Janinka Greenwood

Raising Literacy Achievement in Reading: How Principals of 10- to 12-Year-Old Students Are Making This Happen.

Many studies show that school leadership is a key factor in supporting change within schools, but few have specifically considered the impact leadership has on gains in students’ reading outcomes. This article focuses on factors that typify leadership in schools where such gains have been identified and explores the nature and quality of leadership that contribute to a school environment conducive to improving the reading achievement of 10‐ to 12‐year‐old students. Interviews were conducted with principals and other relevant parties at five New Zealand primary schools. Findings showed that the schools’ principals were openly passionate about raising students’ literacy achievement. They provided tangible support for all staff, particularly in the form of whole‐school professional development in literacy. They trusted their staff, worked collaboratively with them and were committed to using summative standardized reading assessment as a means of identifying students’ ongoing literacy needs and tracking the assessment of learning.

Aesthetic Learning, and Learning Through the Aesthetic

The aesthetic is at the heart of all our work in theatre and drama, yet it remains a term that eludes definition, and perhaps rightly so. The art of drama and theatre is complex, culturally situated, and forever renegotiating the expectations and boundaries of previous work. That which excites or moves us in the art is also complex, culturally situated, and escaping definition through words. But because it eludes firm definition does not mean it is not important to consider, describe, and attempt to understand, particularly so because as teachers and community workers we often talk about ‘aesthetic learning’ as something that is not only particular to the arts in education but also of significant value.

Educational Change and International Trade in Teacher Development Achieving Local Goals Within/Despite a Transnational Context

The study in one country to support the development of education in another is a regular event in the field of contemporary tertiary education, and it is likely to grow as developing countries accelerate their educational development projects and as Western universities seek international student funding. This article reports the case study of a specific teacher development project and examines the degree to which local development goals were met (or not) within an overtly international study experience, and uses the context and findings of the case to develop a discussion about fair academic trade. Because the stake holders in cross-national education are not univocal, it uses a number of different critical lenses to examine the findings and explore the complexities of the learning contract and its outcomes. It then offers a working model that nominates key elements for fair academic trade, and briefly reports on further collaborations that are growing out of the case study.

Drama education in New Zealand: a coming of age? A conceptualisation of the development and practice of drama in the curriculum as a structured improvisation, with New Zealand's experience as a case study

I propose a conceptualisation of drama in school education as improvisation within a framework that has a number of fixed but changing structures. I examine how the ‘drama in schooling’ practice of one country, New Zealand, might be seen as a group improvisation in which, through dramatic negotiation, participants evolve their goals, narrative and roles. Among a range of improvisational strategies, I explore how they deal with offers and blocks, tease out tension, engage with status and super-objectives, evolve dramatic symbols. In this discussion improvisation begins as a metaphor. However, following models in organisational management, the discussion hopes to contribute to ‘the emergent yet currently amorphous theory of organizational improvisation’ (Kamoche, Cunha, and Cunha 2003), and particularly suggest ways in which such theorisations might be applied to examinations of educational practice.

Teaching and Theatre in Our Sacred Spaces

Abstract This article explores the use of drama in areas that might be called ‘sacred space’. It lines up curriculum statements in both Australia and New Zealand that promote the use of the arts as ways to express cultural and personal identity, with the need to develop awareness of the issues regarding values, ownership, experimentation. It examines three theatre events within that area of specialness that is here called sacred space, with particular attention to how their participants regard them. It aligns the themes that emerge with those debated in the literature of intercultural theatre. In this way it seeks to offer an initial platform for further research and scholarship in the field.

