title: Engaging environmental education through PISA: leveraging curriculum as a political process

authors: Eames, Chris W.

abstract: The Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD) works with countries worldwide to implement testing in the areas of science, mathematics and reading through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) every three years, and this process is recognised to influence education systems through areas such as curriculum. Over the past decade, the OECD increasingly has acknowledged the need to include a greater emphasis on environmental issues, including developing student competencies specifically in this area. For the 2025 PISA round, we were invited as environmental science education experts to contribute to the Science Framework, which underpins the science assessment. This paper explains how we responded to that invitation, including foregrounding the urgent need to understand the competencies of 15 year-olds to address critical socio-ecological challenges such as climate change. We argue that this provides environmental education practitioners and scholars with a powerful opportunity to gain world-scale data for research and advocacy, which could enhance the visibility and leverage for our field in curriculum, whilst also recognising the political process within which we were engaged.

text: Engaging environmental education through PISA: leveraging curriculum as a political process The Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD) works with countries worldwide to implement testing in the areas of science, mathematics and reading through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) every three years, and this process is recognised to influence education systems through areas such as curriculum. Over the past decade, the OECD increasingly has acknowledged the need to include a greater emphasis on environmental issues, including developing student competencies specifically in this area. For the 2025 PISA round, we were invited as environmental science education experts to contribute to the Science Framework, which underpins the science assessment. This paper explains how we responded to that invitation, including foregrounding the urgent need to understand the competencies of 15 year-olds to address critical socio-ecological challenges such as climate change. We argue that this provides environmental education practitioners and scholars with a powerful opportunity to gain world-scale data for research and advocacy, which could enhance the visibility and leverage for our field in curriculum, whilst also recognising the political process within which we were engaged.

year: 2024

title: International languages in primary schools: Aims, constraints, and one way forward

authors: Barnard, Roger

subjects: language teaching

abstract: The present policy of the Ministry of Education is that all schools should offer instruction in an additional language from Year 7 to Year 10. The additional languages may be te reo Māori, a Pacific language, or one of several international languages. This paper focuses on the latter, and suggests that, at the present time, it would be unwise in many schools to introduce foreign language instruction in Year 7, and instead a focus should be placed on the development of students’ intercultural awareness.
This paper begins with a brief review of the present policy and the benefits which are assumed to accrue from learning languages. It then discusses the existing constraints affecting language teaching in our primary schools, many of which are also faced in other countries which have introduced foreign language instruction in their primary schools. The most important of these constraints in New Zealand, as elsewhere, is the shortage of linguistically competent and appropriately trained second language teachers, A brief consideration is paid to the limited amount of professional development available to primary teachers in this country, many of whom have little, or even no, knowledge of the target language. The multimedia packs, which have been produced for the teaching and learning of international languages in schools, assume that teachers can learn the target language at the same time as teaching it to their students.
It is suggested that, until teachers are professionally prepared for the teaching of an international language, actual language instruction should be deferred. The focus of instruction in Year 7 could instead be directed towards an understanding of the culture of the target language. This possibility is then explored by considering the syllabus and type of classroom activities which might allow teachers to promote their students’ intercultural awareness, key competencies of which are outlined. At the same time, the designated teachers could take steps to develop at least a basic competence in the target language and can receive professional development in appropriate strategies and techniques of second language teaching.

text: International languages in primary schools: Aims, constraints, and one way forward The present policy of the Ministry of Education is that all schools should offer instruction in an additional language from Year 7 to Year 10. The additional languages may be te reo Māori, a Pacific language, or one of several international languages. This paper focuses on the latter, and suggests that, at the present time, it would be unwise in many schools to introduce foreign language instruction in Year 7, and instead a focus should be placed on the development of students’ intercultural awareness.
This paper begins with a brief review of the present policy and the benefits which are assumed to accrue from learning languages. It then discusses the existing constraints affecting language teaching in our primary schools, many of which are also faced in other countries which have introduced foreign language instruction in their primary schools. The most important of these constraints in New Zealand, as elsewhere, is the shortage of linguistically competent and appropriately trained second language teachers, A brief consideration is paid to the limited amount of professional development available to primary teachers in this country, many of whom have little, or even no, knowledge of the target language. The multimedia packs, which have been produced for the teaching and learning of international languages in schools, assume that teachers can learn the target language at the same time as teaching it to their students.
It is suggested that, until teachers are professionally prepared for the teaching of an international language, actual language instruction should be deferred. The focus of instruction in Year 7 could instead be directed towards an understanding of the culture of the target language. This possibility is then explored by considering the syllabus and type of classroom activities which might allow teachers to promote their students’ intercultural awareness, key competencies of which are outlined. At the same time, the designated teachers could take steps to develop at least a basic competence in the target language and can receive professional development in appropriate strategies and techniques of second language teaching.

