title: Pedagogical learnings of Borat for make benefit glorious community of drama teachers: What teachers can learn from Borat about frame, position and power when working in role.

authors: Aitken, Vivienne Jane

subjects: education

abstract: One of the most exciting strategies available to teachers of drama and indeed any learning area is that of ‘teacher-in-role’. When a teacher takes on a fictional role within the socially real classroom, she reframes reality and repositions herself in relation to the children in the class (Aitken, 2007). To ensure that children are as empowered as possible within the transformed relationship – and for significant aesthetic and ethical reasons too – many teachers stress the importance of ‘signalling’ their transition in and out of role and making the ‘frame’ of the drama explicit (O’Toole, 2002; Edmiston, 2003). However, some resort to unsignalled role in the belief that the lesson will be somehow ‘better’ if participants misframe what is happening as real life events rather than as ‘just’ a drama. This paper critiques this attitude by drawing parallels with Baron Cohen’s controversial ‘mockumentary’ Borat, which could be described as a sustained exercise in unsignalled ‘filmmaker-in-role’. While Cohen operates in the medium of film rather than classroom drama, and while his objectives are not pedagogical, the movie highlights crucial questions about ethics, aesthetics and power that resonate for anyone using unsignalled role, including teachers. This paper addresses some of these questions, including: ‘Is it acceptable to manipulate people into ‘misframing’ a fictional role for your own purposes?’ ‘What difference does it make if the objective is educational?’ and ‘What if the unwitting participants are children?’

text: Pedagogical learnings of Borat for make benefit glorious community of drama teachers: What teachers can learn from Borat about frame, position and power when working in role. One of the most exciting strategies available to teachers of drama and indeed any learning area is that of ‘teacher-in-role’. When a teacher takes on a fictional role within the socially real classroom, she reframes reality and repositions herself in relation to the children in the class (Aitken, 2007). To ensure that children are as empowered as possible within the transformed relationship – and for significant aesthetic and ethical reasons too – many teachers stress the importance of ‘signalling’ their transition in and out of role and making the ‘frame’ of the drama explicit (O’Toole, 2002; Edmiston, 2003). However, some resort to unsignalled role in the belief that the lesson will be somehow ‘better’ if participants misframe what is happening as real life events rather than as ‘just’ a drama. This paper critiques this attitude by drawing parallels with Baron Cohen’s controversial ‘mockumentary’ Borat, which could be described as a sustained exercise in unsignalled ‘filmmaker-in-role’. While Cohen operates in the medium of film rather than classroom drama, and while his objectives are not pedagogical, the movie highlights crucial questions about ethics, aesthetics and power that resonate for anyone using unsignalled role, including teachers. This paper addresses some of these questions, including: ‘Is it acceptable to manipulate people into ‘misframing’ a fictional role for your own purposes?’ ‘What difference does it make if the objective is educational?’ and ‘What if the unwitting participants are children?’

year: 2008

title: Interactions between ship rats and house mice

authors: Bridgman, Lucy Jade

subjects: Rattus rattus

abstract: Interactions between coexisting invasive species can cause complications when their populations are managed to protect native biodiversity. The ship rat (Rattus rattus) is a widespread invasive species often targeted for management because of its negative impacts on native wildlife, particularly in otherwise mammal-depauperate ecosystems such as in New Zealand. However, where ship rats are removed, another common, coexisting invasive species, the house mouse (Mus musculus), is often detected more frequently, which may undermine the benefit of the management operation for biodiversity. The aim of this study was to better understand why house mice become more abundant, or potentially also more active and detectable, when released from suppression by ship rats through determining the mechanism involved. The hypothesised mechanisms were: exploitation competition, interference competition and intraguild predation. 

Focusing on New Zealand, I reviewed diet studies of ship rats and house mice to have a clearer understanding of the resources they may share. I found that whilst some features of their diets differ, ship rats and house mice do show overlap in the range of food items they consume. Therefore they could compete for these shared resources if they were limited. However, in captive experiments I confirmed that ship rats exhibit predatory aggression towards house mice and therefore have potential to directly negatively influence mouse populations regardless of resource availability. 

In response to the threat of predation by ship rats, house mice exhibited avoidance of caged rats during further captive experiments and this restricted their foraging choices. In the field, the foraging behaviour of mice in podocarp-broadleaf forest was also limited by the risk posed from abundant ship rats, which prevented them from accessing resources. In similar habitat at Pureora Forest Park during a longer term study of mouse populations, mice captured when ship rats were abundant had lower body mass compared to those captured when ship rats were controlled, an effect that was not offset by supplementary feeding.

