Embracing change in education
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The final day of the school holidays usually involves as much relaxation as possible, but for more than one hundred and thirty educators they were more interested in attending a symposium that promised to examine issues around the ‘politics of change’ in New Zealand education.
Hosted by the School of Critical Studies in Education and supported by the School of Te Puna Wānanga, the one-day event attracted educators from a range of levels and organisations, including early childhood, primary and secondary teachers, along with tertiary providers from the country’s main universities and polytechnics. After the opening powhiri at the Te Aka Matua ki te Pou Hawaiki Marae they packed the music auditorium at the Faculty of Education to listen to three highly regarded academics and a panel of invited speakers. These included Professor Glenda McNaughton from the University of Melbourne, Professor Alison Jones from The University of Auckland, and Professor Peter Roberts of the University of Canterbury.
The symposium was organised by the faculty’s Dr Vicki Carpenter and Dr Iris Duhn as a way for educators to come together and look for ways to ask some of the difficult academic questions that confront education in New Zealand today. The symposium grew out of a desire to share research they presented based on a compulsory undergraduate course on the politics, philosophy and history of education to the NZARE conference last year. This particularly looked at teachers’ roles as intellectuals, as Vicki and Iris believe it is important for new teachers to be both learners themselves and critical thinkers.
“We need teachers who can not only hit the ground running but be intellectuals and agents in their careers for positive change,” says Vicki. “The most lasting part of my teacher training was that it made me curious - it challenged my intellectuality and my sense of agency. So we were keen to provide a space to put some questions out there and talk about what some of the answers might be.”
In her presentation ‘Educators as critical meaning makers’ Professor Glenda McNaughton focused on some specific Australian issues in early childhood. She argued that racially just social change in education requires educators to consciously remember the past, be aware of discourses of privilege and discrimination, and rethink what they know in order to appropriately reposition what they do. This has been particularly important to Australian research with young children and early childhood educators about the pace of race, racism and anti-racism in their lives.
Encouragement to embrace awkward intellectual spaces in education that can involve discomfort and tension was a key theme of ‘The fantastic politics of change’ presented by Professor Alison Jones and Te Kawehau Hoskins of The University of Auckland’s School of Te Puna Wānanga. They argued that ‘mindfulness’ of difference rather than a need to ‘understand’ and therefore control it could be liberating to all concerned. In arguing for this mindfulness, they spoke against that anxious energy common in education: a striving for the ‘fantasy’ of solutions and ideals in the Māori-Pakeha relation.
This was complemented by the keynote address of Professor Peter Roberts ‘Living on the Edge: Critical education in troubled times’. He agreed that these times and the politics of change force us to live with a level of discomfort. He feels, however, that this goes to the heart of what critical perspectives in education is all about so we shouldn’t feel discouraged but see this tension as a positive space.
The panel discussion looked at what ‘critical education’ might mean in the 21st Century, why it matters, and some impediments in the way of such a goal. Panelists included Dr Eve Coxon (Faculty of Education), Dr Jane Gilbert (NZCER), Associate Professor Nesta Devine (AUT), and Anne-Marie O’Neill (Massey University).
Feedback indicated that those who attended appreciated the opportunity to come together in a neutral space to discuss ideas and returned to schools, centres, and tertiary institutions feeling refreshed, engaged and energised.
“There was a real sense that the participants went away with some new ideas”, says Dr Duhn. “Teachers and educators are often in a position where they are giving out [to others], and this was an opportunity for teachers to come together and feel that they were receiving something that inspired them to think further.”
“I really hope that the participants went away with the feeling that ‘thinking teaching’ is exciting. I hope they felt that little tinge of ‘wow!’”
