Humanities

This paper focuses on the role of the principal in establishing a meaningful appraisal process. The journey of one urban primary school is explored from the perspective of the principal as the teaching staff transition from an ineffective system to a process that has teacher growth and learners' achievement at the centre. We acknowledge that the leadership team and teachers played an important role in implementing any changes, however, the key focus of this paper is the principal's actions. Audio-recorded interviews with the principal and five teachers, followed by three years of participant observations of regular meetings and conversations recorded in field notes, chart the principal's journey. We argue the principal's leadership strategies developed a community of practice supporting teacher professional development, which in turn paved the way to shift teachers' perceptions and produce a meaningful appraisal process. This shift is evidenced in surveys taken at the beginning and end of the three-year period which show a marked change in teachers' attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of the appraisal purpose. We conclude with implications for school leaders interested in revising their appraisal process.

There have been many people who have supported, encouraged and motivated me to complete this thesis. My husband Tony has always supported me in any madcap adventure I have decided to undertake-this research being one of them. He has always challenged me to be the best I can, and is unwavering in his belief that I can do whatever I set my mind to, even when I have had doubts. I would also like to acknowledge the role my parents played in this journey. Mum critiqued and proofread every chapter on more than one occasion. She said she 'enjoyed reading it' but I am sure there are better ways she could have spent her weekends and evenings. Dad encouraged me when it got tough, calling me 'Doctor Daughter'-I would have looked a right twit if he had to change it to 'Almost Doctor Daughter'. I am not an academic, but I wanted my children, Stacey, Lorissa, Frank and Tom to see that even their quirky mother could achieve something wonderful. I hope I have shown them that they too, can achieve whatever they set their minds to. My thanks also go to all of my teacher friends who, over the years, have entered into vigorous debate and discussion about the purpose of appraisal and why and how we carry out this process. It is through this debate and discussion that the concept of this study grew. I have always believed that 'authentic purpose' was the key ingredient missing from appraisal processes, however, I now know the whole process is so much more complex than that. Finally I would like to thank my supervisors, Margaret Walshaw and Sally Hansen for their support and ideas. I need to specifically acknowledge the wisdom and patience of Margaret throughout this journey. Without Margaret's guidance I doubt I could have made the leap from a Masters Degree to a Doctoral thesis. Margaret's timely responses to my seemingly silly questions and her purposeful, yet gentle critique and feedback of my work made me think harder and probe deeper. I feel proud and privileged to have had Margaret as my supervisor.

Abstract: Facilitating a more responsive style of teaching in primary mathematics has implications for not only teaching practice, but also for how we plan for our learners. Grouping decisions, task selection and teacher confidence in mathematical content are important considerations when developing inquiring mathematical communities. This article introduces some core elements of current theory for primary teachers who want to include inquiry principles in their mathematics program and increase their confidence levels when teaching primary mathematics.  Teaching practices that promote learner agency are identified, followed by a planning process that allows for the flexibility required for responsive teaching and also encourages teachers to critically engage in mathematical content as they plan for their learners. Key Points: Responsive teaching in mathematics requires teachers to be more flexible with their teaching in primary mathematics than ever before. Current theory on how chi...

At the beginning of their programme in 2015, 40% of the 83 primary pre-service teachers at the University of Otago did not meet the required standard for content knowledge, and therefore their programme was adjusted. During their three-year programme, the pre-service teachers’ mathematical content knowledge was examined, as well as other affective aspects of their relationships with mathematics, including beliefs and feelings about mathematics and teaching, and associated identities. Pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the usefulness of the interventions were sought. Their relationships with mathematics generally became more positive as they grew towards becoming teachers and as they adopted a growth perspective. The pre-service teachers found the interventions useful although their confidence remained somewhat conditional on their knowledge and the age of the children. Many of the pre-service teachers moved from thinking about their own relationships with mathematics to thinking a...

There have been many people who have supported, encouraged and motivated me to complete this thesis. My husband Tony has always supported me in any madcap adventure I have decided to undertake-this research being one of them. He has always challenged me to be the best I can, and is unwavering in his belief that I can do whatever I set my mind to, even when I have had doubts. I would also like to acknowledge the role my parents played in this journey. Mum critiqued and proofread every chapter on more than one occasion. She said she 'enjoyed reading it' but I am sure there are better ways she could have spent her weekends and evenings. Dad encouraged me when it got tough, calling me 'Doctor Daughter'-I would have looked a right twit if he had to change it to 'Almost Doctor Daughter'. I am not an academic, but I wanted my children, Stacey, Lorissa, Frank and Tom to see that even their quirky mother could achieve something wonderful. I hope I have shown them that they too, can achieve whatever they set their minds to. My thanks also go to all of my teacher friends who, over the years, have entered into vigorous debate and discussion about the purpose of appraisal and why and how we carry out this process. It is through this debate and discussion that the concept of this study grew. I have always believed that 'authentic purpose' was the key ingredient missing from appraisal processes, however, I now know the whole process is so much more complex than that. Finally I would like to thank my supervisors, Margaret Walshaw and Sally Hansen for their support and ideas. I need to specifically acknowledge the wisdom and patience of Margaret throughout this journey. Without Margaret's guidance I doubt I could have made the leap from a Masters Degree to a Doctoral thesis. Margaret's timely responses to my seemingly silly questions and her purposeful, yet gentle critique and feedback of my work made me think harder and probe deeper. I feel proud and privileged to have had Margaret as my supervisor.

