From local colours to global hues
Alea Macam
The stirring sight of children standing in unison, reciting their patriotic oath while gazing at their country's flag, embodies a deep sense of national pride and identity. However, like the sun that will eventually set, the grounds that will soon be emptied, and the flag that will be lowered and retreated at the end of the day, this identity, too, may transform. As global hues blend with local colours, we bear witness to the emergence of new forms of identity shaped by the broader social, economic, and political forces that are constantly redefining our sense of self and nationhood.
© 2023 | Alea Macam
Identification as emerging researchers
Atif Khalil
To explore the socialisation experiences of doctoral students, I traced the stories of students from a university in Pakistan. This image represents an aspect of doctoral students' socialization, that of participating in research conferences. Presentation of findings for peer critique is a key aspect of researcher identity. By disseminating research to the wider academic community, doctoral students gain constructive feedback which enhances their confidence to communicate and helps clarify their conceptual understanding. Besides, students develop a sense of belonging through contributing knowledge in the academic community.
© 2023 | Atif Khalil
Magnifying learning
Megan Grainger, Helen Turner, Sophia Rodrigues, Cathy Buntting, Brent Wagner
Investigating the impacts of a school-scientist partnership between the University of Waikato and Maeroa Intermediate provided Year 7 and 8 students with an opportunity to observe bees – and varroa mites – in new ways. Using the University’s compound microscopes and portable scanning electron microscope was a highlight for many of the students, vividly demonstrating how additional learning opportunities can emerge from school-scientist connections. The project was inspired by colleagues at Cardiff University and funded by the Waikato-Cardiff seed fund.
© 2023 | Megan Grainger, Helen Turner, Sophia Rodrigues, Cathy Buntting, Brent Wagner
Playing the air, soldering the ether: Reaching Brazilian students through Art and Science
Christian Quimelli
My PhD research uses the Theremin to develop interdisciplinarity across Science and Music, improve student engagement at school and enhance peer interaction in group work. This picture displays the multifaceted workshops I did in Brazil over a 14-week period. For that, I used the Theremin, an outstanding musical instrument that you play while waving your hands in the air without physical contact. The students were taught how to play the instrument, compose to it using alternative music notation, and build an optical version of it.
© 2023 | Christian Quimelli
Back to school : Can a teacher educator still kick it in the classroom?
Claire Coleman
This artwork represents research where, as a current teacher educator, I returned to the classroom as a generalist primary teacher to reflect upon my own practice as a teacher, make connections to my research and ITE experience, and consider the relationship between those two aspects of myself. Through creating this artwork, I reflected upon the pressure I felt to conform to the ‘performance’ of the good teacher, my acts of resistance through playful pedagogy, and the privilege I have to enact them.
© 2023 | Claire Coleman
Te Whāriki: A rich interweave of myriad cultural and environmental strands
Devika Rathore
Early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand is becoming increasingly multicultural. A traditional woven whāriki or mat represents the early childhood curriculum framework Te Whāriki. Migrant Indian teachers bring with them their unique and diverse socio-cultural as well as ecological histories, identities, experiences to add to this mat. They bring their own cultural and environmental fibers and interweave them into the loose strands of Te Whāriki, thus adding to the richness of the ever-expanding mat as they continue their learning journeys alongside those of the children.
© 2023 | Devika Rathore
Hierarchical versus non-hierarchical in the mentoring relationship
Dwi Purwestri Sri Suwarningsih
Traditional mentoring refers to a more experienced person passing on their skills and knowledge to a less experienced person. A contemporary definition refers to the promotion of personnel growth leading to richer subsequent experiences. My doctoral research explores the Early Childhood Development (ECD) mentoring experienced by teachers, mentors, government representatives, and development agency staff. Some participants asserted that their mentoring relationship is more hierarchical (guiding and helping), depicted as someone watering plants. Others contended that relationships are non-hierarchical, and both mentor and mentee have an opportunity for professional growth, represented by the two hands (from different people) producing zucchinis.
© 2023 | Dwi Purwestri Sri Suwarningsih
Maize as a concept for understanding childrearing practices in the African context
Emela Fenmachi
Maize as a metaphor for child development in the African context considers children as kernels protected and nurtured by husks, leaves, stalks, roots, as well as influenced by rain, sunshine, and soil. The husks, leaves, stalk and roots represent the entire family system (the immediate family, extended family members and ancestors). The rain, sun and soil are external influences on child development, like educational and social services and the government. Maize plants growing together metaphorically depict different family units supporting each other in a community. Healthy growth requires all parts of the maize plant. Therefore, children's wellbeing and development require collaboration among all stakeholders.