year: 2006

title: Echoed silencing in Te Whare/Tangata

authors: Lewis, Cassandra Louise Terauhina

subjects: Mana Wāhine

abstract: Wāhine Māori voices are suppressed due to multiple intersecting factors in Aotearoa which negatively impact our lived realities. The aim of this thesis is to foreground wāhine voice and identity within a settler colonial housing system. The current ‘housing crisis’ has been an issue of interest in academia focusing on housing insecurity, homelessness and neoliberalism. Additionally, the criminalisation of Māori has been explored by scholars to a similar extent, especially the pipelining of Māori into incarceration and precarity through policing and surveillance strategies. However, how the criminal justice system and the housing systems interact is scarcely investigated in Aotearoa, and moreover, has not been examined through a Mana wāhine theoretical framework. Mana Wāhine scholars have long critiqued colonisation and the accompanying practices, ideologies and discourses of difference that misrepresent wāhine as the ‘savage other’. How wāhine Māori are constructed through political discourse and factors leading to the silencing of wāhine are at the forefront of this inquiry and moreover, wāhine resistance, survival and aspirations while navigating a discriminatory housing system is examined.

Political and Western discourse contributes to the criminalisation and deficit framing of wāhine as the ‘undeserving poor’ and ‘criminal other’ which subsequently silences wāhine and encourages discriminatory practices. This thesis contends that the channelling of wāhine Māori into a precarious population, the criminalisation of wāhine Māori, and the colonial discourses surrounding wāhine interact together and create barriers to wāhine Māori access to housing. An analysis of housing discourse, alongside wāhine perspectives provides a counter-narrative of the lived reality and voice from wāhine who reside in a predominantly precarious and Māori populated area. The findings show cases of surveillance, discrimination, social policing and steering wāhine Māori into unhealthy living conditions, however, wāhine were also creative in their practices of resistance and survivance.

text: Echoed silencing in Te Whare/Tangata Wāhine Māori voices are suppressed due to multiple intersecting factors in Aotearoa which negatively impact our lived realities. The aim of this thesis is to foreground wāhine voice and identity within a settler colonial housing system. The current ‘housing crisis’ has been an issue of interest in academia focusing on housing insecurity, homelessness and neoliberalism. Additionally, the criminalisation of Māori has been explored by scholars to a similar extent, especially the pipelining of Māori into incarceration and precarity through policing and surveillance strategies. However, how the criminal justice system and the housing systems interact is scarcely investigated in Aotearoa, and moreover, has not been examined through a Mana wāhine theoretical framework. Mana Wāhine scholars have long critiqued colonisation and the accompanying practices, ideologies and discourses of difference that misrepresent wāhine as the ‘savage other’. How wāhine Māori are constructed through political discourse and factors leading to the silencing of wāhine are at the forefront of this inquiry and moreover, wāhine resistance, survival and aspirations while navigating a discriminatory housing system is examined.

Political and Western discourse contributes to the criminalisation and deficit framing of wāhine as the ‘undeserving poor’ and ‘criminal other’ which subsequently silences wāhine and encourages discriminatory practices. This thesis contends that the channelling of wāhine Māori into a precarious population, the criminalisation of wāhine Māori, and the colonial discourses surrounding wāhine interact together and create barriers to wāhine Māori access to housing. An analysis of housing discourse, alongside wāhine perspectives provides a counter-narrative of the lived reality and voice from wāhine who reside in a predominantly precarious and Māori populated area. The findings show cases of surveillance, discrimination, social policing and steering wāhine Māori into unhealthy living conditions, however, wāhine were also creative in their practices of resistance and survivance.

year: 2021