title: Connecting the dots: Enhancing curriculum through STEAM integration

authors: Taylor, Simon

abstract: There’s a growing buzz around integrating STEAM (Science, Technology, Environmental Studies, the Arts, and Mathematics) into the curriculum for junior secondary school students. This future-focused approach aims to spark curiosity and innovation. To explore the potential of STEAM programmes, a dedicated group of teachers from two schools embarked on a short-term research intervention. This blog shares on some of their findings, which could help to shape the future of science education.

text: Connecting the dots: Enhancing curriculum through STEAM integration There’s a growing buzz around integrating STEAM (Science, Technology, Environmental Studies, the Arts, and Mathematics) into the curriculum for junior secondary school students. This future-focused approach aims to spark curiosity and innovation. To explore the potential of STEAM programmes, a dedicated group of teachers from two schools embarked on a short-term research intervention. This blog shares on some of their findings, which could help to shape the future of science education.

year: 2025

title: Collaboration in family violence intervention: A process evaluation of the hamilton Family Safety Team

authors: Gregg, Lisa

subjects: collaboration

abstract: The Family Safety Team (FST) is a collaborative intervention developed to address family violence in New Zealand. Interagency collaborations are effective at addressing the social supports for battery, improving the systems and responses of agencies that address battery, and improving cohesion and consistency across agencies. The FST has a particular focus on justice system agencies. 

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the Hamilton FST. The research was conducted using in-depth interviews with FST members and others directly involved with the project, archival research using police family violence files, observation of FST meetings, and a focus group with battered women. The evaluation was constructed around four aims: to identify any barriers to establishing the FST, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Hamilton FST, to determine the adequacy of the FST structure, and to assess the extent to which the FST has improved the ability of agencies to enhance the safety and autonomy of battered women and hold offenders accountable. 

An overall finding of this evaluation was that people are feeling very positive about the Hamilton FST. The evaluation found that the FST has increased contact and communication between community and government agencies, and there was improvement in each agency's awareness of the policies, processes and protocols of other agencies in the FST. The evaluation found some limitations in the amount of monitoring and measurable outcomes from the FST, but this was understandable considering the infancy of the project and the time taken for members to understand their roles and the function of the FST. However, there were some positive developments in police responsiveness: an improved police attitude towards family violence cases, and an increase in cases coded as family violence. 

An important finding of this evaluation was that the Hamilton FST is functioning as a genuine collaboration. This seemed to be due to: mutual respect and an equal distribution of power among FST members, trusted working relationships, recognising each member for their area of expertise, and the role of the coordinator. There are, however, some limitations of the FST model that FST members need to acknowledge.

text: Collaboration in family violence intervention: A process evaluation of the hamilton Family Safety Team The Family Safety Team (FST) is a collaborative intervention developed to address family violence in New Zealand. Interagency collaborations are effective at addressing the social supports for battery, improving the systems and responses of agencies that address battery, and improving cohesion and consistency across agencies. The FST has a particular focus on justice system agencies. 

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the Hamilton FST. The research was conducted using in-depth interviews with FST members and others directly involved with the project, archival research using police family violence files, observation of FST meetings, and a focus group with battered women. The evaluation was constructed around four aims: to identify any barriers to establishing the FST, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Hamilton FST, to determine the adequacy of the FST structure, and to assess the extent to which the FST has improved the ability of agencies to enhance the safety and autonomy of battered women and hold offenders accountable. 

An overall finding of this evaluation was that people are feeling very positive about the Hamilton FST. The evaluation found that the FST has increased contact and communication between community and government agencies, and there was improvement in each agency's awareness of the policies, processes and protocols of other agencies in the FST. The evaluation found some limitations in the amount of monitoring and measurable outcomes from the FST, but this was understandable considering the infancy of the project and the time taken for members to understand their roles and the function of the FST. However, there were some positive developments in police responsiveness: an improved police attitude towards family violence cases, and an increase in cases coded as family violence. 

An important finding of this evaluation was that the Hamilton FST is functioning as a genuine collaboration. This seemed to be due to: mutual respect and an equal distribution of power among FST members, trusted working relationships, recognising each member for their area of expertise, and the role of the coordinator. There are, however, some limitations of the FST model that FST members need to acknowledge.

year: 2007

title: An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand

authors: Mahuika, Nepia

subjects: Oral history

abstract: At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular.

text: An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular.

year: 2017