Tilda Swinton’s status as a fashion icon exemplifies the contradictory functions that Walter Benjamin attributes to fashion as both exemplifying commodity fetishism and expressing a utopian ‘image wish’. This vexed relationship with fashion inflects Swinton’s cinematic performances, enhanced by her emphasis on disguise and transformation that calls into question the nature of identity and its authenticity. Her persona speaks to the fluid and fragmented dimensions of contemporary European identities, which are rooted, but also cross borders, national and otherwise; similarly, her public presence testifies to the way that contemporary culture has generated new forms of celebrity as a means of representing identities in which the negotiation of gender is a significant component.

Dunedin artist Marie Strauss produces a range of work in different media, marked by the intermedial nature of her practice.For Strauss, “Fashion for me is like painting, or making a meal or creating a pot – to me it’s all the same.”Through the intermedial continuum of her engagement, ‘art’ is released from traditional hierarchies and boundaries. While  locally,  perhaps,  more  routinely  associated  with  her  fashion  label  Dada  Vintage  and  shop  Dada  Manifesto,  located in Dunedin, Strauss is also a painter and ceramicist. The everyday practices of eating and dressing inflect the meaning of her ceramics (which are sculptural rather that utilitarian in nature) as well as her paintings.

Fashion within Strauss’s work as defined intermedially becomes a highly personal expression of allegiance, festivity and attachment. The play of colour and vibrancy of texture, as shifting intensities, evoke the innocent delights of childhood and an optimism about the human condition in which such mutual pleasures provide a common ground that promotes our understanding of a more utopian future. The double valence of fashion, as both a consumer non-durable and art, recalls the views of the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin who saw in fashion, and our acquiescence to its system, a symptom of commodity fetishism in one of its more virulent forms, but also deemed it a manifestation of the human subject’s continued search and desire for a more utopian future. Fashion by its nature as ever changing expresses a dissatisfaction with the present and a belief in a better future, according to Benjamin’s formulations of its paradoxical role. The intermedial connections sustained by Marie Strauss’s project demonstrate fashion’s potential to connect the subject to the aesthetic impulse defined by Stern through his notion of vitality affects – an appreciation of life and beauty that is arguably a human right allocated to all by birth, the sign of a shared humanity that has the potential to draw us together in celebration rather than war.

Depuis les années 1980, un débat important se déroule parmi les militantes américaines autour du terme « féministe » et de son emploi. Elles sont préoccupées par la question de savoir à qui accorder la légitimité politique. Andi Zeisler, dans un ouvrage récent We Were Feminists Once : From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement [1], a popularisé le terme de « marketplace feminism  » [féminisme du marché]. Sa définition a beaucoup en commun avec des formes antérieures de féminisme qu’on a appelé dans ces débats « féminisme consumériste », « post-féminisme », « néo-féminisme » ou « féminisme au choix » [« choiseoisie »] dans les dernières décennies [2]. Pour les féministes comme Zeisler, cette modalité du féminisme populaire que certain·e·s considèrent comme une renaissance féministe et qui a émergé ces dix dernières années, manque de la conscience sociale que Zeisler juge cruciale pour pouvoir considérer ce mouvement comme authentique. Cette forme de féminisme populaire, « a marketplace feminism », vise selon Zeisler des groupes de consommatrices (composés de femmes ayant un minimum de sensibilité féministe), davantage que la promotion d’objectifs politiques. Une lecture de films populaires destinés à un public féminin met en avant un certain nombre de questions épineuses : pouvons-nous, en tant que féministes, lire les films qui relèvent de ce « marketplace feminism  » comme utiles aux objectifs du féminisme tels que nous les concevions ? Le « marketplace feminism » tel qu’il s’exprime dans un film-événement, doit-il être considéré comme irrécupérable ? Je propose d’explorer ces questions à travers l’analyse d’une série de récentes fictions audiovisuelles populaires, ciblées principalement vers des publics féminins.

Typically, fashion has been associated with the large urban centers that are considered the hubs of contemporary culture, or “fashion’s world cities,” to borrow from the title of an oft-quoted edited volume; however, in the twenty-first century, fashion may play a role at a local or regional level, even in relatively isolated contexts such as that provided by Dunedin, located in New Zealand, at the bottom of the South Island. The work of Dunedin designers such as Margarita Robertson, creative direc- tor for the clothing line NOM*d, and Sara Munro, creative director for the clothing line Company of Strangers, illustrates Walter Benjamin’s conceptualization of fashion as expressing utopian desires, in this case a form of “rooted cosmopolitanism,” to borrow from Kwame Anthony Appiah, while furthering an economic system dependent on commodity fetishism.

The brainchild of designer and artist Marie Strauss, DADA, and its flagship boutique DADA Manifesto, emerged on the Dunedin scene in 2008 with a fanfare of brilliant colour and dramatic accessories. In a town typically associated with New Zealand Southern Gothic and edgy streetwear, Marie’s creations, marketed under the labels DADA Vintage (2008-2014) and DADA Collection, quickly gained a cult following among this city’s savvy citizens who sought out her shop as a fashion destination.