New Zealand (NZ) Europeans show a unique implicit bicultural effect, with research using the Implicit Association Test consistently showing that they associate Maori (the Indigenous peoples) and their own (dominant/advantaged majority) group as equally representative of the nation. We replicated and extended this NZ = bicultural effect in a small…

Assumptions and interventions about the so-called "obesity epidemic" pervade health and physical education classrooms and national policy agendas in New Zealand, as they do elsewhere in the Western world. In contrast, critical scholars in these subjects advocate an active deconstruction of the tenets and presumptions underpinning public…

Dynamical models based on three steady-state equations for the law of effect were constructed under the assumption that behavior changes in proportion to the difference between current behavior and the equilibrium implied by current reinforcer rates. A comparison of dynamical models showed that a model based on Navakatikyan's (2007) two-component…

This paper offers a preliminary exploration of Connell's idea of southern theory and its potential application to career development. Four assumptions of metropolitan (northern) social theory are described: (a) the claim of universality, (b) reading from the centre, (c) gestures of exclusion, and (d) grand erasure. These assumptions are…

It is time to situate distributed leadership as a critical conceptualisation of school leadership; its popularisation has generally preceded conceptual and empirical development. Over the last 10 years distributed leadership has often been presented as a new construct of school leadership, though critique against education policy reforms and…

Experts in science communication were asked to identify the essential elements of a science communication course for post-graduate students. A Delphi methodology provided a framework for a research design that accessed their opinions and allowed them to contribute to, reflect on and identify 10 essential elements. There was a high level of…

After reviewing the literature on the topic of leadership, Simkins (2005) confirmed what the author finds to be true; that there is an over-abundance of models and theories of leadership in the literature. More concerning is that some of these models and theories disappear as quickly as they appear. Learning about leadership develops through…

The article explores the complementary connections between communities of practice and the ways in which individuals orchestrate their engagement with others to further their professional learning. It does so by reporting on part of a research project conducted in New Zealand on teachers' online professional learning in a university graduate…

In March 2004, Stephen Ball and others presented a symposium at the conference of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) on the necessity of theory in educational research. Like Ball, I have observed that theory, not just social theory, is a difficult space and one that divides researchers (those comfortable with theory and those less…

This study addressed career transitions in view of new environments along with the mobility of individuals across cultural territories. It paid attention to various adjustments individuals can make in their career in relation to their new environment and analysed those adjustment modes in relation to Nicholson's theory of work role transitions.…

The significance of relationships between the parents and teachers of preschool and kindergarten children is well established. Teachers and schools are presumed to be responsible for lack of parent-teacher collaboration. Internationally, early childhood teacher education programs recognize this and offer courses related to parents and families.…

In this article the author considers the impact of research and theory on non-dominant minority groups and the influence these have on shaping educators' understanding of the sociocultural, historical, and structural forces that impinge upon their work in the schools and communities they serve. Specifically, she reconsiders the constraints of John…

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…

The use of hybridity today suggests a less coherent, unified and directed process than that found in the Enlightenment science's cultural imperialism, but regardless of this neither concept exists outside power and inequality. Hence, hybridity raises the question of the terms of the mixture and the conditions of mixing. Cultural hybridity produced…

The discourses and practices of neoliberalism, including government policies for education and training, public debates regarding standards and changed funding regimes, have been at work on and in schools in capitalist societies since at least the 1980s. Yet we have been hard pressed to say what neoliberalism is, where it comes from and how it…