© 2023 | Emela Fenmachi
Drawing: An artefact of students’ understanding of chemical reactions
Garry Galvez
Combustion (or burning) is a familiar chemical reaction. In chemistry classrooms, burning magnesium is an activity used to spark students’ interest or demonstrate reaction concepts (e.g., mass conservation or reaction types). The image shows the combustion of magnesium producing a bright white light (a perceptible phenomenon) and a student’s drawing of the reaction at the submicroscopic level (i.e., structure and behaviour of imperceptible entities like atoms, molecules, and/or electrons). My research examined the visual-spatial elements of students’ submicroscopic drawings of various reactions after observing them through practical work. The findings provide insights into students’ thinking and understanding of chemical reactions.
© 2023 | Garry Galvez
Distributed leadership and teachers’ professional learning
Dwi Janet Zhong
Promoting teacher professional learning is not just the responsibilities of school principals and individual teachers. This is especially so for rural schools in China due to a lack of qualified teachers and school leaders. The photo illustrates a collective learning activity after a demonstration class in a rural school, where university researchers, an expert teacher from an urban school, school leaders and teachers of the rural school were discussing how to teach a mathematics concept. The findings of this research project imply distributed leadership which underscores collective intelligence could contribute to teacher professional learning in rural schools.
Photo from a collaborative project by Faculty of Education, Southwest University and a rural primary school in P.R.China. Photo credit: Project researcher Janet Zhong
© 2023 | Janet Zhong
Who is the young rural citizen?
Janina Suppers
This image shows findings from a mixed-methods case study, conducted in Anderberg, a small rural village in Germany. In this study, I engaged in conversations with young people aged 13 to 16 and their teachers using focus groups, interviews, and a questionnaire to explore how young rural citizens participate in their communities and their school. Findings suggest participants’ engagement was closely tied to their rural place. While their remote rural location restricted access to some citizenship activities such as protests, it facilitated access to unique participation opportunities such as club leadership roles, volunteering for community events and community service activities.
© 2023 | Janina Suppers
© 2023 | Jo McMillan
The key competencies in technology and engineering practices
Junming Wang
Competencies in technology and engineering are important educational content in China at the primary school level. This research gained insight into the pupils’ competencies by investigating how students performed the process of artefact creation (Design-Create-Test-Modification-Presentation). Through video recording and observation, we found most pupils created artefacts not based on a fixed/given plan but based on their curiosity, interest and existing capacities, demonstrating different levels of competencies in technology and engineering. The findings highlighted the importance of students’ existing knowledge and creativity, suggesting that technology and engineering practices help enhance students’ competencies in communication, participation and contribution.
© 2023 | Junming Wang
Artificial intelligence and languaging
Laura Gurney
What does it mean to communicate with artificial intelligence? While the architecture of our meaning making is vastly different, we seem to understand each other. How might language produced through artificial intelligence resemble, differ from, and shape human languaging?
[This image is based on a collaborative project with Dr Eugenia Demuro, Research Strategies Australia. The image was produced using OpenAI.]
© 2023 | Laura Gurney
Reality shapes our perceptions!
Maryam AL Aufi
This word cloud, consisting of over 100 views, is based on initial findings of 16 interviews conducted with academic staff in one of the public universities in the Sultanate of Oman. Perceptions are likely to be complex and multifaceted, reflecting a range of perspectives and experiences.
As a person in the academic field, can you see the hidden term in the word cloud?
[I designed and created this word cloud using Microsoft PowerPoint]
© 2023 | Maryam AL Aufi
On critical reading
Maurice Cheng
In media literacy education, students are to develop the awareness that a piece of “news” is not exactly the same as the “event” that has happened. I often wonder how the reconstruction is similar to ours, as researchers, when we write up our findings…
© 2023 | Maurice Cheng
He Awa Whiria: A braided rivers approach to research, policy, and practice
Melissa Derby
This image represents a bicultural framework called He Awa Whiria. Created by Professor Angus Macfarlane in 2011, the He Awa Whiria framework has had a significant impact in the academic world and beyond. Inspired by the braided rivers that feature on the landscape of the Canterbury Plains, the framework has been adopted by a range of government departments, National Science Challenges, and higher learning institutions. Often referred to as a ‘braided rivers’ approach, He Awa Whiria is anchoring the work of researchers and practitioners in both national and international spheres.
