teachers’ strengths, in a Pacific context. This research suggests that through using an Appreciative Inquiry framework, beginning science teachers can be given the opportunity to identify strengths and positive elements of their teaching of science, and plan action to build on these strengths.

year: 2017

title: Body and spirit in the poetry of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence

authors: Prisco, Mark

abstract: This thesis examines the poetry of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence in terms of its religious and aesthetic significance. I explore the common ground between these two writers, and their spiritual and philosophical differences as expressed in the content and style of their poetry, and other work. I argue that they were both driven by their dissatisfaction with the modern industrial age—the ethos that determined ‘utility’ and ‘progress’ as the means to fulfilment—which for them, however, was synonymous with the cultural and spiritual wasteland of modernity, a world without ‘god’.

Eliot’s response, implicit in his poetry, was to posit a spiritual unity, a homogenous community of shared values underpinned, eventually, by Christianity—a religion that ultimately dispenses with the body, and leads us toward the Divine Father, the bodiless God. Lawrence, in contrast, keeps his reader firmly grounded in the physical world of touch—for him, the only possible world, without which there can be no spirit. We are resurrected, Lawrence believed, in the flesh—or not at all. 

Their respective views are evidenced throughout their poetry. We see, even in his ‘pre-Christian’ poetry, Eliot’s preoccupation with the body—his moral and aesthetic repulsion against it; and indeed I suggest that his negative depictions of the body are a prelude to his later ‘Christian’ poetry. This, I contrast with Lawrence’s glorification of the body, as manifested throughout his poetry; and I suggest that Lawrence’s ‘philosophy of life’ is morally more sound because it is grounded in nature. Although Eliot’s Christianity is not an attempt to escape the world and his responsibilities, it is nonetheless a dismissal of life in the flesh and all of its attendant joys and sorrows. It would annihilate the opposition (‘evil’, ‘darkness’, ‘lion’), and seeks release from the natural world, the tension that holds everything together, which would lead towards a cosmic imbalance, the extinction of nature, of everything—of time, into the bodiless Eternal, the resolution of body into spirit.

But if there is no darkness, there is no light. This, Lawrence expresses most explicitly in his non-fiction, but his poetry is alive with it—the cosmic significance of everything, the unbegotten spark from which a god is born: the present eternal moment. 

The final section of my thesis is a collection of poetry (to not let go) written over the duration of three or four years. It represents my creative response to the critical component outlined above. My poems are not an imitation of Eliot and Lawrence, but evidence nonetheless of direct engagement with those two poets and the subject matter of my thesis.

text: Body and spirit in the poetry of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence This thesis examines the poetry of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence in terms of its religious and aesthetic significance. I explore the common ground between these two writers, and their spiritual and philosophical differences as expressed in the content and style of their poetry, and other work. I argue that they were both driven by their dissatisfaction with the modern industrial age—the ethos that determined ‘utility’ and ‘progress’ as the means to fulfilment—which for them, however, was synonymous with the cultural and spiritual wasteland of modernity, a world without ‘god’.

Eliot’s response, implicit in his poetry, was to posit a spiritual unity, a homogenous community of shared values underpinned, eventually, by Christianity—a religion that ultimately dispenses with the body, and leads us toward the Divine Father, the bodiless God. Lawrence, in contrast, keeps his reader firmly grounded in the physical world of touch—for him, the only possible world, without which there can be no spirit. We are resurrected, Lawrence believed, in the flesh—or not at all. 

Their respective views are evidenced throughout their poetry. We see, even in his ‘pre-Christian’ poetry, Eliot’s preoccupation with the body—his moral and aesthetic repulsion against it; and indeed I suggest that his negative depictions of the body are a prelude to his later ‘Christian’ poetry. This, I contrast with Lawrence’s glorification of the body, as manifested throughout his poetry; and I suggest that Lawrence’s ‘philosophy of life’ is morally more sound because it is grounded in nature. Although Eliot’s Christianity is not an attempt to escape the world and his responsibilities, it is nonetheless a dismissal of life in the flesh and all of its attendant joys and sorrows. It would annihilate the opposition (‘evil’, ‘darkness’, ‘lion’), and seeks release from the natural world, the tension that holds everything together, which would lead towards a cosmic imbalance, the extinction of nature, of everything—of time, into the bodiless Eternal, the resolution of body into spirit.

But if there is no darkness, there is no light. This, Lawrence expresses most explicitly in his non-fiction, but his poetry is alive with it—the cosmic significance of everything, the unbegotten spark from which a god is born: the present eternal moment. 

The final section of my thesis is a collection of poetry (to not let go) written over the duration of three or four years. It represents my creative response to the critical component outlined above. My poems are not an imitation of Eliot and Lawrence, but evidence nonetheless of direct engagement with those two poets and the subject matter of my thesis.

year: 2024-04-22

title: Providing space for indigenous knowledge

authors: Tangihaere, Tracey Mininoa

subjects: indigenous knowledge

abstract: Colonial influences have generally failed to respect indigenous knowledge, languages, and cultures. Determination to reclaim First Nations identity is visible in many jurisdictions. First Nations Peoples continue to call on governments to facilitate changes needed to revitalize their economic, social, cultural, and spiritual well-being. This article is a reflective article generated from our response to the situation of Mäori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. It provides a background on the historical attempts to weaken Mäori leadership and the resilience of Mäori in their resistance to such undermining. Using a description of a physical space, the Marae (the meetinghouse), the authors provide a glimpse into a distinctive Mäori psychology connected to Marae encounters and into Mäori ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Three examples of organizational practice at the incorporation of such values are provided. Four implications for management education are posited as relevant not only to the education of managers in Aotearoa but wherever engagement with indigenous people occurs.

text: Providing space for indigenous knowledge Colonial influences have generally failed to respect indigenous knowledge, languages, and cultures. Determination to reclaim First Nations identity is visible in many jurisdictions. First Nations Peoples continue to call on governments to facilitate changes needed to revitalize their economic, social, cultural, and spiritual well-being. This article is a reflective article generated from our response to the situation of Mäori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. It provides a background on the historical attempts to weaken Mäori leadership and the resilience of Mäori in their resistance to such undermining. Using a description of a physical space, the Marae (the meetinghouse), the authors provide a glimpse into a distinctive Mäori psychology connected to Marae encounters and into Mäori ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Three examples of organizational practice at the incorporation of such values are provided. Four implications for management education are posited as relevant not only to the education of managers in Aotearoa but wherever engagement with indigenous people occurs.

year: 2011