What are the school-wide strategies that support sustained, regular and effective instructional reading programmes for 10–13-year-old students? A New Zealand experience

There is a significant body of international research indicating that reading instruction does not consistently occur in the final years of primary schooling and progress drops-off as students move through the schooling system. This paper uses case study research to investigate the interactions and the self-perceptions of five literacy leaders, eight teachers of 10–12 year-old students and their principals in five New Zealand primary schools. The schools had been nominated as succeeding in teaching reading in the upper primary school by literacy experts. The article is part of a wider ongoing research project based on a substantial investigation of reading in the final years of primary schooling. All schools had a designated literacy leader who played a key role in supporting literacy development across the school. They were supporting teachers in further developing their knowledge of reading processes and strategies to improve instructional reading at the Year 7 and 8 levels. At all five schools the principals strongly supported the whole school ongoing professional development in reading. The literacy leaders played a significant role in supporting teachers and providing a cohesive alignment within their long-term, school-wide plan to improve reading achievement. Teacher knowledge of literacy processes was evident with teachers planning explicit instruction around text. Vocabulary knowledge and comprehension strategies were recognised as two key areas. School-wide assessment data and in-depth analysis of the implications of the results were discussed amongst staff.

What is happening when teachers of 11–13-year-old students take guided reading: a New Zealand snapshot

This paper focuses on eight teachers nominated as effective in teaching reading to 11–13-year-old students. Data consisted of interviews and unstructured and structured observations of the guided reading lessons. The qualitative data and their analysis explored the research participants’ views to give more detail and filter the quantitative results. The research found although these schools and teachers had been identified as effective in the delivery of reading instruction, there appeared overall to be a need for further development in allowing more student-led dialogue and less teacher dominated discourse. The number of times the majority of these teachers instigated instructional strategies during a guided reading lesson impacted on power relationships countering dialogic discourse.

Ko tātou te rangahau, ko te rangahau, ko tātou: A Māori Approach to Participatory Action Research

Participatory Action Research is an approach to research that not only integrates action and investigation, but also involves those who would be most affected by the project as co-researchers. Although in Western scholarly traditions it is a relatively recent, though widely adopted research paradigm (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005), in Māori traditions it is embedded. It is embedded in the workings of the marae, the people’s communal house, where the community investigates and debates issues that concern its well-being and future actions. Cycles of action, reflection, and reconceptualization are involved. Tātou ki a tātou (All of us together are working for all of us) is a phrase that repeatedly reoccurs. This phrase is embedded in mythic understandings of knowledge: Tane climbed to the heavens and brought back and shared three kete (baskets of knowledge). Each provided access to a particular sphere of knowledge from the esoteric to the practical, and each was assigned to those who would best explore and develop that knowledge for the well-being of the people. The phrase is also embedded in contemporary kaupapa Māori research, which upholds the building of capacity and the development of well-being for the iwi, or people, as the primary goals of research, which emphasizes the importance of accountability to iwi and signals preference for methodologies and methods that engage participants as co-constructors of the findings.

The where of doctoral research: the role of place in creating meaning

Abstract This article explores the importance of place within doctoral research. It considers place as localised, experiential, interactional, embedded in history and discourses, and often multi-faceted and fluid. With a focus on the field of education, it argues that doctoral students need to navigate between the university, the place of study and the local context which is the field of their research, and that such navigation will enable them to explore the tension between the usefulness of global, critically developed (and sometimes homogenising) scholarship and the situated realities and needs of their local context. Drawing on the work of five doctoral students, it examines how they have contextualised their projects in the values, social and economic conditions, histories and aspirations of the sites of their fieldwork. It argues that such identification, exploration and description of place allow the students to lift the smudge of sameness, and allows the reader to better understand the meaning of the research.

Learning communities and fair trade in doctorates and development: report of a collaborative project

This article reports the second stage of a study examining an academic partnership in which Bangladeshi doctoral students in a western university focus their research in the grounded context of Bangladesh and investigate the processes for change. After briefly outlining the previous published stage which examined the academic trade in higher education with developing countries, the article builds on the concept of fair academic trade to critically reflect on the development of a doctoral learning community, a publication project and three specific doctoral studies. The methodological approach is one of participatory action research, with focus on critical reflection on practice.