The metaphor of He Awa Whiria – or a braided river – acts as a methodological framework for drawing upon both Western knowledge and mātauranga Māori. The framework posits that a blending of these two knowledge streams creates an approach and results in solutions that are potentially more powerful than either knowledge stream is able to produce on its own. In this image, the framework was applied in a study exploring literacy with Māori children and their families. Together with Professor Angus Macfarlane and Associate Professor Sonja Macfarlane, I am co-editing a book showcasing the impact of He Awa Whiria in academia and beyond.
© 2023 | Melissa Derby
Layers and hierarchies
Nicola Daly
I think of research as happening in layers. I work in relation to layers of research which have been conducted by others, and I add to my own layers of understanding. Much of my work also relates to hierarchies, or layers ordered in relation to power in language. I am interested in how languages are represented in children’s picturebooks: what this might communicate to children about the relative importance of the languages and how it might impact children’s metalinguistic awareness.
© 2023 | Nicola Daly
It matters what matters matter in initial teacher education
Olivera Kamenarac and Juan Jose Garces Olmos
What might initial teacher education (ITE) be like if we re-imagine teaching as an inter-dependent, response-able, entangled, ever-shifting, difference-rich, diffractive process that is produced between and among human, non-human, and more-than-human agents?
ITE is an assemblage of policies, politics, funding, bodies, memories, locations, technologies and more, all of which contribute to what matters in teaching and teacher becomings. Our project troubles teaching as a reflective, reflexive and analytical practice that treats agency as solely human. It explores possibilities for re-imagining ITE in ways that support teachers to be(come) response-able to and within, not just for what happens in educational spaces in the changing and inequitable more-than-human world.
© 2023 | Olivera Kamenarac and Juan Jose Garces Olmos
Dismantling certainties and crocodile alert!
Philippa Hunter
Max, the Head of History, was enthusiastic about Carl’s teaching.
“Carl’s great! He gets on really well with the kids, and he is learning to teach history just like me. When he is ready, I plan to pass on the mantle because I see him as a future head of history.”
In my problematised history pedagogy research within secondary teacher education, the symbolic mantle is viewed as embodying identity, expertise, authority, and the power to define history. The dismantling of cloaked weighty traditions and essentialist notions inspires deconstruction of historical representation as creative self-fashioning.
© 2023 | Philippa Hunter
Mīharo – to wonder at, to explore, to admire
Simon Taylor
This image was taken while we were researching the nature of curriculum integration at a Bay of Plenty primary school. We find much to admire in these three motivated and committed tamariki in their studies of Te Ao Hurihuri (the Changing World). Much can be achieved when teachers and students are committed to sharing their skills, knowledge and space. Our research seeks to explore the wide range of skills of measurement and constructions created by the students, as well as the associated talk. This has provided teachers with an effective way of checking developing conceptual knowledge and understanding.
Photo credit: Simon Taylor and Barbara Whyte
© 2023 | Simon Taylor
Nurturing women's health: Raising awareness of gynaecological cancers
Sonja Ellis
This image represents the fragility of the female reproductive organs. While protected within the bubble, the bubble itself is fragile and is protected by being nurtured (represented by the women's hands). Raising awareness of gynaecological cancer is the focus of my current research programme. My first study focuses on engagement (or not) in cervical screening among non-heterosexual women, many of whom have historically been excluded from cervical screening due to misinformation. Cervical cancer is largely preventable through cervical screening. In this respect, its prevention is quite literally "in our hands".
© 2023 | Sonja Ellis
Curiously quirky invasion — Research in motion
Sue Cheesman
© 2023 | Sue Cheesman
Brent’s self portrait in form of an assemblage drawing
Thomas Everth
Brent is a participant in a research project with “climate activist teachers” and produced this assemblage drawing as a self-portrait. Brent defines himself by the relationships with the world. He said about his drawing: Where could you find me if you needed to find me in the world? And that’s kind of what that system entails. It’s just, it’s just, you know, I’m connected to something. But what’s that something, and then it kind of goes into this third tier of interconnectedness. And that’s both my transport of myself, transport of the things that come to me, and the transport of things that go from me to something else.
