New Zealander Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a teacher in remote rural Maori schools in the 1940s-1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has…

This paper draws on 38 student interviews carried out in the course of the team research project "Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Maori Doctoral Students". Maori doctoral thesis work takes place in the intersections between the Maori (tribal) world of identifications and obligations, the organisational and epistemological…

The year 1998 marked 50 years of doctoral study in New Zealand, and in 1999 I embarked on a history of Ph.D. theses in Education. Influenced by Foucaultian genealogy, this employed a fusion of bibliographic, archival and life-history interview methods. One hundred and eighty-three Education theses were identified and 57 of these graduates…

Most studies on the history of educational ideas have focused on what influential educational theorists and policy-makers have said and written at particular times, constructing a "view from the top." The project from which this article is derived focused on the ways theoretical debates have been "lived" by teachers in New…

This paper reports research on: the major educational ideas that have shaped New Zealand's educational policies and influenced the content and form of teacher training and early childhood education; the educational ideas that have influenced teachers and former teachers; and how teachers have reacted to the major changes that policymakers have…

This study examined the tides of educational thought of New Zealand teachers from the 1920s-1990s, taking information from a study of the educational life histories of 150 teachers and former teachers ages 21-98. Using case studies, the paper discusses the impact of student-centered learning ideas in secondary schools from the 1950s-1980s. (SM)