The day begins with a keynote from Dr. Mazharuddin Syed Ahmed who speaks on 'empowering through education:meaningful refugee participation in NZ society. Mazhar began overview of the various communities he is involved in including the joint research group on Islamic New Zealanders. He summarised his participation in the Royal Commission formed to look at what happened during and after the mosque shootings. Followed with his development of a deep sense of belonging to Aotearoa.
Proposed that meaningful refugee participation in includes voice in policies and in education begins with lowering educational integration barriers. For many refugees, their host country also contributes to atrocities occurring in his home country. Shared the stories of Bariz Shah to illlustrate the challenges refugees faced before and after their arrival.
Discussed why people migrate and summarised history of immigration across the millenium. Refugees are displaced not through choice, making it more challenging as the move is not through choice. Refugee intake in Aotearoa is still very low. For refugees, it is a long journey to Aotearoa. When they arrive, there are many continuing challenges and stress etc. Summarised why NZ is seen to be a good country to settle in.
Shared the Aroha project he initiated after the mosque shootings. Used the murmuration of starlings as an example of the contribution of individuals to the wider activities - they do not have a leader as such. After the mosque shootings, it was individuals' actions which made a difference for the people affected.
As a small country, NZers have 2 degrees of separation. We are born to be kind and care about others. Hate comes because we are taught to hate! The role of teachers is one key towards shifting from hate to love. Important to help students understand cognitive biases and what to do to check their own biases. Arts of bias lead to a downward spiral towards attitudes which support genocide! hence important to create opportunities for learners to understand the influence of bias.
Therefore, encouraged the need to be kind as it is contagious and good for our well-being and contributes to a better society.
After morning tea, I follow the Education 1 stream.
First up, Jamie Vaughan (Institute of IT professionals), Samuel Mann and Henk Roodt from Otago Polytechnic present on their work 'Hiapo framework - weaving professional identity in IT'. Sam presented work from Jamie's Doctoral work. Ongoing challenge of AI as being 'cowboys in suits'. In Jamie's masters, he found a mismatch of IT professionals and what was required in organisation practice. A comparison between nursing - 90% describes nursing IT but SFIA IT skills international) focuses 90% on technical skills. Applied Porter's value chain to bridge the nursing approach and SFIA. How to layer identity and values associated to bicultural practices (for example) is a output of Jamie's work as it is not only adding more 'skills' to SFIA but looking at holistic ways to integrate professional identity. The Niuen Hiapo (tapa cloth) to weave in meaning and narratives of 'being'.
Following on we have, 'winning, doing and finishing: an account of externally funded research, with pointers for colleagues' with Cath Fraser and Judith Honeyfield from Toi Ohomai. Began with the challenges represented through the aged care industry and the rationale for studying older adults and aging. Study participants were Māori and Chinese people. Study looks at how health care education is constituted and delivered to look at how aged care curriculum is enacted and student perspectives of older people. Ako Aotearoa project about to be completed. Provided and discussed research methodology and some findings. Shared some of the narratives/video resources as part of reporting the project.
Then, Graeme Harris from Ara shares his work 'looking at teaching practice to develop a new high interest course'. He introduced the topic 'engineering systems analysis motorsport flavour'' how the level 7 course was developed, reflected on and reviewed. Described the rationale and process of drawing on industry expertise and feedback to select the content for the course (that could be logistically possible with current lab /industry equipment). Course is 2 and and half week block course and 50-100 hours to complete a specific project. Block course is hands on to learn the principles of testing, use the equipment, CAD software etc, to solve a problem along with industry visits. Block course finishes with a test and the post project project to complete the course is progressed through the semester and worth 35% of the course. Course outcomes are good with many students obtaining jobs with the industry supporters. Shared improvements going into the future.
After morning tea, the last group of presentations:
Faye Wilson-Hill and Niki Hannan (Ara) with Hemi Hoskins (Te Wānanga o Aotearoa) and Hēperi Harris (Hawaiki Hou) present their ongoing work on 'Māui te Pūkenga: the evolution of the expert kaiako. The project sought to understand the experiences of kaiako as they expereince Maori culture and integrate these into their teaching, Data was collected through collaborative narrative inquiry yielding over 50 narratives. These kaiako were always travelling in the direction of learning and developing their culturally responsive pedagogy. They were already engaged in creating culturally responsive teaching environments. A re-framing mindset was also crucial to continually recognising and understanding bias so that indigenising and normalising mātauranga Maori continued. Not knowing was ok, but the important approach was to be comfortable with not knowing.
Narratives were read out for the audience to better understand the concepts discovered, recognised, and honoured.
Then with the team from Otago Polytechnic for the last two sessions in Education 2 stream.
Layered drivers framework with Samuel Mann, Ruth Meyers, Dave Guruge, Jamie Vaughan and Mawera Keretai (University of Otago). Shared data collected from two participants, with their stories of working through disconnections between their individual identities within a discipline and organisational practices. Introduced the concept of levers in practice from the work of Mawera. Using stories of people subjected to decolonisation and ask participants to redo these stories to remove biases participants already hold. From there, the values required for inclusion into a curriculum can be distilled. Shared website with the information on the project.
Genre prompts as reflective tools in professional practice with Samuel Mann, Dave Guruge, Ruth Meyers and Kylie Wright. Modelled how the prompts can be useful to help people tell the stories of their practice / reflections / challenges etc.
The conference closed and moved on to join the Ara 'Blues and Brews' end of year celebration.
