Search

For Jean Herbison, learning in her early 20th century childhood world was relatively uncomplicated and predictable. Life was shaped by unambiguous family, faith and settler colonial prescriptions about how children should behave and what they should become. Approaching the centenary of her birth, children today must navigate a very different society of 'unlimited can'; an achievement society that generates a debilitating compulsion to self-improve (Byung Chul-Han). In this Herbison lecture, I offer a personal reflection on the contemporary 'triangle' of education research, policy and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Viewed as a culturally and historically specific 'form of life' (Rahel Jaeggi), I ask whether, over the last thirty five years, this triangle may have unwittingly contributed to a collective failure to give adequate recognition to children's learning. Despite our best intentions, have we simply reified students and in doing so alienated them from learning in all its complexities and dimensions (Knud Illeris)? More than mere acknowledgement of 'the other', recognition theory highlights the importance of socially developed qualities such as confidence, respect and esteem (Axel Honneth) to each child's capacity to develop meaningful relationships to or 'resonance' with an ever accelerating and uncontrollable world (Hartmut Rosa) and the people and communities in it. In practical terms, then, what can we draw on that is already immanent in our research, policy and practice triangle to transform children's institutionalised learning? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to add to the literature on the sociology of oral health and dentistry by presenting the relevance of status passage to the study of complete tooth loss. The article reports on an analysis of data taken from participants residing in the Nelson region of New Zealand. In total the data include interviews from 20 participants, all of whom had their remaining natural teeth removed before 1960. In total, 12 women and eight men were interviewed. All were from a European background with an age range of 71 to 101 years. Following a narrative approach, participants were interviewed on the nature of the social factors that resulted in complete tooth loss by starting with their family history and then focusing on the factors and events leading up to their total tooth loss. Data were analysed using the methods and techniques of grounded theory. This article provides an outline of the importance of scheduling, prescribing, social factors, 'compound awareness contexts' and reversibility to the status passage into complete tooth loss. We conclude by arguing that the theory of status passage may enable a detailed analysis of the 'time-space extensionality' of trajectories into complete tooth loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on an ethnographic research project that examined how New Zealand child protection social workers discussed decision making about reported risks for children. The study involved a combination of detailed interviews and observations of social work practice in social work offices from late 2002 to mid 2003. In this article, I show how the initial responses by social workers in statutory child protective services were filtered through everyday heuristics about risk as they reasoned with harm and danger probabilities. Social workers who participated in this study tended to treat risk as something that needed to be known early on in the case trajectory. By retaining a focus on what was known and recorded and, therefore, could be identified and used as the basis of interventions, social workers effectively excluded the possibility of a challenge from alternate views or positions about risk. Importantly, this approach to risk prevented social workers, their supervisors and colleagues from exploring the ways in which risk was constructed and used. Thus, they did not consider the extent to which social workers decisions, such as those to remove a child exposed families to other types of risk, to the potential harm of placing children in alternative or foster care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Maori individuals and groups in New Zealand have been active for many years claiming rights to property and resources guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. An important contemporary case, Wai 262, extends the scope of these claims to include ownership of Maori culture and its products. The tendency in this claim to reify culture, and to assert indigenous ownership of it, is common. However, New Zealand's approach to the issue of cultural rights is unique. The state has established a quasi-judicial forum, the Waitangi Tribunal, to hear claims about violations of Maori Treaty rights. In this particular instance the Treaty - Tribunal framework has shaped indigenous claims in ways that paint the claimants into a corner. Their position at the hearings’ closings comes into conflict with the kind of liberal democratic values that provide Maori iwi (tribes) opportunities to make their case. It is therefore unlikely that Wai 262 will afford a solution to the problems of cultural appropriation and marginalization that exist in contemporary New Zealand. As such, this long-running case leaves the claimants, and those sympathetic to their plight, with some unfinished business. It also provides an important new window into the contradictions facing indigenous peoples who seek redress through law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]