Catalysed by conversations amongst a group of colleagues, this article is an initial exploration of what happens to women academics aged 60+ who work in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work is an example of when academic theories, in this case feminism, are called forth by real-world experiences – in this case, increasing academic job insecurity, catalysed by post-pandemic economic shortfalls. We blend together personal anecdotes and feminist analysis to show how women’s academic careers, which are commonly constrained (...) by motherhood in their younger years, are also curtailed at the senior end by processes of voluntary/involuntary retirement, as and when demanded by adverse fiscal conditions. (shrink)

New Zealand has received world-wide accolades for its Early Childhood Education curriculum, Te Whāriki. This paper explores the tension between economic imperialism, and a curriculum acknowledged as visionary. The foundational ideas of Te Whāriki emanate from sociocultural and anti-racist pedagogies. However, its implementation is hampered by the overarching policy discourse of Human Capital Theory, with its instrumental emphasis on economic outcomes. While Te Whāriki offers local cultural and educational possibilities, HCT is presented by those espousing economic disciplines, as having universal (...) application. These tensions, largely unacknowledged and unexplored, place ECE teachers in positions of difficulty. While trying to meet aspirational curriculum goals in their daily practices, teachers’ attempts are constrained by supranational economic discourses. I ask how Edward Said’s concept of contrapuntal readings can offer spaces for resistance to the dominance of economics. (shrink)

Volume 51, Issue 10, September 2019, Page 991-994.

There is a move to centralise scattered documents; to archive all hardcopies of published journals in one place. PESA is moving to the institutionalisation of its history. We may ask, if philosophy of education in Australasia began at Bassar College, University of New South Wales on 20 May 1970, or if it emerged from the post-war focus on teacher education, teaching on the philosophy of education. Further to the injunction that we query who may be foregrounded; who assigned to possible (...) appendices of any PESA stories? By definition the non-members, the rejected scripts, the programme notations of those who failed to present at conferences will be the omissions. And the very fact that some have been rejected, for perhaps inadequate philosophising, for moving beyond the discourse of the liberal understanding of education means that there will always be gaps, omissions, a select record. In what ways may the archive order us? How do we ensure that archival history of PESA is not the work only of Great Wo/men. We will find that after ordering and collating disorderly archives, that what is collated will be incomplete. Our question may be as was Lorimer and Philo’s, ‘should we be “allowing more disorder into the archive”’? (shrink)