At Pureora, the ship rat control operations did not achieve optimal low ship rat levels, however, despite small mouse sample sizes, both the abundance of mice measured by live-trapping and their activity in tracking tunnels were positively affected. These measures were moderately correlated indicating that activity was related to mouse abundance. However, capture probability varied seasonally and according to rat abundance in unexpected ways, indicating more subtle and complex potential influences of ship rats on the probability of detecting mice. 

My results indicate that the main mechanism by which ship rats suppress house mice is intraguild predation. This is because though apparently food restricted, house mice did not access resources I provided for them when ship rats were abundant, which rules out exploitation competition. Ship rats appear to view house mice as prey and opportunistically consume them, which differentiates intraguild predation from interference competition as the latter is primarily driven by resource defence. Even if predation events are rare, my research demonstrates that the risk effects of avoiding an abundant opportunistic predator appear to have a strong influence on the abundance and distribution of house mice.

text: Interactions between ship rats and house mice Interactions between coexisting invasive species can cause complications when their populations are managed to protect native biodiversity. The ship rat (Rattus rattus) is a widespread invasive species often targeted for management because of its negative impacts on native wildlife, particularly in otherwise mammal-depauperate ecosystems such as in New Zealand. However, where ship rats are removed, another common, coexisting invasive species, the house mouse (Mus musculus), is often detected more frequently, which may undermine the benefit of the management operation for biodiversity. The aim of this study was to better understand why house mice become more abundant, or potentially also more active and detectable, when released from suppression by ship rats through determining the mechanism involved. The hypothesised mechanisms were: exploitation competition, interference competition and intraguild predation. 

Focusing on New Zealand, I reviewed diet studies of ship rats and house mice to have a clearer understanding of the resources they may share. I found that whilst some features of their diets differ, ship rats and house mice do show overlap in the range of food items they consume. Therefore they could compete for these shared resources if they were limited. However, in captive experiments I confirmed that ship rats exhibit predatory aggression towards house mice and therefore have potential to directly negatively influence mouse populations regardless of resource availability. 

In response to the threat of predation by ship rats, house mice exhibited avoidance of caged rats during further captive experiments and this restricted their foraging choices. In the field, the foraging behaviour of mice in podocarp-broadleaf forest was also limited by the risk posed from abundant ship rats, which prevented them from accessing resources. In similar habitat at Pureora Forest Park during a longer term study of mouse populations, mice captured when ship rats were abundant had lower body mass compared to those captured when ship rats were controlled, an effect that was not offset by supplementary feeding.

At Pureora, the ship rat control operations did not achieve optimal low ship rat levels, however, despite small mouse sample sizes, both the abundance of mice measured by live-trapping and their activity in tracking tunnels were positively affected. These measures were moderately correlated indicating that activity was related to mouse abundance. However, capture probability varied seasonally and according to rat abundance in unexpected ways, indicating more subtle and complex potential influences of ship rats on the probability of detecting mice. 

My results indicate that the main mechanism by which ship rats suppress house mice is intraguild predation. This is because though apparently food restricted, house mice did not access resources I provided for them when ship rats were abundant, which rules out exploitation competition. Ship rats appear to view house mice as prey and opportunistically consume them, which differentiates intraguild predation from interference competition as the latter is primarily driven by resource defence. Even if predation events are rare, my research demonstrates that the risk effects of avoiding an abundant opportunistic predator appear to have a strong influence on the abundance and distribution of house mice.

year: 2012

title: Māori medium children’s views about learning mathematics: possibilities for future directions

authors: Hāwera, Ngārewa

subjects: New Zealand

abstract: Pre-European traditional Māori education in New Zealand was integrated and holistic. With Western influence many Maori children struggled to achieve at school. Māori medium education based on retaining Māori values, language and culture therefore emerged to provide an alternative avenue for education. A key element in this initiative is to increase children’s engagement with, and learning of, mathematics. Views from 61 Year 5-8 children in Māori medium contexts have been sought to provide insights about their mathematics education. This paper discusses some of these views and raises possibilities for future directions to support the momentum of this positive initiative.

text: Māori medium children’s views about learning mathematics: possibilities for future directions Pre-European traditional Māori education in New Zealand was integrated and holistic. With Western influence many Maori children struggled to achieve at school. Māori medium education based on retaining Māori values, language and culture therefore emerged to provide an alternative avenue for education. A key element in this initiative is to increase children’s engagement with, and learning of, mathematics. Views from 61 Year 5-8 children in Māori medium contexts have been sought to provide insights about their mathematics education. This paper discusses some of these views and raises possibilities for future directions to support the momentum of this positive initiative.

year: 2011