Carn Symposium 2: November 7, 2016
Abstracts
Carol Hamilton
Writing to Tell a Story about a Topic – unpacking the process.
In November 2015 469 submissions from the Select Committee Inquiry into identification and support for students with the significant challenges of dyslexia dyspraxia and autism spectrum disorders in primary and secondary schools in New Zealand were posted on the New Zealand Parliamentary website. These were downloaded in order to examine how the submissions framed the process of diagnosis of the learning difficulty. Under what conditions was a diagnosis sought? How was the diagnosis obtained? What could be learned about the benefits and drawbacks of diagnosis – of ‘becoming disabled’ (Erevelles2014 ) - from what was held in these narratives? This talk follows aspects of the process of writing up publically available narratives to tell a story about a topic. It includes how the first draft was written, feed-back given by reviewers and how this information was taken into consideration in the re-writing.
Gail Adams-Hutcheson
Spacings of mobile farming in New Zealand:
Assemblages of cows, bodies, farms and the weather
Weather changes moods – Nirvana, “In bloom” (1991)
Cresswell (2011) broadens mobility studies to include non-human objects and structures, but rarely, non-human animals and the weather. I add here both livestock and the more literal atmospheric conditions of sun, wind and rain which are largely missing from mobilities studies. Weather is ubiquitous, yet hard to ignore – it impacts on both researcher and the researched. I visited farms and was: jumped-up-on by dogs, rode on 4-wheel bikes, got licked by calves [happy/sunny], felt hot, got covered in dust [tired/sweltering], stood still in the milking-shed [tension/cold], and was blasted by freezing winds and slopped through thick mud [depression/winter wet]. For Ash (2013a, 35) “the body is a kind of living or somatic memory, which is composed of various retentional apparatuses”, which become ignited by alignment of senses. In this paper I argue for attention to be paid to sharemilking and the materiality of atmospheres to draw attention to the ‘centrifugal’ forces of mobile rural dwelling. Sharemilking is a largely unique agrarian practice in New Zealand which is embedded in the notion of mobility. Sharemilkers typically own the livestock and machinery, but not the land and enter into contract with landowners on a share profit basis. Contracts are finished and new ones are taken up on a set day, the 1st June which is often termed colloquially as ‘Gypsy-day’. The contract nature of sharemilking stimulates a cascade of mobilities and enabling infrastructures (assemblages) as farmers move on a stuttering schedule of contract
renewals. The frequent upheaval of hundreds of large animals and sheer amount of equipment moved, which is needed to run a sharemilking operation, does warrant further consideration.
Keywords: Assemblage; atmosphere; mobilities; rural spaces; non-humans
Philippa Hunter
Cross-disciplinary collaboration in an MTchgn Evidence-based Inquiry paper: Rethinking secondary teacher education
In this presentation I reflect on a pedagogical innovation implemented in theFaculty of Education’s MTchgLnprogramme (2016). A critical pedagogy stance shapes my research motivations and methodology.As the coordinator/teacher of an Evidence-Based Inquiry(secondary) paper, I aimed to activate participants’ collaboration and thinkingabout approaches to pedagogy across the curriculum. This involved making visible ways participants identify and articulate curriculum discourses, contexts, and disciplinary insights. Participants selected and researchedarticles about pedagogy in relation to their curriculum specialisms (English, mathematics, social sciences, technology, languages, physics, biology). Each participant presented a face-to-face seminar about an article’s author/s as researcher/s, curriculum purpose and evidence-based findings. This also involved class members in practical applications. As a seminar follow-up, each presenter generated questions to lead an online discussion with their peers, and synthesised the discussion’s ideas.I propose cross-disciplinary collaborative pedagogies present opportunities in teacher education for rethinking curriculum purpose and engagement.