title: Pedagogy beyond the gate: The Ngahere Project

authors: Kelly, Janette

abstract: The significance of experiences in nature for children’s learning and development has been expounded by philosophers and educationalists for centuries. In many contemporary early childhood education (ECE) settings, such experiences are highly valued. Nowadays, Froebel’s notion of kindergartens as “children’s gardens” is likely to be complemented by ideas from Steiner, Montessori, Malaguzzi and, more recently, by Scandinavian notions of forest kindergartens (Knight, 2009). In Aotearoa New Zealand the natural environment of the bush or “ngahere”, as it is known in te reo Māori, is also seen as a significant learning environment. This article explores some of the pedagogical issues a group of ECE teachers encountered with children during an action research project looking at teaching and learning possibilities in nature-based settings “beyond the gate”.

text: Pedagogy beyond the gate: The Ngahere Project The significance of experiences in nature for children’s learning and development has been expounded by philosophers and educationalists for centuries. In many contemporary early childhood education (ECE) settings, such experiences are highly valued. Nowadays, Froebel’s notion of kindergartens as “children’s gardens” is likely to be complemented by ideas from Steiner, Montessori, Malaguzzi and, more recently, by Scandinavian notions of forest kindergartens (Knight, 2009). In Aotearoa New Zealand the natural environment of the bush or “ngahere”, as it is known in te reo Māori, is also seen as a significant learning environment. This article explores some of the pedagogical issues a group of ECE teachers encountered with children during an action research project looking at teaching and learning possibilities in nature-based settings “beyond the gate”.

year: 2012

title: The positive effects of negative information: Extending one-class classification models in binary proteomic sequence classification

authors: Mutter, Stefan

subjects: computer science

abstract: Profile Hidden Markov Models (PHMMs) have been widely used as models for Multiple Sequence Alignments. By their nature, they are generative one-class classifiers trained only on sequences belonging to the target class they represent. Nevertheless, they are often used to discriminate between classes. In this paper, we investigate the beneficial effects of information from non-target classes in discriminative tasks. Firstly, the traditional PHMM is extended to a new binary classifier. Secondly, we propose propositional representations of the original PHMM that capture information from target and non-target sequences and can be used with standard binary classifiers. Since PHMM training is time intensive, we investigate whether our approach allows the training of the PHMM to stop, before it is fully converged, without loss of predictive power.

text: The positive effects of negative information: Extending one-class classification models in binary proteomic sequence classification Profile Hidden Markov Models (PHMMs) have been widely used as models for Multiple Sequence Alignments. By their nature, they are generative one-class classifiers trained only on sequences belonging to the target class they represent. Nevertheless, they are often used to discriminate between classes. In this paper, we investigate the beneficial effects of information from non-target classes in discriminative tasks. Firstly, the traditional PHMM is extended to a new binary classifier. Secondly, we propose propositional representations of the original PHMM that capture information from target and non-target sequences and can be used with standard binary classifiers. Since PHMM training is time intensive, we investigate whether our approach allows the training of the PHMM to stop, before it is fully converged, without loss of predictive power.

year: 2009

title: Māori language resources and Māori initiatives for teaching and learning te reo Māori

authors: Greensill, Hineitimoana

abstract: As the most southerly member of the Polynesian languages, a sub-group of the widespread Austronesian language family (Harlow, 2007), te reo Māori has been the subject of substantial analysis, documentation, and analyses of its structure since first contact with Captain Cook in 1769 (Whaanga & Greensill, 2014). The history, trials and tribulations of te reo Māori in Aotearoa have been well documented (see, for example, Reedy, 2000; Spolsky, 2005; Waitangi Tribunal, 1986, 2011). The various reasons for the language’s decline has been an area of ongoing debate and critique by academics, researchers, linguists, language activists, parliamentarians and Māori in recent times (see, for example, Bauer, 2008; Benton, 2015; Higgins, Rewi, & Olsen-Reeder, 2014; Rata, 2007; Winitana, 2011).

text: Māori language resources and Māori initiatives for teaching and learning te reo Māori As the most southerly member of the Polynesian languages, a sub-group of the widespread Austronesian language family (Harlow, 2007), te reo Māori has been the subject of substantial analysis, documentation, and analyses of its structure since first contact with Captain Cook in 1769 (Whaanga & Greensill, 2014). The history, trials and tribulations of te reo Māori in Aotearoa have been well documented (see, for example, Reedy, 2000; Spolsky, 2005; Waitangi Tribunal, 1986, 2011). The various reasons for the language’s decline has been an area of ongoing debate and critique by academics, researchers, linguists, language activists, parliamentarians and Māori in recent times (see, for example, Bauer, 2008; Benton, 2015; Higgins, Rewi, & Olsen-Reeder, 2014; Rata, 2007; Winitana, 2011).

year: 2017