title: Understanding Teachers' Perspectives on the Purpose and Importance of Science Education

authors: Ryan, Hayley Elizabeth

subjects: Teachers persecptives

abstract: The focus of this thesis is to identify teachers’ perspectives on the purpose and importance of science education. This focus is twofold. It is concerned with finding out what teachers understand the purpose of science education to be, that is, why they believe science is taught in schools and how learning science benefits students in their daily lives. It is also concerned with understanding how important science education is to teachers – how much teachers value science as a learning area, and how this value is reflected within their teaching practice.  

	This work determines firstly teachers’ perceptions of science education practice. It examines how teachers perceive the science planning process; how much involvement and control they feel they have throughout the planning stage, including perceived control over teaching pedagogies and planning material. Simply put, how much do the teachers feel is up to them, and how much do they feel is mandated from management. Secondly, the work focuses on personal perspectives about science education. It seeks to examine teachers’ opinions and views on the purpose of science education, why science is taught and what they believe students stand to gain through science education. A major element of understanding teachers’ perspectives is to understand what importance teachers place on the teaching of science, specifically the nature of science – what does the nature of science (NoS) mean to them and how do they show this through planning and teaching? NoS is a key element of science education, recognised both internationally and within New Zealand, because it promotes scientifically-literate students. NoS is described as being a critical component of scientific literacy: understanding NoS through scientific practice develops scientific dispositions in students. This study is interested in gaining teachers’ understandings of NoS and the importance teachers place on NoS in relation to these global understandings.

	The data for this research was collected through interviews with four teachers in two different schools. The study offered the teachers the opportunity to explore their personal perspectives. The findings reveal teachers’ understanding of the science curriculum was underdeveloped. The teachers appear to lack understanding of the science curriculum area, including NoS, and this was reflected in their pedagogical approaches and planning. The analysis identified four key themes impacting on teachers’ level of understanding: limited science training and professional development, the low status of science education in primary schools, lack of knowledge and experience with current teaching approaches in science, and limited understanding about the purpose of science education. These themes are supported by research demonstrating that they are global and have been acknowledged for many years now. The first theme in this study was identified as the likely root cause of the existence of the other three themes. This finding reveals the nature of teacher training and professional development as a potentially fundamental and critical issue to address in science education. Further research is needed to confirm consistency in these results across New Zealand schools. If consistency is found, this outcome may then raise the issue to one of national importance for science education, demanding attention from government policy-makers, pre-service training institutions and professional development facilitators.

text: Understanding Teachers' Perspectives on the Purpose and Importance of Science Education The focus of this thesis is to identify teachers’ perspectives on the purpose and importance of science education. This focus is twofold. It is concerned with finding out what teachers understand the purpose of science education to be, that is, why they believe science is taught in schools and how learning science benefits students in their daily lives. It is also concerned with understanding how important science education is to teachers – how much teachers value science as a learning area, and how this value is reflected within their teaching practice.  

	This work determines firstly teachers’ perceptions of science education practice. It examines how teachers perceive the science planning process; how much involvement and control they feel they have throughout the planning stage, including perceived control over teaching pedagogies and planning material. Simply put, how much do the teachers feel is up to them, and how much do they feel is mandated from management. Secondly, the work focuses on personal perspectives about science education. It seeks to examine teachers’ opinions and views on the purpose of science education, why science is taught and what they believe students stand to gain through science education. A major element of understanding teachers’ perspectives is to understand what importance teachers place on the teaching of science, specifically the nature of science – what does the nature of science (NoS) mean to them and how do they show this through planning and teaching? NoS is a key element of science education, recognised both internationally and within New Zealand, because it promotes scientifically-literate students. NoS is described as being a critical component of scientific literacy: understanding NoS through scientific practice develops scientific dispositions in students. This study is interested in gaining teachers’ understandings of NoS and the importance teachers place on NoS in relation to these global understandings.

	The data for this research was collected through interviews with four teachers in two different schools. The study offered the teachers the opportunity to explore their personal perspectives. The findings reveal teachers’ understanding of the science curriculum was underdeveloped. The teachers appear to lack understanding of the science curriculum area, including NoS, and this was reflected in their pedagogical approaches and planning. The analysis identified four key themes impacting on teachers’ level of understanding: limited science training and professional development, the low status of science education in primary schools, lack of knowledge and experience with current teaching approaches in science, and limited understanding about the purpose of science education. These themes are supported by research demonstrating that they are global and have been acknowledged for many years now. The first theme in this study was identified as the likely root cause of the existence of the other three themes. This finding reveals the nature of teacher training and professional development as a potentially fundamental and critical issue to address in science education. Further research is needed to confirm consistency in these results across New Zealand schools. If consistency is found, this outcome may then raise the issue to one of national importance for science education, demanding attention from government policy-makers, pre-service training institutions and professional development facilitators.

