Georgina Stewart

Reductive metabolism and hypoxia-selective toxicity of nitracrine

The 1-nitroacridine nitracrine [NC,1-nitro-9-(dimethylaminopropyl-amino)acridine] is a potent hypoxia-selective cytotoxic agent in culture, but lacks activity against hypoxic tumor cells in vivo at therapeutically accessible doses. To clarify reasons for this failure in vivo the metabolism of NC was investigated in stirred suspension cultures of Chinese hamster ovary cells, in EMT-6 spheroids, and in mice. One major low molecular weight metabolite (identical to that generated by NaBH4/Pd/C reduction) was observed in hypoxic (less than 10 ppm O2) single cell suspensions, while [G-3H-acridinyl]NC formed trichloroacetic acid- and acetonitrile-insoluble macromolecular adducts (MA) at a rate seven-fold higher than in aerobic (20% O2) cultures. Formation of these adducts correlated with cytotoxicity under air or nitrogen, and hence may provide a dosimeter for NC-induced damage. Autoradiographic investigation of the distribution of MA in spheroids equilibrated with 5% O2 showed that the label was restricted to the outer cell layers rather than being localized in the hypoxic central region. Thus metabolic activation is probably too rapid, even in well-oxygenated cells, to allow adequate distribution to hypoxic microenvironments in tumors. In mice, levels of MA were higher in liver, kidney, spleen and lung than in Lewis lung tumors, indicating that oxygen concentration does not exert a dominant influence on relative rates of metabolic activation in vivo. The development of nitroacridines with useful hypoxic selectivity in vivo will require identification of analogs for which reductive metabolism is more completely inhibited at oxygen concentrations found in normal tissues.

Maori in the Science Curriculum: Developments and Possibilities.

The aim of this paper is to examine the current state of development of Mäori science curriculum policy, and the roles that various discourses have played in shaping these developments. These discussions provide a background for suggestions about a possible future direction, and the presentation of a new concept for Mäori science education (note that in this paper this phrase refers to science that incorporates Mäori language and/or knowledge, rather than Mäori participation in science education).

Out of Place: Indigenous Knowledge in the Science Curriculum

This chapter reviews the history of indigenous science education research, which has emerged from wider discourses of multiculturalism and equity for non-Western students in science education. There is a history of fierce debate between oppositional positions taken on the question of including indigenous knowledge (IK) in the science curriculum: while none dispute the importance of indigenous knowledge, only some equate it with indigenous science, understood as a valid form of science incompatible with Western science. Research into the inclusion of Māori knowledge in the science curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand indicates that such efforts often employ emblematic aspects, extracted from authentic cultural contexts, and treated in isolation from the historical socio-political relationship between Māori and Western cultures. In this way, including indigenous knowledge in the science curriculum exposes deeper layers of cultural knowledge to caricature, in the form of distorted representation. Rather, to hold IK in tension with science catalyses insight into the philosophical nature of science, serves as a reminder of occasions when science has been subject to political distortion, and returns the focus to the question of equity in outcomes of science education for indigenous students.

Science in the Māori-medium curriculum: Assessment of policy outcomes in Pūtaiao education

This second research paper on science education in Māori‐medium school contexts complements an earlier article published in this journal (Stewart, 2005). Science and science education are related domains in society and in state schooling in which there have always been particularly large discrepancies in participation and achievement by Māori. In 1995 a Kaupapa Māori analysis of this situation challenged New Zealand science education academics to deal with ‘the Māori crisis’ within science education. Recent NCEA results suggest Pūtaiao (Māori‐medium Science) education, for which a national curriculum statement was published in 1996, has so far increased, rather than decreased, the level of inequity for Māori students in science education. What specific issues impact on this lack of success, which contrasts with the overall success of Kura Kaupapa Māori, and how might policy frameworks and operational systems of Pūtaiao need to change, if better achievement in science education for Māori‐medium students is the goal? A pathway towards further research and development in this area is suggested.

Introducing the Indigenous Philosophy Group (IPG)

This group guest editorial introduces the Indigenous Philosophy Group, or IPG, and its initial members, purpose and possibilities. The IPG provides an umbrella for exploring indigenous philosophica...

Māori in the Kingdom of the Gaze: Subjects or critics?

