This article advances transdisciplinarity as a potentially useful applied theatre theory and method. It maps the ways transdisciplinary research principles informed and framed an applied theatre project and suggests that making applied theatre explicit rather than implicit as a transdisciplinary research process may help practitioners…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand student experiences of authentically assessed community partnership projects and reflect on authentic assessment from a social and environmental sustainability perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The authors present an elaborated case study including graduate-level courses at a university…

Rapid urban development in small rural communities is occurring at an unprecedented pace in regional Aotearoa New Zealand. Despite this growth, rural schools are positioned at the margins of the planning process and the implications of this urbanisation trend remains unknown. This research challenges the notion of the rural-urban divide by…

Purpose: In Aotearoa New Zealand, Health Education is socio-critical in orientation and is offered as a subject that can offer credits towards the national secondary school qualification. The purpose of this paper is to explore the learning experiences of people who studied Health Education to the final level of secondary schooling in Aotearoa New…

This paper delves into the innovative use of the potluck, or "pa'ina," as a metaphor to reimagine a research approach aimed at fostering collective understanding between non-Indigenous knowledge seekers and Indigenous knowledge guardians in Indigenous contexts. By embracing the broader context of research, this metaphor strives to create…

By engaging students in everyday issues and events, STEM education can contribute to the development of citizens who are equipped to make the world a better place. However, students' STEM learning with this focus requires teachers to identify age and context appropriate issues. Student investigation of local issues and events can be motivating for…

In this article, Holly Bodman shares the journey she embarked on as a fourth-generation middle-class Pakeha to decolonise her practice. Bodman began by reading the work of local scholars and educators to discover her unconscious bias, which led to deepening cultural relationships with her students, their whanau, and the community. Armed with a new…

Drawing from principles of ethical research derived from our review of national and international policy documents, in this paper we reflect on our research experiences working in partnership with Indigenous educators in a project to support young Indigenous children's oral and written language development through collaborative action research.…

A summary of Carol Mutch's research into the role of schools in disaster response and recovery highlights the expectations that are placed on schools following a crisis. Her research shows that school staff undertake these extra demands willingly and conscientiously, despite the toll that it takes on their own health and wellbeing. In this article…

Discussions around civic engagement are now commonplace in Aotearoa New Zealand universities, albeit to varying degrees of intensity. The results of these discussions are realised in strategic plans, curricular development and the commitments of individual academics to engage with the world outside the university. This article explores the…

This article describes one aspect of a research project that sought to describe and interpret the perspectives of university colleagues who are community-engaged, about their community-engagement, within one research-intensive university in New Zealand. We explored the communication devices and processes used during community engagement, with a…

Service is a fundamental value for the teaching of Pacific-heritage learners. This article describes educators' perspectives of the value of service, one of the values foundational to Tapasa. Findings from interviews, talanoa, and teaching observations show that service is demonstrated and nurtured differently by Pacific and non-Pacific educators,…

The vision of New Zealand's Ministry of Education is to "lift aspiration, raise educational achievement for every New Zealander". However, our national statistics show us that this goal remains elusive for many students, particularly those who identify as Maori. In order to both raise the educational achievement of all students, and to…

This paper, by a Bangladeshi and a New Zealander, brings together narrative inquiry studies of the leadership initiatives in two quite different rural schools, in Bangladesh and New Zealand respectively. The schools are in communities that might be considered as significantly underprivileged, and generationally alienated from education, within…

The primary objective of this research project was to investigate the specific interventions that make the biggest difference to Maori students' academic motivation and in-school engagement within one Kahui Ako in Aotearoa New Zealand. Student, whanau, school leader, and teacher perspectives were examined to understand which interventions were…