year: 2016

title: Making home, making identity: Asian garden making in New Zealand, 1850s–1930s

authors: Beattie, James John

subjects: New Zealand

abstract: A ‘garden breathes spirit, atmosphere’ into space, a garden makes place home.¹ Gardenmaking, as KatieHolmes, SusanMartin and KylieMirmohamadi observe, is ‘an act of memory and settlement’, one looking ‘back to recollected forms and forward to new growth’.² For most settlers to New Zealand, making a home through gardening meant recreating aspects of their European heritage. It meant introducing, as environmental historian Thomas Dunlap notes, ‘European grass growing in imitation of English meadows’. It involved recreating the lowlands of Scotland through gorse hedges and thistle. Or, it meant cultivating an environment to incorporate familiar flowers and trees, and new varieties too.³ This article, however, complicates this picture of settler garden making as a reminder of home in Europe. It instead examines those Europeans who fashioned gardens and landscapes as reminders of a home in Asia. By examining their hidden histories of garden making, it complicates assumptions made in New Zealand and overseas garden history literature about settlers invariably hailing from Europe and inevitably recreating gardens reminiscent of their home there.⁴ My findings also challenge preconceived notions that the only people making Asian gardens in New Zealand were Chinese migrants themselves.⁵ Equally, I do not discuss the popularity of Asian species or cultivars in settler society, as planted for purely aesthetic responses. Instead this article only examines planting to recall the places from which the varieties originated.⁶ In revealing this hidden history, so to speak, of Europeans brought up in Asia or having spent much of their life there and using garden making and landscape features to recall that history, this article extends the recent research of Duncan Campbell and others into the important connections New Zealand maintained with Asia, from the collection of rare and valuable Chinese objects through to settler recreations of Japanese games, and literary and aesthetic influences. To quote Campbell’s chapter title, itself taken from a work by the New Zealand/British writer Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), this article gives spatial and visual life to ‘[w]hat lies beneath those strange rich surfaces’ of colonial New Zealand.⁷ Scraping away the surfaces of three of those gardens—two in colonial Canterbury, in New Zealand’s South Island, and one in its subtropical north of the 1920s and 1930s— reveals a rich patina of Asian influences colouring New Zealand’s garden history. My hope is for this article to mark the beginning of a project drawing together the warp of literature on settler garden making using Chinese plants and designs with the weft of the history of the garden making of the Chinese themselves.⁸

text: Making home, making identity: Asian garden making in New Zealand, 1850s–1930s A ‘garden breathes spirit, atmosphere’ into space, a garden makes place home.¹ Gardenmaking, as KatieHolmes, SusanMartin and KylieMirmohamadi observe, is ‘an act of memory and settlement’, one looking ‘back to recollected forms and forward to new growth’.² For most settlers to New Zealand, making a home through gardening meant recreating aspects of their European heritage. It meant introducing, as environmental historian Thomas Dunlap notes, ‘European grass growing in imitation of English meadows’. It involved recreating the lowlands of Scotland through gorse hedges and thistle. Or, it meant cultivating an environment to incorporate familiar flowers and trees, and new varieties too.³ This article, however, complicates this picture of settler garden making as a reminder of home in Europe. It instead examines those Europeans who fashioned gardens and landscapes as reminders of a home in Asia. By examining their hidden histories of garden making, it complicates assumptions made in New Zealand and overseas garden history literature about settlers invariably hailing from Europe and inevitably recreating gardens reminiscent of their home there.⁴ My findings also challenge preconceived notions that the only people making Asian gardens in New Zealand were Chinese migrants themselves.⁵ Equally, I do not discuss the popularity of Asian species or cultivars in settler society, as planted for purely aesthetic responses. Instead this article only examines planting to recall the places from which the varieties originated.⁶ In revealing this hidden history, so to speak, of Europeans brought up in Asia or having spent much of their life there and using garden making and landscape features to recall that history, this article extends the recent research of Duncan Campbell and others into the important connections New Zealand maintained with Asia, from the collection of rare and valuable Chinese objects through to settler recreations of Japanese games, and literary and aesthetic influences. To quote Campbell’s chapter title, itself taken from a work by the New Zealand/British writer Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), this article gives spatial and visual life to ‘[w]hat lies beneath those strange rich surfaces’ of colonial New Zealand.⁷ Scraping away the surfaces of three of those gardens—two in colonial Canterbury, in New Zealand’s South Island, and one in its subtropical north of the 1920s and 1930s— reveals a rich patina of Asian influences colouring New Zealand’s garden history. My hope is for this article to mark the beginning of a project drawing together the warp of literature on settler garden making using Chinese plants and designs with the weft of the history of the garden making of the Chinese themselves.⁸

year: 2011

title: Māori experiences of bipolar disorder: pathways to recovery

authors: Waitoki, Waikaremoana

abstract: The findings of this research highlighted pathways into mental illness for Maori that could have been avoided earlier. The pathways to recovery however, showed the critical importance of maintaining connections with significant family members over the lifespan. Exposure to varying levels of childhood adversity, such as sexual and physical violence, parental mental illness, multiple and/or abusive foster care, and abandonment issues led to acute levels of post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, poor relationship choices, depression, anxiety and safety issues.

text: Māori experiences of bipolar disorder: pathways to recovery The findings of this research highlighted pathways into mental illness for Maori that could have been avoided earlier. The pathways to recovery however, showed the critical importance of maintaining connections with significant family members over the lifespan. Exposure to varying levels of childhood adversity, such as sexual and physical violence, parental mental illness, multiple and/or abusive foster care, and abandonment issues led to acute levels of post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, poor relationship choices, depression, anxiety and safety issues.

year: 2014