This conceptual research study examines the discursive constructions of giftedness, infancy/toddlerhood, and economics/neoliberalism to consider their implications in gifted education. This analysis is undertaken from a Foucauldian perspective and draws from concepts such as power/knowledge, discourses, disciplines, and power relationships to…

In his writing in the mid-nineteenth century -- "The Idea of a University," John Henry Newman argues that the university provides a platform for human advancement through teaching and research. Over a century later, our public university now hedged on several social, political, ecological and economic factors that bully its traditional…

This article investigates the possibilities of a vocational pedagogy for undergraduate popular music education which is grounded in site and city. The value of work-integrated curricula in tertiary music environments is well established; however, often absent from such discussions is consideration of how geospatial contexts mediate the…

This article reports on my experiences as a novice researcher as I traverse the challenges of being a postgraduate international student while conducting fieldwork in my own country. While my research aimed to determine the strategies of five public elementary school principals who facilitated school turnaround and the political and economic…

This paper reflects on the history of adult and community education (ACE) in Aotearoa New Zealand with special reference to older people's learning. The paper adopts a critical framework and draws on both primary and secondary sources. Key economic, political, social, demographic and cultural forces are discussed along with the huge growth in…

Global economic and advanced capitalist agendas have taken on ideological dimensions that are flat, precise and which assert "undeniable" facts. These agendas are gradually shaping a society and its education based on consumerism and a global economic order which is "not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally…

Discusses the recent New Right educational "reforms" in New Zealand within the context of the welfare state crisis. Details the development of conservative privatization and deregulation policies and the individualistic economic and social principles dominating the educational restructuring movement. Such trends impoverish the notion of…

Analyzes political and economic context for divergent paths of two key education curriculum reform documents in New Zealand. Contrasts a centrally controlled, subject-based, achievement-oriented curriculum for compulsory education with a child-oriented, thematic, experimental curriculum for early childhood education. Suggests some reasons for the…

Questions the extent to which New Zealand children have benefited from New Right economic policies and argues that the invisibility of children, the role of public concern about children, and the social construction of childhood are factors which have facilitated implementation of these changes. Examines how personal and political spheres…

This book examines 1980s educational reforms and their consequences for the 1990s, focusing on the Australian Labor Party government's policy response to conditions of economic scarcity. The first section addresses the broader economic, social, political, and ideological context of educational reform under Australian Labor governments, compared to…