The annual Ara Institute of Canterbury has rolled around for
another year. Programme offers
Day one presentations summarised below:
Dr. Allen Hill – The role of education outside the classroom
(EOTC) in environment and sustainability education. This is a Ministry of
Education funded project. EOTC encompasses any learning outside of school
ground and related to all subjects across the NZ school curriculum. Multi-phase
project began with 500 schools out of 2500 responding to National survey. Then focus
groups with teacher professional groups. Then school specific case studies and
focus group interviews with teachers and students. Provided overview of
findings. Survey identified key themes from perspective of schools. Majority
(96%) indicated EOTC as being extremely important to their school. Student
engagement, authentic learning, curriculum enrichment and capability were the
most important factors.
Dr. Tony McCaffrey – Resistance and care: the shifting but
necessary place of disability performance in the city as site of disaster and
recovery. Used contemporary challenges faced by Christchurch residents,
earthquakes, shootings, climate change etc. as base and rationale for the need
to support the artistic and performing opportunities, across all sectors of
society. Hospitality and inclusion are hallmarks of an excepting community.
Work with ‘different light’ the actors with intellectual challenges used as a
way to bring the themes together.
Lynette Winter – Tutors’ characteristics of embedded numeracy
teaching as practice at an ITP. A brief overview of her M Ed thesis. Briefly
summarised embedded numeracy premise as practiced in Aotearoa/NZ – i.e. subject
teachers will embed numeracy. However, works better is vocational tutor and
specialist maths teacher work together. Sought to find out how embedded
practice was actually enacted through interviews with 6 tutors, each teaching
in a different programme. Used the know the learner, demands and what to do as
framework. Collectively, tutors good at know the learner and what to do in
their context. However, depth was perhaps not achieved, especially with programmes
that do not have natural opportunities for numeracy practice.
Dr. Selena Chan – I guidelines for developing e-assessments for
learning. Summarised e-assessments, the pedagogical concepts underpinning the project,
the research process and the guidelines. Report now avaiable at the Ako Aotearoa site.
Dr. James Murray – death and digital assets. Collaborative
project with Deakin University to explore what happens to digital assets when
death occurs! Defined digital assets and challenges. Currently, unless
individual has registered company, videos made by individual are difficult to
be accessed by dependants. Current law not keeping up. Lawyers also not up to
date, as survey of law websites, indicates poor and contradicting advice.
Account access varies with different platforms, apps and social networks.
Armit Sarkar – Information systems resilience in time of
crisis: lessons from NZ. Collaborative research with Ara, University of
Canterbury and Jade (software development company). Provided overview of
difficulties in defining resilience and the need to create framework relevant
to the IT industry. Current theories checked to see how these fit with the
actual need for resilience, i.e. through experiences through the Christchurch earthquakes.
Software for gauging IT resilience also part of the potential from the study. Summarised
briefly the Q method quantitative method used to analyse the data.
As always, an ecletic selection and always interesting to find out what researchers at Ara Institute of Canterbury are involved with.
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