Abstract For Māori, a real opportunity exists to flesh out some terms and concepts that Western thinkers have adopted and that precede disciplines but necessarily inform them. In this article, we are intent on describing one of these precursory phenomena—Foucault’s Gaze—within a framework that accords with a Māori philosophical framework. Our discussion is focused on the potential and limits of colonised thinking, which has huge implications for such disciplines as education, among others. We have placed Foucault’s Gaze alongside a Māori metaphysics and have speculated on the Gaze’s surveillant/expectant strategies with some key Māori primordial phenomena in mind, such as ‘te kore’ (nothingness) and ‘āhua’ (form). We posit the Gaze as an entity and thus aim to render it more relevant to Māori, so that it can be addressed appropriately. We also (but relatedly) preface that discussion by theorising on some of the challenges that confront us as Māori authors in even referring counter-colonially to the Gaze. Whilst we do not seek to destabilise the Gaze by positing it as a metaphysically based entity, we do hint at the possibility that critical indigenous philosophy may even for a short time bring the Gaze into focus for Māori. By introducing an awareness of an alternative (Māori) metaphysics, we may have unsettled the self-certainty of the Gaze.

What does ‘indigenous’ mean, for me?

This editorial starts from the understanding that identity formation is one of the primary purposes of formal education, especially schooling, and that processes of national identity-building are r...

From both sides of the indigenous-settler hyphen in Aotearoa New Zealand

Iho/Abstract The idea of the ‘intercultural hyphen’ is likened to a gap or bridge between ethnic groups, created from the ongoing intertwining of sociopolitical and intellectual histories. This ‘gap or bridge’ wording captures the paradoxical nature of the intercultural space, for which the ‘hyphen’ is a shorthand symbol or sign. There are options on either side to engage or disengage across the intercultural space represented by the hyphen—but how, and with what results? In Aotearoa New Zealand, tensions invoked by the indigenous-settler hyphen are worked through every day in a multitudinous range of real-world scenarios. The purpose of this article is to combine critical Māori readings with critical Pākehā readings to discuss the intercultural hyphen as a theoretical concept in education, showing how Māori and Kaupapa Māori benefit from this concept, and arguing for stronger engagement of critical Māori scholarship in the field of philosophy and theory of education.

Collective writing: An inquiry into praxis

This is the second text in the series collectively written by members of the Editors’ Collective, which comprises a series of individual and collaborative reflections upon the experience of contributing to the previous and first text written by the Editors’ Collective: ‘Towards a Philosophy of Academic Publishing.’ In the article, contributors reflect upon their experience of collective writing and summarize the main themes and challenges. They show that the act of collective writing disturbs the existing systems of academic knowledge creation, and link these disturbances to the age of the digital reason. They conclude that the collaborative and collective action is a thing of learning-by- doing, and that collective writing seems to offer a possible way forward from the co-opting of academic activities by economics. Through detaching knowledge creation from economy, collaborative and collective writing address the problem of forming new collective intelligences.

Lifting the Publishing Curtain: The editor interview project of the EPAT Editorial Development Group (EDG)

Academic publishing has undergone a vast transformation in the last decade, along with clear beneficial and harmful impacts for higher education researchers. Journals cannot ignore the value of going online, something that was viewed as daring at the turn of the twenty-first century. At the same time that higher education leaders around the world have largely accepted an ideology of continuous data-based performance evaluation systems—for universities, sub-units, departments, and individual researchers—data emerging from online publishing enables new and influential forms of comparative analysis of journals and fields. Pressure to publish for younger scholars seems forever on the rise, and not in just any peer-reviewed journal. With increased employer demand for publication and limitless space online, the labor of journal production has risen dramatically. New levels of profit are possible for savvy academics, and ‘savvy’ is now something to which doctoral candidates across fields increasingly aspire. Journal editors have faced exciting and risky challenges during this online revolution. Though no two experiences are the same, either in the traditional or new production modes, all editors have had to make choices about new modes of publication, with financial and intellectual implications. In recent years, journal editors have begun sharing their views and perspectives regarding their participation in the ongoing transformation of academic research norms (Brooks, 2012; Burbules, 2014). Meanwhile, the field of philosophy of education has been heavily and uniquely influenced by the recent decades of restructuring and revaluation of academic knowledge and the functions of higher education institutions. Around the world, conferences in the field have normalized a role as a support group for an apparently disadvantaged new generation of researchers, with society presidents taking on the charge to protect a field at risk of irrelevancy in a neoliberal world (Roberts, 2009). The nurturing of junior scholars has been deemed essential by our societies and the editors of our leading journals (see, for example, Smeyers & Burbules, 2011). The success of novices is widely recognized to correlate with their interactions and relations with mentors and other more practiced members of a field, and journal editors in philosophy of education have begun to take seriously the newly theorized