© 2023 | Thomas Everth
Stimulating children’s curiosity and imagination – the patchwork quilt
Vicky Beckwith
Fifty years ago, this patchwork quilt’s fabric, colour, and imagery stimulated a child’s curiosity and imagination. Forty years before UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals, this quilt was hand-stitched by a grandparent for their grandchild, giving new life to recycled material. Each hexagon brings its own unique lived experience from its previous life as a dress, jacket, off-cut, blouse, or skirt. There is meaning in remembrance, and belonging within the quilt’s journey and texture. The narrative continues, as the quilt’s fabric, colour, and imagery are talked about with the next generation, igniting curiosity and imagination for the next fifty years.
© 2023 | Vicky Beckwith
Collaborating in the liminal zone
Wendy Carss, Bronwen Cowie (University of Waikato) Helen Trevethan, Jane Tilson (University of Otago) Jeana Kriewaldt, Natasha Ziebell (University of Melbourne) Kim Beasy, Michelle Parks (University of Tasmania)
Beginning teachers are in a liminal zone facing multiple boundaries to being and becoming a teacher. In our research, we have found that networks of collaborators support the wayfinding needed for teacher growth. This involves building relationships as a professional with colleagues, students and the community, all the more so when it involves moving somewhere new. These relationships are enablers in the intellectual, emotional and social enterprise of teaching.
© 2023 | Wendy Carss, Bronwen Cowie (University of Waikato) Helen Trevethan, Jane Tilson (University of Otago) Jeana Kriewaldt, Natasha Ziebell (University of Melbourne) Kim Beasy, Michelle Parks (University of Tasmania)
Computational thinking embedded in authentic context for young Māori learners
Wendy Fox-Turnbull, Shaoqun Wu, Tiana Mayo, Matthew Stafford
This poster represents the underpinning ideas of our research in the field of computational thinking in technology education. This four-week unit study took place at a small semi-rural primary school where kaiako and tauira worked together in an authentic context to learn sequencing and orientation of computational thinking through the programme of Beebot. The Beebots symbolise our tauira, while harakeke, a natural fibre which is strong and versatile, symbolises the support that kaiako provide by connecting learning to their land and whānau. The research achieved success in the use of te reo Māori, Tuakana-Teina teaching and lived experience as Māori in technology education.
© 2023 | Wendy Fox-Turnbull, Shaoqun Wu, Tiana Mayo, Matthew Stafford
Narrative therapists address substance (mis)use in Aotearoa: Stories from the field
Wendy Talbot and Tina Phillips
We asked narrative therapy addiction counsellors to talk about their work with people who are grappling with addictions such as alcohol, drugs, gaming, gambling, food, sex and more. The therapist participants told us addiction is a political and social problem not an individual problem; they problematise the substance (not the person) and focus on the context that produces Addiction. At first glance the full recycling bin might evoke questions and ideas about the consumers of the alcohol but what questions might be asked about the substance and the cultural and political contexts that produce and maintain Addiction in societies?
© 2023 | Wendy Talbot and Tina Phillips
Assimilation or multiculturalism?
Yu Yuan
Cultural adaptation could follow different pathways. The pictures present the adjustments of a group of Chinese international students' dining habits. The top photo shows a traditional Chinese meal (hotpot) that the students shared at the beginning of their journey in New Zealand, while the one below shows a Western-style meal (grilled steak and potatoes) that they made for their gathering one month later. Nevertheless, the Western-style meal blended with students’original habits, including a shared dish of tomato and scrambled eggs. Did these students assimilate to Western dining, establish a new habit, or use multiple dining habits?
© 2023 | Yu Yuan
Sharing my story": Using digital storytelling to establish personal connection through visual expression.
Hazel Woodhouse & Zaida Moffat
Digital storytelling uses visual media to express personal and cultural identity. The image stems from research that explored how digital stories could be used by training teachers to introduce themselves and share funds of knowledge. This image, created by a summer scholar, illustrates their digital story by depicting a whānau kete, woven with the pattern Poutama – which symbolises the attainment of knowledge. The pictured pounamu taonga represent values drawn from personal connections and life experiences. In parallel representation, the old book, digital tablet and headphones represent a hybrid learning journey, as ferns surrounding the image signify new growth and aspirations.
© 2023 | Hazel Woodhouse & Zaida Moffat