National Tertiary Learning and Teaching conference - 2015 Day 2 morning

Now updated with links.

Take the conference bus out to the BoPP Wildermere campus for another busy day. The day begins with keynote from Dr. Ingrid Huygens who presents on 'educating for a Tiriti relationship: learning about Maori visions for Pakeha settlement'. Focused on some history from the Maori perspective and examples from contemporary tertiary education. Reminder to educators of our role in the 'cultural work' industry and to ensure our students continue to be committed to roles as a 'conscience' checkers. Have to help educate for social issues, skills to work across cultures and work through implications of colonisation and decolonisation. Sites of power in the Maori world is from the whenau, the people, up whereas for pakeha, the monarchical down process. Described the ways Maori developed new tikanga (laws or rules) to work with influx of whalers and then settlers and the precursor activity to the signing of the Tiriti. Also the original ways hapu worked together in cooperative endeavours to trade, grow and harvest food. Clarified how Maori interpreted the Tiriti in terms of their worldview and the roots of present Tiriti reconciliations and claims. Encouraged connection of educators with the 'honour the treaty' movement and to apply to their own teaching contexts to contribute towards building a decolonized future. 

After morning tea, I chair four sessions with mine scheduled at the end. First up, we had Hemi Inia and Eruera Prendergast-Tarena present on the 'He Toki Ki Te Mahi': supporting Maori apprentices'. The programme is a cooperative initiative launched in 2011 between Hawkins Construction, Ngai Tahu and Cpit which is led by the Ngai Tahu Iwi. Objective not only for skills training to be a mechanism for large scale social change to support and enable Maori aspirations. 800 trainees through pre apprenticeship into apprenticeship and then into a higher level learning pathway into leadership as site managers, project manager and quantity surveyors including business ownership. In apprenticeship, He Toki are the employer with host employers including Hawkins, Fletcher, Dominion and Max. He Toki also screens applicants and assist entry into apprenticeship if any pre-preparation required. Uses learning and mentoring frameworks - Ako Whakaruruhau (Kerehoma et al., 2013). Focus on whanau and apprentices to ensure success and pathways to careers and future livelihoods. 

Then, a session with Dean Ellery from BoPP 'if creativity is so important to the arts, business and society, why don't we teach it?' Your creative potential is within you but if it is, you need to decide what and how to do it. Need to find who you are so that your creativity is able to come forth. Defines as creativity is about the motivation to bring something new into existence. Everyone is creative as we are born with it and for some creativity were educated out of them :(  creative requires energy and risk. Teaching creativity involves helping individuals realise their potential and also entails creating challenges to the known order. Creativity learning required through all levels of education. Students complete Level 2 NCEA instead of dropping out of school. 

Thirdly, we had a presentation on 'from drop-out to Master Builder. The success story of a Trades Academy' with Colin O'Gorman and Andy Pivac from Unitec - Auckland West Vocational Academy. Went through how academy set up and results. A partnership with Massey High School who funded the logistical set up of with programme focused on building a house to create learning environment for learning. Unitec provided programme expertise, trades skills and trades teaching. Seed money from housing foundation into a community organisation called village trust. House then sold to housing corporation. 

My presentation on 'aligning graduate profile framed qualifications with occupational identity indicators' followed. The presentation focussed on how to apply graduate profile to assessment processes to recognise skills / dispositions attained through conferment of job tasks, responsibilities and job titles. Advocating for understanding of the holistic nature of embodied occupational identity and how to introduce newcomers to and how to better affirm occupational identity.